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Leviticus emerged out of an experimental band
that Peter Bowman-Pease and Charles Kos were
a part of, the Philo Ensemble, which also featured
Phil Makeras. Kos had written a number of ambient
pieces that didn't fit with Philo, so Bowman-Pease
and Kos recorded them as a separate project
at Kos' Studio7. Bowman-Pease's cousin Lesley
Sohl soon joined, as did Makeras eventually.
Kos began co-writing songs with Sohl, and it
is these first songs that make up much of the
music that was released as "Ion Transfer-Process"
in 1981. The two also began to work on a second
project titled "One Day."
In March 1981, Kos formed Visiting the Zoo
with Stewart G, and brought to that band revised
versions of the songs that he had recorded with
Philo. With Visiting the Zoo as a backing band,
Kos re-recorded many of the songs that had appeared
on "Ion Transfer-Process," adding
"Barteby," and a song co-written with
Stewart. A demo was prepared, but was not released.
When Visiting the Zoo disbanded in October
1981, Kos formed a band with his housemate Jovan
the Yugoslavian and with a singing duet. The
band was in rehersal for two months, but no
stage set emerged. In 1982, Kos and Sohl returned
to working on ambient projects with Bowman-Pease.
The three also re-recorded all of the songs
prepared for the Visiting the Zoo demo (less
the Stewart collaboration), and these versions
were released on "Barteby" toward
the end of 1981. The trio also contributed "Music
for Express
Elevators" to the "Music for the Mindless"
tape produced by Jos. Barbier.
The "One Day" project was initially
two songs and three ambient pieces that were
out of context with "Ion Transfer-Process,"
which was fuelled by punk angst. By contrast,
the "One Day" songs were quiet and
dreamlike, while the ambient pieces were thematically
inconsistent, and Kos chose to put them aside.
He was to pick up the thread of "One Day"
during the summer of 1982. Working closely with
Sohl, he developed a number of song-music pieces
that fit into a mosaic inspired by a sense of
personal loss that Kos was experiencing at the
time. Kos wrote a novella titled Malaket that
built the music into a story, and had plans
to develop it into a performance piece in collaboration
with Kevo, a dance student at the Banff Center.
Some portions of the novella were developed
into a stage play by Kos and John Wimbs, titled
"Conditions of Atmosphere."
"One Day" was Kos' last release under
the name Leviticus. The EP "If things were
different, how could the change?" was issued
under the studio name. Kos moved to using his
own name on "Frequency" (1983), and
did so again on "Thematics" (1985),
which was a reissue of the Leviticus recordings
on a 90 minute tape. Thematics was a companion
to If..., and the two tapes constituted a three
hour foray into the musical life of the artist,
a high water mark in this sense, and also in
total sales, since it was available in Canada's
two largest markets, and it sold well by the
standards of independent releases. Kos recorded
in 1985 and 1986, but only one track from these
sessions saw the light of day, on 1996's Who
Would I Be? He would not return to recording
until 1994, at which time he produced an early
version of Is it safe?, another track that was
central to Who..? Iformé, recorded 'live'
from tracks assembled from If... on November
22, 1995 to mark the tenth anniversary of its
predecessor, saw limited distribution. The reformed
version of The Laughing Horse was a local source
of amusement for the artist when it came to
life as a lounge track. It is a high point on
Columba-Kos,
released in 1999.
Kos produced an ambient music series in 2003
that was based on the Virtual Gramophone Project.
Similar in some ways to the OLS Macintosh experiments
that Kos undertook in 1984, it is entirely a
product of the computers used in its production.
Since Kos disassembled the recording portion
of Over Land Studio in 2001 to make way for
other projects, the 2003 music exercise is described
as 60% noise, 30% strange attractors, and 10%
Vivaldi and Berlioz on a swing trip. Make of
that what you will.
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