Funeral for the Moon

I have a notebook. I share this notebook with Ashley. We collaborate, share ideas, and generally random around inside it - its been interesting using it and we've only had it for about a week. Whenever it is my turn to have the journal I carry it with me everywhere. I stop and write. Thats exactly what I did tonight.

I took a drive.
I wrote this poem at stop signs.
----
No streetlamps here
No lights / no love
No cotton clothes
On empty street

We're all hollow and dead in
a void night
No hymns, no lovesongs
No candy canes

and most of all
No rain

On empty street

//

There's a bad moon,
in the distance rising
(god! stop it -
why do I always see the moon?)

God damn the moon

God send it straight to hell
Into the sickly churning bowels of the unknown
Banish it
Bury it beneath dead leaves and dead kings
Let's kill the moon

You bring the shovels
I'll chant the last rites and then we'll
sing the funeral dirge

Funeral for the moon

the manifesto

I’m standing on seven pillows in a golden sea dancing with brilliant moon reflections
I don’t know how I see that the sea is golden in this night but I do see it and I embrace that I have new senses and perceptions
I know that the lines have been redrawn and I am in Else, the land of the nine and the fourteen
I’m looking past the sea and these pillows and I know that this is no dream
I know that there are no circus tents here, nor Adam and Eve nor Fantasy nor Imagining
I know that I can taste this land and that She is strawberries and champagne
I know that the other lands were cardboard, were illusions, were trickmirrors, were nothing out of nothing for naught
I can see a moon in the skies, pink with youth and amber with wisdom
I know someday I will reach it
But the aching in my arms reminds me that I am rowing and I stare at the sea and no there is no shore
And I know that I could drown here in this perfumed sea, happy and content, without the moon

In the Far Wood

In the far wood
We, essence
Roam and play
Never bored
We

Storm green castles and
Break green limbs
Burn brown brushes and
Worship sparks and embers
Glowing

We glow

We overflow, pinesap
Blood – we, nature’s extracts
Abstract, concrete
We are green and we are
Thriving

We thrive
We glow
We

undawn (new demo, poem fragment)

another new track:
undawn demo

with this track, i took the improvised noise techniques and vocal experimentation of rabbit and brought back some of the more classic shadowclast noise-rhythms and synth melodies. i feel it to be a pretty good marriage of the two.

the fragment:
Haste the (un)dawn of negative sun
To illumine patterns in darkness
To amplify the resonance
To allow the night to feed back on our ears, poisonous and vibrant

(i've got a black sun in my head)

I long for the night
To come and empty this place
To blot out the sky and erase borders

(how long before all becomes night
how long before the white king in twilight-)
we shall all become the night


thoughts? (on the poem or the song or both or something completely unrelated or only tangentially related or just thoughts on nothing at all at least leave a comment kthx)

new song!

shadowclast - rabbit

my newest song. i'm very very proud of this piece, this is definitely the direction i want to go with the next shadowclast album.

i'm improvising a lot of the material in these newer songs in the same way that i've been approaching the construction of the rabbit poems. my newest material is written in one sitting and i don't modify it from there on out - this forces me to finish songs. this song actually contains portions of the rabbit series in spoken word format. all vocalizations in this song are performed by me.

some influences i can hear, listening back on this track a few hours after its creation:
throbbing gristle - part two
download - furnace
dead voices on air - shap, hafted maul
animal collective - hollinndagain (and other early / noisy AC material)

i'll be posting more of these noisy improvisations (hopefully i'll become more and more comfortable with my voice - my goal is from here on out to only upload tracks with vocals).

please please please tell me what you think, i feel like this is radically different from what i usually do.

Rabbits pt. 4

Where’s your rabbit?
Is he combusting in his hole?

Did he sprout wings?

Where is your rabbit?
Has he left this hollow place?
Has he embraced stars and
Left you to gaze longingly as he evolved and
Left you behind

Where’s your rabbit?
If not behind stars and moons
Has he escaped dimension and definition?


(This might be the last of the rabbits for awhile. Please leave comments about one or all of the poems in this series. These poems definitely come from a different process in comparison to most of my prior work, and I could definitely use some....guidance, or whatever. I don't really feel like this one ends very well. I'll keep tinkering with it.)

Rabbits pt. 3

Little rabbit burning bright
It is upon your heart I wish tonight
To see it stop
To see it cease
Won’t you pull the covers up
‘round my cheeks?


Who are you, mr. rabbit
That you stab me with static eyes
Accusing

Who are you, my dear friend rabbit
To chastise?

