Dead Can Dance - Into The Labyrinth

This is the record that started it all. It is single-handedly (pun slightly intended) responsible for my becoming an unrepentant music obsessive. This record, DCD's 7th and the first with American distribution, had an unlikely hit with the single 'The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove' (which also shares a title with a Secret Agent (Danger Man) episode) enthralled my young ears with its ethnic polyrhythms and sacrificial lyrics. I was a drummer at the time, so the beat caught my attention. I struggled to catch the name, and when i did, i hounded every place of musical commerce i could think of. Unfortunately, the record would not be released in the states for several months, and that's when the obsessive record questing began. I would take the train to Chicago, and buy expensive overpriced Belgian imports of their albums, before they were re-issued domestically. Those freezing, icy Chicago sojourns, reeking of incense and cappuccino, would make an indelible impression on me, as would the music contained on this album.

Dead Can Dance's music is like magick personified, given voice, and as such, it is the kind of thing i have always wanted to share, here at J's Heaven. The whole reason i started this blog in the first place was to put sounds out into the world, to maybe colour yr afternoon or evening or night drive. To take a little strand of these beautiful moving moments that i have experienced, and spread it 'round. There seemed to be no shortage of places to hear great music out there, so i sort of stopped for a while. But then i noticed that there's not very many people posting records anymore, and it seems a shame to let the whole thing die. The explosion of the music blogs a few years ago was a time of great imagination and innovation, even if we were all a bit hungry and jaded, not really taking the time to listen to what we had. I've been taking the time, enjoying my life, listening to my favorite records. I've met the love of my life, and we are building a life together. We have a black cat. We cook dinners, sweep floors, buy groceries. This is the kind of shit that music is meant for, as a compliment and an expression of simple, mind-blowing appreciation.

It is this level of contentment that can radically alter yr life. With this contentment, i am exploring and learning how to write about music for real, to take my time and say what i'm trying to say. That's very much a work in progress. Music has brought so much magick, so much joy and inspiration, i just want to spread my particular flavor around. I'm going to do a series of posts of my most influential albums, the records that have made me the bearded, hatted weirdo that is typing here at 12:43 a.m. on a monday night. I'm broke as hell, but certainly not defeated. Still not drunk, still trying to write cool songs. I've been up to a lot, while this blog has been sleeping. I'd love to fill you in. If you care to take a look, i've also started a new blog, called Forestpunk,where i do a lot of philosophical and metaphysical speculating, as well as posting bric-a-brac. I'll be doing these album reviews at The Guardian, as well, just so a few more people might find them, in an effort to further spread the good word about some of my favorite music.

Excited about writing and sharing music with the world. Glad to still be here with y'all.
Read about Into The Labyrinth at The Guardian
Find it on Amazon:  Into the Labyrinth
PREVIEW

Black Tape For A Blue Girl - The Rope

i've had a nearly insatiable appetite for dark, atmospheric folk music lately. This has led me back down a mouldering tunnel towards Goth's dark light. Black Tape For A Blue Girl was one of the first goth bands i found. I had to have my friend tell me the name six times, before i got it. Prior to that, i was getting into the early '90s grunge radio rock, the likes of Blind Melon, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana; all of which were angsty and dark, in a flannely kind of way. I had first heard the term Gothic used in conjunction with Danielle Dax's Jesus Egg That Wept, and found a kindred spirit in its deep southern creepy crawl. I'd been obsessed with the nocturnal since childhood. I used to have dreams of being a vampire since age 11, even going so far as to file my canines to points and refusing to enter the light of day sans sunglasses. I felt a sparkle, a goose-pimpled freefall down a rabbit hole of drugs, sex, magick, madness. I was leaving behind the safety of conventional morality and cookie cutter paradigms, spending all day hiding from the sun, burning incense and losing myself in the paintings of Salvador Dali. I stumbled upon Baudelaire's 'continued derangement of the senses' quite on my own. Black Tape's ambient interludes, stirring strings, and blasted lyricism would guide me...

It has been interesting going through this record again, with adult ears. Some of it has not aged particularly well. Some of it is melodramatic in the extreme, such as the title track "The Rope" with lines like "i see my answer on the end of a rope/the room too cold for me/Cut out my eyes they forgot how to cry/the pain too strong to see." I mean, i've written plenty of prose like this in my life, but thank all that is unholy, most of those notebooks have been lost in fire and flood. Then there's the guitar on "Memory, Uncaring Friend" which sounds like a fishbone out-take, and sometimes the bass sounds canned and straight-to-DAT, gives it that horrid Halls & Oates sheen. And then there's the vocals of Oscar Herrera (for the longest time i thought the voice of Black Tape was Sam Rosenthal, the mastermind behind Projekt Records), who is gothy in the extreme, sort of like Rosetta Stone or Fields of the Nephilim, people copping Andrew Eldritch and Peter Murphy, all that was 'Gothic Rock' as it would be known by Mick Mercer.

However, with the recent appreciation of Shoegaze and 80s drum machines (like A Place To Bury Strangers, Crocodiles) and with Neo-classicism finding a foothold in the underground (Johann Johannson, Library Tapes, even Stars of the Lid) our ears may be attuned to find the gems of this recording; the psychedelic tribal beats, the glorious grit of the Korg Poly61 and the  Moog Realistic Concertmate MG-1, that makes parts of this record sound like some cabaret from A Clockwork Orange or Blade Runner. Futuristic Nostalgia. The way they use Digital Delays would be adopted by every atmospheric dream rock band that would come after. Those that appreciate the doomed, fatalistic romance of The Cure and Joy Division should be able to find something to cling to, in this darkness.

Projekt Records, and a lot of 80s goth had a very psychedelic take on dreariness. I get this sense of imported rugs and low light, like a Parisian cafe in a holographic universe. It seems plastic, stylized, but the emotions and appreciation are genuine. Goth always had a hedonism, a sensuality, to it - blood and wine and insomnia and damaged visions. Dragging yr way through the gutters, crawling across a carpet of stars to approach the absolute. Ripped velvet and blood-spattered lace; the tail-end of the 20th century had no appreciation for aristocracy. Some of us were dancing in the ashes as Rome burned. Escapist and visionary.

This recent string of posts has found me investigating the earliest work of musicians that have been infuential on me, trying to isolate and evaluate the various strands of aesthetic without nostalgia, but also apart from the endless wheel of innovation. Newer does not equal better; all history is now happening simultaneously, and it us up to us to make up our own minds who we are, what we like, what we are trying to say. I find Black Tape's doomed sensuality worthwhile, and the tones are soothing to my cochlea. I could do without some of the self-indulgent vocals, and i am curious to see how they modified over the years this band was active.

Expect more obscure, archival footage like this one, in the coming moments. I'm vacillating between the current and the past, trying to get my head together, and also to become familiar with my own creativity.

(link removed, but i suggest that you seek this out.)
Projekt store

For those that dig this, Projekt released a 2cd version a couple of years ago, with an additional disk of Projekt bands re-interpreting these songs. I believe it was re-mastered from the original 4-track tape, as well. Look into it.