YULE (21 December 2010)

The musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

VARIOUS ARTISTS

PEOPLE TAKE WARNING! (Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938)


Original Issue: 2007 Tompkins Square (TSQ1875) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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from Pitchfork:

Times are tough. Times are always tough. But times used to be much tougher.

A recent report noted the global rise of the standard of living, and the U.S. stock market keeps hitting all-time highs. Even if the relative prosperity of America is tempered by the troubling observation that, contrary to the usual positive economic indicators, life isn't getting much better, life in general doesn't seem that bad.

Every so often, though, we get a glimpse of what once was and what could very well be again. The precarious, precipitous housing market leads to talk of recession, which inevitably brings up depression. The Hurricane Katrina humanitarian disaster provided an alternate-reality view of the United States as Third World nation. The resolution of the United Auto Workers strike settled the weight of thousands of jobs bobbling in the balance. The death toll and number of wounded in Iraq and elsewhere creeps upward, reminders of a time when sacrifice was compulsory, not voluntary.

Yes, times are tough, but times used to be absolutely terrible-- rife with starvation, disease, extreme poverty, and senseless death. As relative prosperity continues unabated, perspective predictably fades. People Take Warning: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938 provides that perspective with three discs of abject misery, songs about misery, miserable people, and the miserable things they've done or that were done to them. It's the epitome of a bad trip back in time, and a riveting collection of musical snapshots capturing a country teetering on the edge of the abyss, looking down, and singing songs about what they see.

Titled "Man V. Machine", the first disc focuses on songs of train wrecks, plane crashes, and the odd car accident, and features lot of songs about the Titanic, in particular. The other two discs are titled "Man V. Nature" and "Man V. Man [And Woman, Too]", respectively, and tackle just what their names imply: natural disasters and good ol' fashioned murdering.

It's harrowing and horrifying stuff, but there's a twisted element of rueful humor to this set, too. "If it bleeds, it leads," goes the cynical journalism saying, and these horror stories, drawn from headlines, serve much the same purposes as the tabloids, providing tales of loss you can't turn away from. It's also a little like the scene of the accident on the side of the highway, with traffic slowed to a near halt so that everybody can get a good look, as if they don't already know what they're going to see.

You generally know what you're going to get here, too, but just because it's familiar sounding hardly means it's full of household names. The set inevitably includes a few songs from such usual suspects as Son House and Charley Patton, as well as often anthologized tracks like Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks". There are also plenty of well-known subjects, like the infamous Old 97 train, conductor Casey Jones, the doomed Tom Dooley, and the reliably murderous Stack O'Lee. But there are countless surprises as well, like "El Mole Rachmim (für Titanik)", a song that stresses how much the great ship's sinking resonated with recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

Music like this has always been the province of obsessive collectors, and it will probably always remain that way. But there's no question that having this music packaged together by experts and fans beats scouring estate sales for fragile 78s. Whether beautifully packaged (like the astounding gospel collection Goodbye, Babylon), thematically organized (the fun medicine show soundtrack Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937), or both (the still essential Anthology of American Folk Music, which, lest one forget, really was once just part of one man's collection), it's still remarkably powerful and moving all these years-- but really not that many-- later. As Tom Waits puts it in his introductory essay, "The scratches on the 78s sound like the ocean in a shell, and the songs are riding inside across time."

SAMHAIN (31 October 2008)

The Musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

WHEN

SVARTEDAUEN (THE BLACK DEATH)


Original Issue: 1992 Tatra (TATCD 008)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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1 The Black Death (38:27)

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from Jester Records:

In 1992 came When's heaviest piece, Svartedauen (The Black Death), inspired by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen's drawings with the same name, describing the ravages of the plague in Norway during the Middle Age.

This single 38-minute piece is by many considered Pedersen's most evocative album.

Svartedauen contains elements from Norwegian folk music played on fiddle and mouth harp, terrifying symphonic parts à la Death in the Blue Lake with pounding drums, choir and strings, and a carpet of other grotesque sounds: hearses, moans of the dying, rats, flagellants? whips and a scythe being sharpened, to name a few.

Did you record sounds yourself, or did you get them from elsewhere?

LP: "I mixed many of my own sounds, and borrowed some from Norwegian Film. Bernt Kanstad, the technician, was working there, so I got access to many sounds that I sampled, looped and used manually. And I recorded many scraping sounds on a big, old cello that was standing in the studio, but many of those sounds were heavily manipulated afterwards, so you can?t always hear that they are cello sounds. I like working that way: not using entirely natural sounds, but doing something extra with them".

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from Volcanic Tongue:

When is the solo-project of Lars Pedersen, known for his work in Norwegian art-rockers Holy Toy in the 80s. His When project seems to be his own musical playground, as every album seems different from the other.

