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

At The Head Of The Woods - Beyond Time And Space

[ L I S T E N A N D B R E A T H E ]


At The Head Of The Woods are beyond time and space. This record, released on the Summer Solstice of 2008, sounds like lying on yr back, beneath a mossy oak tree, staring at starlight. There may or may not be fire. You must drift off for a moment, you feel yrself drift to the sky on a carpet of red cedar smoke. As you rise, you gain perspective; you notice the grandeur of grand forests, but you also see/hear/feel the devastation. The whine of homeless owls. The flies of pestilence. Cascadia seems to foster a vague form of nature worship. The enormous trees, millions of species of flora and fauna. It is impossible not to empathize, not to be driven to one's knees in respect and humility. There comes a point when the bark of a chainsaw biting into wood feels as if it is entering yr own flesh. You have become a black metal warrior, at that point, and it don't matter what yr music sounds like. There is an unbroken thread from Panopticon to Mt. Eerie to James Woodheads' At The Head Of The Woods Project. You would be forgiven for assuming some kind of atmospheric post-rock/metal, something like Windmills By The Ocean or Year Of No Light, but ATHOTW is walking his own path. On 'Beyond Time & Space' you get a 70-minute excursion of free-floating Floyd guitar, synth drones, and field recordings. There are lyrics, pertaining to the sky the earth the soil, but its all so luscious and drawn out, its hard to pick out what he's talking about. The comparison i was most keen on was a resemblance to Black Tape For A Blue Girl, there's a hint of Sam Rosenthal's ethereal masculine vocals, which is a style that has been moldering and unused for at least a decade. Beyond Time And Space sounds like a darkwave band making a space-rock record, record live in a cluster of Willow trees. I saw James Woodhead at the local Psychopomp event, last week at The Lovecraft. For that occasion, he played a droney synth set that sounded like Bach on ketamine. Through him, i found out about a regional collective called Glassthroat Recordings, which seems to focus around Seattle and Portland. They feature my favorite brand of nature worship, magickal and mysterious and unfettered by genre. They've got metal acts, dreamy droney soundscapes, dark romantic folk. I just found out about this shit last Wed. and i am a man obsessed. I look forward to going through their entire catalog, and exploring the dark woods of my mind. If yr from here, check 'em out, go see 'em live, buy a t shirt. If yr not, listen and wonder just what the fuck we've got in the water, up here in the corner. Highly, highly recommended. Distinctive artist with a singular style and something to say. Emotional yet still visionary. New favorite. You can read a sweet interview that James did with the equally sweet Heathen Harvest magazine here. You can stream the whole record here: http://attheheadofthewoods.bandcamp.com/

Coil - Bee Stings

Where's the bells?
Where's the bats?
Where's the summer?
Where's the keyboard?
Where's the instinct?
Where's the patience?
Where's the tiny golden books? 

     - Glowworms/Waveforms

We're soldiers of my soul

- Summer Substructures

Summer is a time of growing. A time of adventure, of energy and vitality. The seeds that we have planted in the Spring shall come to bloom in the summer, yielding abundance, and gathered in the Autumn chill. In winter we reflect, and scheme.

In 1998, British occult noise sculptors Coil released a series of limited-edition 7"s. Bee Stings was released on the summer solstice. At the time, i was a devoted collector of all Coil related ephemera, and had money at the time. I hopped off the road and made a special trek to Gopher Sounds, in Flagstaff, Az., to buy this on yellow wax. 

Used to hearing Coil in their dark Industrial tatters, i was surprised to find this esoteric transmission full of haunting electric viola, courtesy of William Breeze (a member of Current 93 and Psychic TV) and pagan poetry incanted by Jhonn Balance (R.I.P.). It reads like William Blake and sounds like High Mass, but with light traces of Industrial drum machines and swirls of gelatinous noise. This is like like listening to modern classical music, high on cough syrup.