(A little bit of a difference in process here. The first stanza was written on Wednesday, and the last two were written on Thursday. I realize that on first glance they seem like they ought to be divided, with latter half being part four, but I can't shake the feeling that they belong together somehow...)

new music

i'm writing music again.

its been an interesting return, with a number of triggering factors. i cant seem to isolate which factor has had the most impact, but the larger amount of free time is probably the most responsible.

click here to download - via yousendit - the first (semi)complete track i've done in more than six months.
shadowclast - belie.mp3


three demos from the past few weeks:
shadowclast - black curtain.mp3
shadowclast - gather.mp3
shadowclast - the seventh hell.mp3

and just for comparison, the last complete song i wrote, 6-8 months ago - apparently it was bad enough to put me on hiatus, let me know what you think:
shadowclast - at rest.wav (warning: this a .wav, big download)

listening to it again for the first time in awhile, its not a horrible song. the melodies are totally irritating to me, but the rhythmic elements are cool. still proud of those.

i'm in talks with another netlabel about the possibility of doing another web-release over the summer and releasing it early fall. keep on the lookout for that and, as always, hit me up with criticism.

in other news, rabbits pt. 3 is on its way.

Rabbits pt. 2

And there was a rabbit on a crucifix with Mary Magdelene
And they were surveying the promised land

With smiles, eager glances and knowing looks
I know they congratulated each other on Judas’ death

And of course, I also know that they weren’t really smiling

Just the two of them, wooden beams supporting flesh and hare-hair
And I suppose they hanged there

until a great white hand snatched them from their plight and took them off to heaven where they ate pies and drank blue wine under a pink moon and sang “Amazing Grace”

Or something




(pt. 2 of these quick and unedited stream-of-consciousness poems. structure subject to change, actual content won't be messed with)

Rabbits pt. 1

Beyond a function is an unfunction and behind an unfunction is
A rabbit
Smiling heavily at me in purple fields growing velvet corn
Swaying in a breeze visible and black

Beyond this window is a name and behind the name lies
A creeping rabbit
Face adorned with extra teeth and fluid, ears pointed at a sky
Bleeding because it has no name

And there’s the moon and behind the moon are several men standing or sitting thinking of

Rabbits









(Written 5-26, 4:21 PM - no edits. Part one of Rabbits)

the last

Bygones will not be bygones
Until winds swallow you and
Imprison you in western lands

Where the earth is cracked and empty
And the sun never rises, only sets
And you are lacking swords and hands


A rustle of feathers, buried in the oily sea


Left to wander, parched and dust-like
Over the ashes of this burned Rome
Until your feet find seven hills and climb

Over just more rocks and rubble
Banished, you are the last of the last
And sentenced to life after time


You have no eyes


A blade of dry grass, still rooted
In something somehow, provides once-lost
Glimmers of hope, but you pluck it, snatch it up and admire its fading green beauty



And on top of the seventh hill is the flower of ebony that was planted in Eden
Roots deep in the life-stream, sucking the
Last vestiges of vitality and dimming the light of heaven

The rusting deathflower
Petals coarse and dry like your lips
Your dusty lips

And you plucked the last blade of grass, didn’t you




(written May 3rd. This is the second draft. It's not quite there yet.)

download weekend (pt. 1)

UPDATE 5/1:
DOWNLOAD WEEKEND (pt. 1)
Okay, I listened to all of the albums, however, everything from Sidewinder on was listened to away from the computer, and I wasn't able to pay as much attention as I had for the initial releases, so it looks like I'll have to do III, Effector, III Steps Forward, and Fixer again in the near future. For now, enjoy the reviews posted. ;)

Also, let me know if some of the album art pics aren't showing up. I am getting an off-white block for some of them, but the pics show up on some of my friends' computers, so...
-----------------
4/26: Currently gearing up for an all Download weekend. Now that I officially own all of the Download albums, I'm going to listen to the entire Download discography in chronological order (in order of the material being written and recorded, not in order by release date).

My first (from the) Vault shipment (containing 11 CDs - the entire Vault 1 and the three current Vault 2 releases). I've always loved all the eras of Download, but I've never really tried to piece together the different mutations into one cohesive whole (and I believe that they can, and do, actually exist in a similar space). For the Vault albums, this will be basically my first in-depth listen to those, and I'm hoping that they add a significant amount of insight into the already dense Download catalog.

Either during the process of listening to all of this music, or in the aftermath, I will post short reviews below.