The later works have been prog-rock/pop vein, but Svartedauen, his third album from 1991, is a pure 38 minute musique concrète sound-collage. Svartedauen translates to The Black Death and the album is an abstract sound-journey of the plague entering and ravishing the Norwegian countryside in 1349, killing two-thirds of the Norwegian population within a year.

The album was inspired by a series of haunted and eerie drawings of Theodor Kittelsen from 1900 on the subject. Pedersen has made a soundtrack to it.

Fans of Norwegian black metal will recognize the Kittelsen art as the same that adorns the cover of several Burzum albums. A little known fact is that Burzum, and most other black metal musicians during their church-burning heydays, were big fans of this When album. Listening to it with that in mind it actually makes a lot of sense.

Svartedauen in many ways manages to evoke the feeling of doom and medieval dread that the rock-Satanists attempted with distorted guitars. It’s a scary and uncomfortable listen.

BLACK MOON (the dark side of musick)

VON TILL STEVE

IF I SHOULD FALL TO THE FIELD

Original Issue: 2002 Neurot (NR020) Buy it here!

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Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

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1 Breathe (5:41)
2 To The Field (6:36)
3 My Work Is Done (2:45)
4 Hallowed Ground (5:15)
5 This River (5:08)
6 Running Dry (4:53)
7 The Wild Hunt (5:27)
8 Am I Born To Die (4:05)
9 Dawn (3:54)
10 The Harpy (2:28)

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from Rolling Stone:

Grandly ethereal solo efforts are rarely endowed with the kind of eerily personal magic that's cast here.

No less weighty and brash than his heavy, rich sludgework in seminal ambient metal outfit Neurosis, If I Should Fall to the Field reveals Von Till urgently searching for the past's effect on his present through the marriage of traditionally textural folk acoustics and moody, current rock orchestration.

While the exploration of aging, spirituality and universal human connectivity isn't a new exercise in songwriting, Von Till's respect for and nod towards historic American roots music is so smart, honest and engaging that it may as well be.

Rugged vocals emerge from the throat with such fluid, confessional ease that listening feels like voyeurism. Creepiest is the album's climax, "The Harpy" -- a chilling recording of Von Till's grandfather passionately reciting ancient rhyme over his grandson's somber backdrop.

Joan Hiller

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from Amazon:

grandfather's funeral... rural despair... at first i giggled at it, but when i checked the music out, i found it just about appropriate. but don't let that have you expecting some alt country drivel, this is some truly dark, poetic and evocative stuff right here.

what separates this guy from the rest of the "pack" for me (although the music IS quite original in and of itself) is that he's not some skinny and scrappy quasi-bohemian alcoholic, but rather a heavy-set and shaven dude (that somehow makes his pain more "credible" and "unique" for me) with a deep, somber, masculine croon that doesn't sound the tiniest bit forced. just a naturally powerful voice that sends shivers down your spine. he's got that "whispering in your ear at normal pitch" thing going on, for lack of a better way to describe it.

apart from that, expect slow-paced songs that consist mostly of acoustic guitars, with some distant humming sounds etc. and occasional drums. the topics are dark explorations of life, death, etc. but quite poetic, IMHO.

occasionally, the dude "let's it rip" vocally (the end of the "breathe" chorus, etc.) and that's when the shivers REALLY set it. i don't know what else to say, this stuff is so emotional, unique, dark and moving that it's almost bizarre.

screw elliott smith, this is the real deal, folks. listen on headphones, at dusk/night, alone.

p.s. and don't expect no neurosis here.

K. Goettlicher "the_last_of_the_idealists"

GHOST MOON (imaginary musick)

CARETAKER (THE)

SELECTED MEMORIES FROM THE HAUNTED BALLROOM

Original Issue: 1999 V/Vm Test Records (OFFAL02) (Buy it here!)

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Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

The atmosphere created here is superb, taking old 78s and drowning them in mental distortion, going some way to what was going on inside Jack Nicholson's head in the film "The Shining" (inspiration for the project and one of Margot's favorite) - www.discogs.com

Here you can read an interesting article about Hauntology.

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1 The Haunted Ballroom (3:44)
2 By The Seaside (4:00)
3 One Thousand Memories (1:25)
4 Haunting Me (3:48)
5 A Summer Romance (3:05)
6 Den Of Iniquity (2:45)
7 Dream Waltz (3:29)
8 A Handful Of Stars (3:34)
9 Request Dance (5:09)
10 In The Dark (3:02)
11 Reckless Night (3:02)
12 Thronged With Ghosts (3:48)
13 From Out Of Nowhere (3:45)
14 Friends Past Reunited (2:00)
15 You And The Night (3:12)
16 Moonlight Seranade (2:34)
17 Disillusioned (2:41)
18 The Revolving Bandstand (0:47)
19 Garden Of Weeds (3:06)
20 "Excuse Me" For Ladies (0:59)
21 In Days Of Old (2:14)
22 September 1939 (1:57)
23 Thanks (3:25)
24 The Haunted Ballroom (3:20)
25 Untitled (3:29)

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from The Caretaker homepage:

Dusty and forgotten memories, echoes and vibrations from the past.
Using as source, recordings from the 1920's and 1930's era of Ballroom music.
Often painful and desolate memories, recalled and replayed from beyond the grave of our senses.
In amongst this darkness lies the solace of a semi-recognizable melody or phrase, a beacon of light in this often dark and distant ocean of haunted recalled audio.