This version is from the collection Moon's Milk (In Four Phases), which collated all four Equinox recordings. Its got three tracks, "Bee Stings," "Glowworms/Waveforms," and "Summer Substructures." The original 7" only had "Bee Stings" and "Glowworms/Waveforms". There was also a CD EP version of this released with the additional track "A Warning from the Sun (For Fritz)," which was dedicated to a friend of their's who had committed suicide earlier that year. 

Coil were always about bridging the gap between tradition and the future. They revered 20th century art movements, like Dada and the Situationists, along with gay club culture and the works of their Industrial Records brethren (Genesis P-Orridge, Z'ev, Chris & Cosey, Current 93, Nurse With Wound). They were creating their own reality, free of history and of dogma. They championed the works of occultists like Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and spoke freely of re-designing one's own consciousness, through techniques like psychedelic drugs, ceremonial magick and tantric sex. They were uniquely British in their tone. One can picture Druids gathered around stone monoliths, when listening to this musick. 

Coil led many black-clad lost souls down a subway tunnel of myth, magick, poetry, high art. This is vipassana for performance artists. Not secular, not wholly religious. Music for mutants in the in between spaces. Its a terrifying road, full of uncertainty. There are many briar patches and stalking wolves, when one leaves behind the lighted path of Consensual Reality. But there is healing to be found by the firelight. One can overcome conditioning, free one's self of desire and suffering. Spread the wings of consciousness, and soar on wings of imagination.

Today is the summer solstice. My band, Lore Acts, is playing at a noise ritual, in the woods of SE Portland, with a gathering of occultists and unicorns. When i first heard the music of Coil, it seemed alien and incomprehensible. I spent a decade longing for gear, and feverishly plotting what i would do, when i had it. Today is a dream come true, and like all dreams, sometimes it is a nightmare. There is no surrender and no compromise when one is one's own MASTER, and no one to blame but one's self. Time to do the laundry and take out the trash. Time to write those heartfelt letter's you've been meaning to write. Here, in 2012, we have it all at our fingertips. The world spreads herself wide to us. The Akashic Records are rising. Widespread empathy is just around the corner. We are right on the edge of telepathy. Today, i humbly invoke my higher self, ask it to spread its wings of dark light in every corner and crevice of my consciousness. I invite you to do the same. God is alive. Magick is afoot. You can be whoever you like, this time around. Today, light a candle and say a prayer; banish cynicism and defeatism forever. We need not be slaves to our demons; they are figments of dust. 

Keep on fighting the good fight.

bee stings

wiki

brainwashed site

Skincage - Axon (bandcamp)

Jon Ray has described his music as Dark Ambient, but this is not some Brian Wilson acolyte falling asleep on the bass register of his synthesizer. Instead, this is the kind of Dark Ambient that makes you think of Hellraiser, that makes you think of Space Madness, things vast and unknown to mankind. Skincage's music will make you confront yr shadows, it will chain you to a rock and feed you to the hydra. You shall sprout wings and you shall also plummet from spiral heights. You will question, but it will be worth it.

Jon Ray was way ahead of his time, and has never gotten his just desserts. In 2000, when Axon was released, the only attention paid to the likes of Coil, Autechre, Throbbing Gristle, or Nurse With Wound was by reformed goth kitties living in their mother's basements. Reformed Skinny Puppy admirer's that broke up sounds on cheap software, before there was widespread analysis of the works of Pierre Umiliani or Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop. Now, there are whole philsophical chapters that are cited the late 70s mutant militant Industrial Current as inspiration (several different reviews of the most recent Shackleton release, Music for the Quiet Hour/The Drawbar Organ EPs, have mentioned Coil as a reference point) or the horrorshow decadence of Demdike Stare's late-night mind movies, the time is right for people to hear Jonathan Ray's Skincage music for real.