Here's the offical playlist for the weekend:


Skinny Puppy - Puppy Gristle
Friday - 5:43 PM
What a GREAT START to my Download weekend. Currently 17:02 minutes into this beast, first real in-depth listen to Puppy Gristle and I am completely floored. This bridges the gap between Skinny Puppy, Doubting Thomas, and Download. The aggressive and disturbing atmosphere of Last Rights (Ogre's overdubs are definitely still in LR mode, although this was recorded in '93), the bizarre and eclectic sound design of The Infidel, and hints of what was to come with Download in the complete realization of "brap". You can feel the energy in the room, I can imagine cEv and Dwayne alternating between completely spaced out and utter childish joy at the nature of these sounds. I love the gritty distortion from the gristlebox, I love the manipulated string sounds, its all a very surreal experience. I feel like in the future I will be listening to this to follow up the Last Rights experience as much as possible, but this blog ain't about the Puppy discog.
Friday - 6:02 PM
Okay, 34:50 in. Some beautiful synthwork here, nearly beats out the strings at the end of the track "Download" from Last Rights. After the onslaught of distortion, these sounds are just amazing. Now it seems like the track is winding down a bit, some sounds going on that sound similar to granular synthesis (although I'm pretty sure no one really knew that it was called "granular synthesis" in the early '90s.

Final Score: 4.5/5

Download - Inception
Friday 6:23 PM
So far this is less immediately progressive than Puppy Gristle, the first couple tracks remind me of the less accessible Doubting Thomas material, especially from the Father Don't Cry EP (two of the tracks from that EP are actually from '94 and would sit nicely next to most of this material). Basically a mix of the noisy aspects of Last Rights and Doubting Thomas, but also with some similarities to the production style glimpsed on The Process.
Friday 6:41 PM
The last two tracks have really upped the game. I just heard "Left the Radio On" and "Deepdark Modular". "Left the Radio On" is a demo of the track Sidewinder (from the Eyes of Stanley Pain and its namesake EP) that contains the original vocal samples (supposedly from a Peter Gabriel track) of a man chanting. Very effective, I love the side of Download that references world music and creates something new from ethnic influences. "Deepdark Modular" is the first track on the album to feature Mark Spybey, an integral part of the first Download incarnation. You can definitely hear Dead Voices on Air-esque drones and noises that add another dimension to cEvin and Dwayne's synthetic jamming. The next track is "So Easy to Kill", one of the few tracks on Inception that also appeared on the fabled (and super rare) Download Tester. This one seems to be influenced by the production of Puppy Gristle in its repetitive and trance-inducing noise, rounded out by, again, Doubting Thomas style snippets of conversation. The track mutates around the 5:00 mark, dropping the noise levels to allow for a few moments of fragile piano before another all out analog assault. It is at this point, with the speakers absolutely cranked, that I realize just how GREAT this stuff sounds. I can hardly believe that this stuff sat around on DATs for the better part of 10 years. Sounds incredibly fresh and groundbreaking even today.

Later in the evening:
Finished the rest of the album in the car. Car stereo isn't nearly as spectacular as my permanent setup in my room, but Inception was still enjoyable. Also listened to the Inception outtake "Dragon" on the vault 1 bonus compilation Encore. There are some moments of absolute brilliance here, but there are also some dull, less inspired tracks (which is just the nature of being an improv based unit). I still highly recommend this album, even the duller tracks sound years ahead of their time and are interesting, I just think that some of the 5 minute pieces here would work better as short breakdowns or interludes (see Furnace for how to implement strange little experiments that otherwise wouldn't work on their own within a new track).
Favorite tracks: Left The Radio On, Deepdark Modular, So Easy To Kill, Krackerzz, Thats.Our.Process

Final Score: 4/5

cEvin Key - Music for Cats (selected tracks)
Friday 10:31 PM
Music For Cats contains several songs from the early Download period, including tracks from the aforementioned Tester. Here is a list of the DownloadMFC tracks I included in the Download Weekend playlist:
- wind on small paws
- meteorite
- herbalist rule
- greenhouse gases
- have you ever felt like this
- blotter
- i still ate her (not actually on MFC, but released on Wild Planet, track originally from Download Tester)
These tracks were selected from the tracklist for Tester found on Todd Z's Download discog page (link on litany). The tracks that feature Dwayne would not have sounded out of place on Inception - thanks to alien8 on the litany forums for reminding me to include the MFC material. I won't rate the album here because I'm not listening to the thing in its entirety, but suffice to say that if you enjoy the tracks above, you'll enjoy a lot of the material on Inception, and vice versa.