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from Boomkat:

The Caretaker has always been the more thoughful alter-ego of V/VM - the Stockport based butchers have been grinding up sound for quite some time now, and this full length was originally released way back in 1999.

A nice diversion from the demonic plugin-fuelled insanity of their more well known work, Caretaker instead goes for industrial ambience. Think Skinny Puppy’s more cinematic moments and you’ll be somewhere in the right area – what I love most about this album though is the kind of reverberating fairground mood.

Seaside organs hiss and hum in the background and give the record a persistent menace, a thick nostalgic groan which reminds me of Jeunet and Caro’s shiver inducing ‘Cite Des Enfants Perdus’ or maybe even more fittingly David Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’.

Vinyl crackle rings out across the album as if it’s being played as an instrument and before long you’ll be certain you don’t live in the real world anymore. Utterly unique and really quite scary, in the best possible sense.

FULL BUCK MOON (18 July 2008)

The Musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

ARTEMIEV EDWARD & OVCHINNIKOV VYACHESLAV

VOLUME 3: SOLARIS (a film by Andrey Tarkovsky)

Original Issue: 1995 Toei Music (TMP 2003)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

Lucky owners of Volume 1 (Ivanovo Detstvo) and Volume 2 (Andrey Rublyov), PLEASE CONTACT ME!!!

IMO, together with "Eraserhead", this is the most radical soundtrack ever created in film history. A true jewel and a must for any serious lover of thee dark side.

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17 Untitled tracks

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from All Music:

This is the soundtrack to one of the slowest moving, fascinating, and maddening science fiction films ever made. Directed by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and based on the novel of the same name by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, Solaris as a film mesmerized virtually all who saw it with its bright colors, shape-shifting orbs, and hallucinatory frame sequences. Remember though, for all those high-tech sci-fi fans, this was Soviet sci-fi, no special effects that couldn't be made of cardboard, wood, or rubber. This isn't low tech; it's no tech.

One of the things that made the film such a freakout was the soundtrack -- though no one could tell that when they were watching it. It's only now that the music is available as a stand-alone text that this becomes possible. Edward Artemiev and Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov took a spaced-out film and authored a dense yet spacious score.

Heavy on the droning pipe organ and tape-edited effects, the score opens slowly as a conventional theme and drifts very quickly into a music that cannot be named. Electrical sounds of wires shorting out, bubbling noises, and the ever present eeriness of the organ haunting the backdrop make this claustrophobic at times and creepy beyond belief at others. Perhaps the reason is, though, that this is music to give birth to in unknown places (referring directly to the novel and film) and alien spaces.

For contemporary listeners, the reference point might be the long-reverb location and sound-collection methods used by the industrial unit Organum in the late '70s and early '80s as well as 23 Skidoo Nurse With Wound and others. As electronic sound sculptor Hrvatski has stated, Solaris "comes as close to recreating in sound the whole 'space' experience as thought possible." He's not far off, on the music, but the music is way off the map. Awesome.

Thom Jurek

RED MOON (musick & other arts)

NURSE WITH WOUND
SALT MARIE CELESTE

Original Issue: 2003 United Dairies ( UD104CD)

Reissue: 2005 United Jnana (2001 CD) Buy this masterpiece here!


Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

1 Salt Marie Celeste

This work is inspired by the ill-fated story of the Marie Celeste brigantine. Read more here!

From Viennese Waltz:

The decline and fall of one such vessel is evoked with glacial power on Salt Marie Celeste.

This fully realised, hour-long version is one of NWW’s most radically minimalist pieces. It consists largely of a single, looming electronic figure, repeated endlessly like the motion of the waves. This incredibly dark and doom-laden sound is punctuated by regular bursts of eerie effects – first a lonely foghorn, then the breathing and creaking of wood, and finally the constant advance of water.

Energised by relentless stereo panning, the piece describes a shipwreck as a giant arc of progression and descent.

There are distinct similarities with Gavin Bryars’ epochal The Sinking of the Titanic, although the differences are also clear.

Bryars’ ’70s masterpiece takes as its starting point the poignant testimony of several Titanic survivors that the ship’s band continued to play as the ship went down, heroically refusing to abandon their positions and thereby providing the tragedy with a fitting soundtrack. The Titanic itself, meanwhile, was a mass of lively activity in the first days of its doomed maiden voyage, while its sinking was a monument to human folly and hubris.

Stapleton’s ship cradles no such vitality, and its sinking tells of no heroism or ambition. This music speaks only of darkness, of isolation and of watery death.

Richard Rees Jones