One of the things i am constantly asking myself is what music should i talk about, spread around, here at J's Heaven? Obviously, its whatever i'm into at the moment, but i hear so much bloody music that its hard to even know WHAT i AM into, these days. So, one distinction are actual artifacts, things that are handmade and are able to stand out in yr muscle memory. Something to hold on to. Another thing is the past, before the world flooded with every sound imaginable. I have found that often whatever artist or album introduces you to a new genre, or a new way of thinking, is the one that will come to represent all the subsequent discoveries. The opener of the ways.

The third signifier that helps music to stand out is if i actually KNOW the person responsible. It adds whole galaxies of depth and meaning to their art, and it is thrilling to finally acknowledge (now that i'm not totally choking on jealousy) that i have known some fucking talented individuals in my lifetime. It has been constantly motivating to exchange words and ideas with fellow fanatics and zealots over the years, and they believed in me, even when i did not in fact believe in myself. Jon was probably more influential than just about any other human in my growing obsession with sound and sound manipulation. He would patiently answer my e mails regarding free software, what the hell MIDI was, what kind of synth i needed to sound like Sleazy and the crew, what effects were and how to use them. He was the first circuit-bender i knew; (after Axon he would get heavily into hacked hardware and toys, and began to focus more on live performances. That same period found him moving from his native North Carolina to Tucson, Az. and it has been fascinating to watch him come into his own as a legit sound artist, to get married, to find a satisfying way of life). This is music made by one of my FRIENDS, and it is considered antithetical to talk about yr friend's music, and i find that the stupidest thing ever. Axon is a stand-up release, wrestling with the leaden influences of the electronic geniuses of the past, of whom it seemed we could never escape or surpass, and moving into a future of precision, refinement, self-discovery. I would be a quite different person than the man i am today, without the existence of this record.

Since the days of beginning under Jon's tutelage, i've listened to tens of thousands of noise, drone, and ambient releases (both dark and light), and sitting here at my table in Portland, this music sounds fresher than when i first heard it, and i have the ears to comprehend, and appreciate, what my friend was doing 12 years ago. Danceable beats and moments of unexpected beauty give way to disorienting dream logic: snippets of conversation and bass drones. His music reminds me of watching a firework display underwater, or watching something ENORMOUS walking around a barren landscape. Skincage's music is the kind of music i hope to spread around, via J's Heaven, in that it makes the world a more magickal and surreal place. It is visionary, and emotional at the same time. His records have scored some of the most magickally potent moments of my life. It seems to open up a portal, there seems to be a real CURRENT flowing through the aether on this one. Psychic transmission? Choatic servitor? You be the judge.

My only regret is that in the recent Bandcamp re-issue, that Jon still has not restored Ichor, which the label talked him out of including, because it "interrupted the mellow flow of the record"! Can you imagine? With track names like Parasight and The Bruised Mandala, you might suspect that this is not merely music to soothe and seduce. This is music to open you up like a puzzle box, pry open yr third eye, and introduce you to the nether quadrants.

Jon says that if he could sell ten copies of the bandcamp record, he would buy a piano and produce a record of the results, so i'm counting on all of you for that piano record. Find him and like him on FB, lets show some love to this under-heard master of autumnal rumble.

Axon

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Alto!

Played a show with these dudes last night at the exquisite Ella Street Social Club. They kicked out a mind-melting cacophany of tribal percussion and screeching no-wave noise guitar, with an old drum machine holding the beast together. Impressively ritualistic, these guys were taut and focused, unusually powerful. Alto! sounds like Neurosis jamming with Sumner Crane after a Benzedrine all-nighter.

This free download, available from their Bandcamp, is a faithful reproduction of what they sound like live. The drums are full and rich, the guitar is sci-fi, there are textures of tones and ambiance. You can have a late-night drum freak out in yr ears, on demand.
Isn't the internet wonderful!

It was a real pleasure to play on a legit noise bill for the first time, a dream come true. Holy Filament, from Vancouver, Wa, freaked out some squares on a date, and 3 moons channeled Brion Gysin's servitor for the occasion, overcoming technical difficulties to summon the trance, as always.

Bandcamp

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