Download - Charlie's Family
Friday 11:06 PM
Charlie's Family begins. 1:52 seconds in. Forgot how disturbing the samples in "Beautiful" were. Also forgot how disturbing and odd the finished product film (The Manson Family) was. So far the vibe in this track is, again, somewhat similar to Doubting Thomas, but there's more going on here, something vaguely more sinister than any DT track.
Friday 11:11 PM
Now playing "Gristle Dog Corr," which is one of the two Download tracks that is composed primarily of edits of Puppy Gristle. It is strange to hear that gigantic and gargantuan jam paired down to a 6 minute track. However, "Gristle Dog Corr" focuses on the tension between the beautiful strings and the bizarre gristlized noise, and infuses the whole thing with more of those disturbing snippets of dialog from VanBebber's as-then-unreleased film, which makes the whole thing more interesting than the sum of its parts. Interesting note: the latter portion of this track basically sounds like a precursor to Gridlock's Trace album, with the sparse pads and digital clatter. The far-reaching influence of Download can not be overstated.
Friday 11:24 PM
It only gets more disturbing from here on out. I can't help but conjure some bizarre Halloween imagery, probably fueled by the artwork and the fact that a song on the album is entitled "Trick or Treat". The version of "Tweeter Blower" is vastly superior to the Inception version due to the inclusion of a strong rhythmic backbone. I also find it hilarious that immediately following "Tweeter Blower" is "Catblower". I'm imagining the guys jamming to one track and the tweeters rupturing, and then listening to another track and the cat rupturing :D. ... I guess maybe this album inspires such deranged thoughts.
Friday 11:40
This is definitely the most sparse sounding Download release so far. It's like the negative image of Inception - a lot of the same concepts, turned upside down and very uncomfortable. There is a definite comparison to some of what Coil was doing around this time, (Black Light District anyone?), although I would argue Charlie's Family is an easier listen due to the presence of rhythm and something of recognizable melody. Make no mistake, this is not an ambient release - just a more minimalistic one than what Download was known for at the time. I love the disquieting atmosphere, I love the minimalism, I love the whole Halloween vibe - this is definitely the most underrated of the early Download material, which is unfortunate - there's a wealth of great stuff here.
Favorite Tracks: Trick or Treat, Tweeter Blower, Yes, Thank You

Final Rating: 4.5/5

Download - Furnace Re:Dux (reissue Disc 2)
Friday 11:59 PM
Re:Dux begins (this is Disc 2 of the Furnace reissue, the second installment in vault 2). Had to take a short break after Charlie's Family blew me away. For those of you who don't know, Re:Dux is a collection of the jams directly related to the Furnace sessions, so its like a freeform, less song-oriented version of the album.
Saturday 12:07 AM
On "Re:Dux Part 3". So far I've definitely heard material that ended up in two or three tracks on the proper Furnace album. Some of Spybey's vocals seem to still be in place, but without the structure-imposing edits. You'll expect the song to shift and head toward the next portion (Furnace is always in flux, thats what I love about it. More on that later), but instead the groove just keeps going. It would have been amazing to be in the room for these jams, there's just so much creativity! I'm completely astounded by what's going on here. These sounds totally envelop me. I keep referring to the picture of the guys in the studio featured in the layout of Inception - each member is surrounded by a bank of synthesizers and other noisemakers.
Saturday 12:18 AM
The biggest change from Inception and Charlie's Family to the Furnace Sessions is the sense that Spybey really stepped it up in terms of musical involvement. I can hear him subtly in the earlier material but I can really feel his style all over Re:Dux. He reinforces that spiritual, transcendent quality that we all know cEvin, Dwayne, and Phil are capable of. Another interesting shift is that, in the earlier releases, the music is decidedly electronic in all aspects - the percussion, the melodies, the noise, but here, in the inception of Furnace, if you will, the lines begin to blur. This music sounds alive, it is truly organic, and I often cannot tell where field recordings and homemade string instruments end and synthesis begins. This is what leaves me in total awe of the synergy of these four musicians (and the ever elusive Ken Marshall). I truly believe that a good portion of this mutation is due to Spybey's involvement, the Dead Voices on Air releases of this period (New Words Machine, Hafted Maul, Shap) have a similar otherworldly quality that, when paired with these synthetic gurus (Spybey has admitted on numerous occasions that he does not consider himself a "musician", which is what separates him from the other members of Download, in a way) makes for some of the most amazing albums of all time.
Saturday 12:33 AM
Is that Dwayne talk/singing about 4:00 into Re:Dux Part 8? Wow. I know Spybey starts chanting shortly afterwards (I think), but someone with a higher pitched voice is saying some three syllable word or phrase over and over before that. Interesting.
Saturday 12:40 AM
This is very cool. Basically makes the connection between Inception and Charlie's Family and Furnace and beyond. This disc is more melodic and relaxed than Furnace, but it doesn't stand alone incredibly well (and it obviously wasn't meant to). It works best when listened to in close proximity to the proper album and/or Microscopic, whether before or after.
Favorite tracks: I won't pick any because it seems pretty obvious that this was meant to be listened to straight through, and only indexed for convenience. However, Part 6 is probably my favorite, if I had to pick one.

