STN Entertainment
ewish prayers. Hungarian folk
songs. Heavy-metal guitars. In-
dustrial dance rhythms. The roar of
Nazi rallies.
Welcome to Kaddish.
Kaddish is a 70-minute sonic suite
performed by Towering Inferno, a col-
lective helmed by two Jewish musi-
cians — Andy Saunders and Richard
Wolfson — from Britain. It's an al-
bum, released last year in Europe and
recently in the United States. And it's
a stage show, a multimedia performance
piece that melds the music with images of a
burning bush, a burning Star of David and
Aryan youth rallies.
It's provocative, disturbing and stirring. It's
relentlessly noisy in some spots, tranquil in oth-
ers. Brian Eno — himself a
master of avant-garde music
In production for
and the co-producer of sever-
eight years,
Towering Inferno's al U2 albums — calls it "the
Kaddish combines most frightening record I
Jewish elements
have ever heard."
with heavy metal
It's been warmly received
and modern rock.
by critics, with concerts hailed
as triumphs in Berlin and
Austria — where it's illegal to show swastikas
for anything other than educational purposes.
Saunders and Wolfson understand why Kad-
dish is causing such a stir. But they also cau-
tion that those who view it as simply a Holocaust
piece are missing quite a bit.
"We're not telling a story as such," explains
Saunders, 36. "There's no political tract going
through it. What we knew right from the be-
Cr)
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H-
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HEAVY-METAL
Andy Saunders and Richard
Wolfinan are Towering Inferno,
a British/Jewish musical duo.
Their European CD release
evoked praise and controversy.
How will American audiences
react to its U S. release?
GARY GRAFF SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
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