Shamanic Trance

Nomen Est Omen – The sound on the fly (photo: Mihai Plămădeală)

Shaman means wizard in Tungusic language. Yet, the term is known by his meaning of ideologist of ecstasy. The drum is the vehicle through which the shaman goes over the physical boundaries, in order to find and fight the demons that troubled the balance of the most beautiful world possibly  – the one we live in. The truth is that if you wildly beat a percussion instrument, the spirit that invades you at one given time raises up to the euphoria of the extreme sports. Rivers of endorphins cross the body of the “scrapper”, to the despair of the detached witnesses, most of the times. Sometimes, as it was the case at the “Transylvanian Fortresses” Festival, Sibiu 2010, Nomen Est Iulian, Tania & Anca raised over the Lesser Square, riding on a darbuka, flied over the Liar’s Bridge and landed on one of the nearby terraces, for a beer. Gabriela and Mihai waited down for them in order to fasten hair, respectively to take a picture for the archive.

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Past Time With Good Company 2010

In 2009, Nomen Est Omen has set up a home studio and went to the stage of self recording. From January to March 2010 records for the album Past Time With Good Company were made, concentrating on wind instruments (to which were added guitar and percussion) and postprocessing was done until August, at which time the album was released in the Medieval Festival Transylvanian Citadels of Sibiu. The version putted into circulation was not the final one, but an intermediate unmastered by professionals. Nomen studio kit consists of devices dedicated to recording, but sound engineering involves a different specialization than that of singing. Past Time With Good Company 2010 is for now a calibrated and panoramic version of an album that will see a significantly better technically edit in the future.

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Nomen Est Omen I 1996

It is the first discographic project of Nomen Est Omen, recorded in an apartament room, with a multitrack Yamaha 8 Chanels and four Sennheiser microphones. The album, released only on tape, in an edition of 1,300 copies, can be regarded, by technical features and intentionality, as part of the  lo fi genre. The resulting material consists of 40 medieval and Renaissance musical themes in arrangements from two to six voices, totaling 60 minutes. 45% of the sessions were recorded (on channels) by Mihai Plămădeală, who initially intended to produce a solo album, 45% by Plămădeală toghether with (the composer) Şerban Ian Ursachi, who visited him at that time and ended by involving in the project, and 10% by both of them toghether with Eugen Oigăn Nuţescu (the lender of the multitrack device; the future guitarist from  Kumm ) and Dan Radu (later voice /guitar / flute at Byron ), who were invited to participate in the day before the established deadline  (the device had to be returned in Cluj, a city situated at more than 400 km from Bucharest, where the project was held). The recording sessions lasted seven days and the post processing was done in one day by George Pătrănoiu (future to be in Metrock, The Order, Act, Schimbul 3, Krypton, Taxi ). Eponymous album appeared in English and Hungarian graphic versions and was re-edited on a 46 minute tape (31 tracks). The official release took place at the Medieval Art Festival in Sighişoara in 1996, where, together with Mihai Plămădeală & Nomen Est Omen, the above mentioned people were invited to attend. Dan Radu was to remain as part of the band for another year and a half and to take part to more radio recordings in Cluj and Sighişoara, yet unrealised.

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