Final Rating: 4/5

Download - Furnace [remastered] (reissue Disc 1)
Saturday 11:38 AM
I was driving around town this morning listening to the album and I remembered the first time I heard this record. After acquiring VIVIsectVI about 5 years ago, I went on a Puppy-purchase rampage. Strangely, this was one of the first purchases I made (purchased at the same time as Microscopic). I remember sitting on the floor of my room with my head right under the speakers, completely absorbed. I couldn't begin to understand or love this record, but I was drawn to it by its unspeakable complexities. It would be years before I could truly say "yes, I love Furnace" instead of "well, I respect it". And even though it is definitely one of my favorite albums of all time, I can't pretend to say that I've heard all there is to hear on this record.
Saturday 12:26 PM
After many interruptions, I'm about 4/5 of the way through. Currently finishing up Lebanull. This album is so dense, I'm listening as attentively as possible and I still feel like I haven't "touched bottom", like there are still sounds I'm not quite hearing. Every time I think I have this album figured out, it shifts, mutates, and slips through my fingers. Another interesting dynamic shift from Inception and Charlie's Family to Furnace is the inclusion of Genesis P-Orridge. He was present and a contributing member for Puppy Gristle, and now he's back influencing Download again. Interviews from this period seem to hint that GPO wasn't nearly as involved with the production aspect of this record as he was with Puppy Gristle, but that doesn't change the fact that I shiver during Lebanull when he cries: "Do you see what I see? / Do you hear me?" His contributions add a lot of diversity to this record, and everything about GPO seems in stark contrast with Spybey's delivery, which just serves to intensify the schizophrenic nature of this album.
Saturday 12:36 PM
This is interesting. It seems like the material that was built from the jams on Re:Dux is located primarily on the first half of the disc - Seel Hole, Cannaya, Stone Grey Soil, all have very recognizable elements featured on Re:Dux.
Saturday 12:47 PM
Finishing up the album now. 7:17 into Marred. I feel like I've been through the rabbit hole (cliche, maybe, but true). I also feel like I could spend days listening to this album. I'm sure I'll be returning to Furnace much more often now.
Favorite tracks: Omniman, Atallal, Lebanull, Marred

Final Rating: 5/5
Overall rating for Furnace Reissue: 5.5/5

Download - Microscopic
Saturday 12:51 PM
Microscopic begins.
Saturday 12:55 PM
I'm going to skip the remixes by outside parties for two reasons:
a) this is DOWNLOAD weekend!
b) I'm pretty sure that I dislike both remixes :)
Saturday 5:25 PM
Listening to this was very fragmented. I guess I didn't have quite as free of a weekend as I thought. Overall, this is a nice addition to Furnace. The two new versions of Noh Man's Land are highly enjoyable, Energy Plan is amazing and minimal and Coil-esque (to an extent), the title track features what may be GPO's best contributions to the whole era. The remixes are less than spectacular, but then again, I've never been a fan of NEWT (strange, because I like Haujobb), nor am I a fan of Biosphere. The in-house Omniman remix is hardly different from the original, I think the overall structure is slightly different, so maybe it should be labeled "Omniman (Alternate)".

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Download - The Eyes of Stanley Pain
Saturday 6:32 PM
3/4 of the way into Stanley Pain, now 3:05 into Outafter. This record is really brilliant at times. I've been blown away by Suni C, Base Metal, Collision, and Sidewinder so far. There is a definite shift from Furnace to EOSP that I think lies mostly in a role change on the part of Spybey. He's become much less involved in the production of the music and much more of a vocalist. This is cool, on the one hand, because Spybey's vocals were so buried and "just another instrument" on Furnace, here he rivals Ogre. What we have here sounds more like Inception, musically, than anything on Furnace or Microscopic, which obviously had a much higher level of Spybey involvement in the musical creation. This means that EOSP is much more immediate than its predecessors - this is easily the most Puppy-esque Download album. Very similar to The Process in overall sound, one gets the idea that these tracks may have been the ones that Ogre rejected for The Process because they were too "techno-y". Separate and Killfly, especially, strike me as possible Pup-outtakes. Seperate could even be a hold-over from the Last Rights sessions. Another interesting note is that Phil Western is not credited as a member of Download for EOSP (he plays keys on Glassblower, but that seems to be the extent of his involvement), so now we see that Download is back to being primarily a Key and Goettel project with interjections from Valcic and Marshall. Somewhere, I read that EOSP was not recorded in concentrated and focused sessions like Furnace was, which lends a bit less of the cohesive feel present on the former album. I feel like a lot of the magic present on Furnace has been traded for a more direct and aggressive approach which works very well (these guys can do no wrong), but fto me isn't nearly as effective as Furnace.
Saturday 6:49 PM
Another note: Fire This Ground is vastly superior to Gristle Dog Corr, as far as being a track constructed heavily from Puppy Gristle material. While Gristle Dog Corr is basically a summarization of Puppy Gristle (at least to my ears), Fire This Ground uses Puppy Gristle as a basis for forming a very stand-alone track, by (I think) adding some rhythms and a (more) cohesive structure.
Favorite tracks: Suni C, Base Metal, Collision, Fire This Ground, The Eyes of Stanley Pain

Overall Rating: 4/5

(TO BE CONTINUED)


Just to prove I actually own all of this (and to brag a little, after a few years of collecting steadily), here's a pic of my Skinny Puppy + related collection:


Jealous? :D

I'm still missing some singles and some vinyl rarities, but really I'm pretty proud of this collection.

transcending, pt. 1 (draft.001)

to overcome excellence
to offset greatness, to break what’s fixed
to disorientate the orientated

beauty/shackles
to sever ties with conventions

to stand on citadels with
black wind in face
to shudder and be moved to tears
by that unquestionably
enamoring grotesquerie

to lay prostrate and
bury one’s face in dirt
to taste hell and to know
that no plain heaven can
exist without desirable hell

to splash neutral walls with red
to topple the white king into some abyss

to embrace stone and
know false gods are real
to bow in empty temples
and smile and nod and
embrace amongst the forgotten symbols

(this is part one of what might be something of a tour de force for me. i have yet to write anything of "epic" length, but this series might stray into that area. the already posted piece empty temple may end up as part of this series.
is "disorientate the orientated" too much of a mouthful? i always want to say "disorient the oriented" but obviously that is incorrect :P )

throbbing

bloody stump
you are circumcised
skinned

some organs, bound in dirt
you are empty, emptied, and emptying still
slave to grind
throbbing carcass

you are stripped of meaning, void
of no importance
but infuriatingly

as nothing
you are
still
everything

miscellany

a new picture or two:






















just taken to-day. very up-to-date, current, and ----exciting.

-
news.updates.etc

+^ lots of new poetry going on - been very productive lately. below is a very new work (just penned the first draft less than an hour ago) - (sub)urban decay. and below that is a new, extended revision of empty temple that i feel is much more striking. also have some new pieces in progress, one titled "flowers for blackflower" and another tentatively titled "transcending". transcending is shaping up to be a bit of a tour de force - it is rather long (by my standards) and is very self-referential. both of these poems should be posted here in about a week.

+^ began work on new portfolio or chapbook (haven't decided which one it is yet), entitled BLACKFLOWER, BLACKMOON. should be finished by late may. here's a glimpse of the in-progress cover jacket:





+^ eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new subconscious studios "from the vault" series. i'm sure that the new download (fixer) is going to be AMAZING, and i can't wait to hear the rest of the released material. glad to see these guys jumping on the reissue wagon. cEvin key hasn't released a single album that i don't care for, and i'm sure he's sitting on some incredible unreleased material. he recently posted on the litany forum that he and the subcon crew are working on a future DVD release - including HILT live. how amazing is that?


+^ getting into reading a lot of classic poetry, giving me some nice perspective. was reminded today that the line "rose, thou art sick" from coil's love's secret domain is from no other than william blake's classic (and excellent) "the sick rose".




the blake poem:

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy

-
lyrics from coil's "love's secret domain":

Oh rose, thou art sick
Seduce.. let loose
The vision and the void
Blood sickle.. honey suck

In little children's heavy heads
My dreams erupt while in my bed
Innocence is dripping red

In dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk with you
In dreams
You're mine
All of the time

Heads on fire and drunken lights
Days devoured by hungry nights
In love's secret domain
This is mad love
This is mad love
In love's secret domain

Sweet tortures fly on mystery wings
Pure evil is when flowers sing
My heart
My heart is a rose

Give sanity a longer leash
Some of us have sharper teeth
In love's secret domain

Oh rose, Thou art sick
The invisible worm
The vision and the void
The blood sickle cuts
And the honey sucks

Oh rose, thou art sick.


--
coil and jhonn balance have a very understated influence on me. i'm quick to tell you that edward ka-spel, david tibet, and n. ogre are huge influences, but i neglect the strange and vibrant imagery of balance's work that sits on an equal pedestal with the above "trinity". i mean, look at "innocence is dripping red" - wow, powerful, overtly sexual, and yet somehow he retains that elusive subtlety. i am in constant awe. i also think that, out of all the above lyricists / poets i've listed, my poems most resemble balance's work in structure and phasing.

R.I.P.

why don't they release a book of his poetry

(sub)urban decay, draft.001

(sub)urban decay

the lines blur, distort, rearrange
‘round hollowed-out cylinders
cinders and husks

a man, empty face, white hair
sits undead on stoop, eyes
surveying cracked streets, upheaval

mailbox in pieces, and so is the mailman
we are all functions
we are all reduced and equivalent

the earth spat up its dead,
gaping graveyards
perfume of 100 years of sweat and tears

white granite ionic columns
crumbling
onto streetlamps, traffic lights, and forgotten idols

what is this existence
we are roaming pavement fields
we are building nothing

[
a young man asked me the other day
“where does the city end and the forest begin?”

they are all the same, son
]

As Forests Char

We’ll stand on mountains

Evoke Buddha
Somebody

Then burn charred trees
til they are red and black
And paint the sky with dust and ash and flame

We’ll uncover rocks and blemishes
Starve ourselves, burn our tuxedos
Dance on coals
Browse magnetic fields
And forget to comb our hair

Won’t you stop us?

We’ll play our songs to no known time signature
Refuse the dawn

We’ll lay Isaac on sticks and anoint him with oil
We’ll raise the dagger and dare the skies

Respond!

We’ll sing entropic melodies
To the tune of the rusted music box

We’ll bow down to no known gods


As forests char

empty temple

Windows staring empty eyes
Empty vessels
Rowing hollow to the other side

Empty temple
Teeming with the faceless
Writhing with anti-matter

Pedestals with no idols

Barren, discarded
Empty temple sprouted
Seeds of the tree of death

Tabernacle in the nether-garden

No-face stomping exit rites
High-contrast bodies
In empty temple

No-face chanting to no-tune
An ode to discord and hollow, a testimony
To bloodless
To vacuum
To dissonance
To ruin

Inner vacancy, holy of holies
Cold, corrupt and bottomless
Endless stone well of mysterious depth

Impenetrable by those with faces
Only the withered may worship here
Empty temple is no church,
No house of purity or prayer

Empty temple, empty patterns

A thousand no-faces
A thousand concealed and
Burned-away identities

Reveal, reveal
Unsheath
Unmask

If I had a face I would rip it off

What is this mask?

(revised 3/30)

collapse.

All the flowers shall bow to Blackflower

And all shall become the night

I’m swimming

There’s no shore

a thousand undercurrents

a thousand scythes

a thousand axes biting veins

under Blackmoon

And chromatic petals shall fall to the ground

And Blackflower reigns

There’s no shore

If walls have no shape

I’m drowning

Blackflower ate the sky and earth

And shattered all the gods

I’m sucked into the wake

Into the sea’s luminescence

The walls have no shape

There is no wall at all

Eyes gaze upon Blackflower

And shall never know the dawns

(revised 3/19)

burning calendars.

Time shattered by the wind

(and axe)

And scattered in the trees

We gathered up pieces

Put back together

Elmer’s, Scotch, and stitches

And now there are 363 days per year

And forty days a month

and sometimes now we skip a day

Or two, or four, or five

Seven days a week you say?

I know eight or nine

The calendar is burning

Its ashes touch the sky

Shadowclast Tunes

Some of you may be wondering whats up with Shadowclast, the musical entity.

Well, I'm sad to announce that it is officially "on hiatus" - due to the time-consuming nature of school, some technical issues, and some identity issues.

Identity issues? Well, when I released Next Week's Outline and Tesseract back in 2005, I was listening to a strict diet of "emotional" IDM from labels like n5MD, Merck, Hymen, etc. That style, as a result of being almost my sole genre of choice, came naturally to me and I found my material fitting easily into that mold (hence my release through enpeg digital).



However, the past two years have seen a vast and large-scale broadening of my music taste, newly (re)acquired love for a broad range of genres.

So now I face two dilemmas:
1) The music I create sounds identical to my "IDM" period material, but that no longer represents the music I want to make.
2) Tracks that sound more representative of where I am currently seem somewhat formless, jumping from rampant venetian snares drill'n'bass to depeche mode synthpop and are generally lacking overall.

(Possible) Conclusions:
I need to step back, stop making music for awhile.
I need to start recording vocals.
I need some new gear.
I need to stop forcing myself to create demos that don't do anything for me.
I need to join a band.
I need to produce a band's record. (maybe the same thing)


As you can see by the previous post, I am trying my hand at creating poetry. These writings will likely play a big part in my next musical incarnation.

Stay tuned.

Poetry. III

Within the past 6 months I've taken to writing poetry - it is less time consuming than creating music, and fits more readily into my schedule. The only gear necessary is a pen and paper. However, coming from a musical background, I tend to create these poems expecting them to be set to some kind of sound, if not exactly "sung", but at least spoken-word style over ambience.

Some big influences (off the top of my head):
Edward Ka-Spel (the Legendary Pink Dots, the Tear Garden)
Nivek Ogre (Skinny Puppy, ohGr)
David Tibet (Current 93)
H.P. Lovecraft
Thomas Ligotti

----------
Some recent unfinished works.
.

.

.
the unfunctional corner

A wasteland

Discarded names, numbers, concepts

A hair, a string, a desert

A man, a briefcase

. . . . . .

Walking existence

Perambulating

A cane, poking non-static

Giant red “A” and white zeros on sand

. . . . . .

A black hat

Garbage heap of phonetics and pre-algebraic equations

Leftovers of mind

Long gathered dust

. . . . . .

The unfunctional corner

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

test pattern

Static white blood from TV

Eyes swollen shut but open

Staring maybe lifeless

/ / / / / ///

Pupils shot through with red

Red and sea blue

Eyes shot

/ / / / / ///

Noise shock / electric shock

Knocked off the table

Knocked off the world

/ / / / / ///

A face a number a name

White noise composed

Shouts the same thing

/ / / / / ///

Listening with no ears

No face or anything at all

Absorbing test pattern

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

it must be time

Tip back the lid and share a swig

Under Blackmoon

She smiles

Suggestive curves, the room spins

Flicks the wrist and

Leads the way

-

Unlock the gate with practiced hands

A decadent hymn sings doom

Nothing touches us

-

Bodies hardly capable of containing our souls

We escape and fluctuate

And float into that emptiness

-

Falling so long so far so fast we no longer realize

We are falling at all

She reaches for my hand once more

We share the hollow

-

The nihil becomes something else entirely

Shapes and patterns and pillars and fire

As that decadent hymn emerges again

A carnival theme for organ in B-flat minor

-

We have reached the festival of night

The merrygoround of anti-matter and the anti-gods

We manifest as orbs with no defined edges

-

We perform black rites

And smile and nod and embrace among the symbols of ruine

She kisses me with black lips

Decadence I cannot resist

-

We dance and play in darkened corridors

We curl and arch our backs and watch our cats

We clutch and envelop

We watch nothing become something

-

She overlaps me and we contrast and spark and glow and bind

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suggestions welcome - these are still rather undeveloped.

Nap-time ambience.

For the past few weeks I've been experimenting with sleeping to music. The most pleasant and bizarre experiences often stem from drone oriented music. Here are some of my recent favorites, all of them chosen for sleeping because of my enjoyment of them during the waking hours.

Frozen Rabbit - 26,000

After hearing this album praised to no end by fans of Download, platEAU and Phil Western's solo work, I finally had to check this out.

It lives up to the hype.

Sometimes Coil-esque, sometimes reminiscent of Mark Spybey's excellent Dead Voices on Air, at times close to some of the Kranky label noise manipulations, and very near to the synthetic backbone of Download's excellent "III", this album is all I could ask for (and more) from a beatless Western / Hill collaboration.


Dead Voices on Air - From Labrador to Madagascar

Mark Spybey is back after a few years of silence from his central project, Dead Voices on Air. FLtM sees Spybey pulling back a bit from the more "band" oriented DVOA releases of the late '90s, early '00s. Here he recalls the musical imagery and tonal palette of early releases like Shap and New Words Machine, while maintaining an updated sound - this album doesn't sound like it was recorded over a weekend on a 4-track (not to belittle the genius of the first three albums, but Spybey definitely seems to have embraced some new studio techniques - this material sounds much more crisp than the early material).


Loscil - Stases

I have a love hate relationship with Loscil. I quite enjoy the drones present on many of his releases, but in most cases the rhythm section dulls the effect of the beautiful drones - Sumbers suffers from Monolake-wannabe tech-dub drum kit overuse. Here, Scott Morgan devotes the sound to (extremely) minimalistic sine-wave drones that float pleasantly in the surrounding air, and are not tied down to any repetitive "dance" rhythms - leave that to the aforementioned Monolake and platEAU.



I don't often listen to music during the night as I sleep, but during short naps I often have the stereo cranked to something either droney or minimalistic.

What do you sleep to?