FULL BEAVER MOON (13 November 2008)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

BLOOD AXIS & LES JOYAUX DE LA PRINCESSE

ABSINTHE: LA FOLIE VERTE


Original Issue: 2002 Athanor (ATNR 017) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

A recent discovery for me and an unvaluable gem!

Totally mesmerized by this masterpiece...this is the sound of my beloved Europe!

I am the Green Fairy
My robe is the colour of despair
I have nothing in common with the fairies of the past
What I need is blood, red and hot, the palpitating flesh of my victims
Alone, I will kill France, the Present is dead, Vive the future.

But me, I kill the future and in the family I destroy the love of country, courage, honour,
I am the purveyor of hell, penitentiaries, hospitals.

Who am I finally? I am the instigator of crime
I am ruin and sorrow
I am shame
I am dishonour
I am death
I AM ABSINTHE

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1 Folie Verte (I Am The Green Fairy) (3:40)
2 Symphonie Verte (And Here I Am, An Absintheur...) (4:59)
3 Minutes D'Absinthe (Let Me Be Mad, Mad With Absinthe) (1:59)
4 Absintha Taetra (Opaline) (6:58)
5 Poison Vert (D'Après Frédéric Barbier) (6:57)
6 Avec Les Fleurs... Avec L'Absinthe (With Flowers And With Women) (1:58)
7 Absinthine (D'Après Emile Duhem) (0:55)
8 Variations Sur Le Thème De Corelli (By Venus And Cupid) (4:05)
9 Variations Sur Le Thème De Corelli (That Night, I Drank Deeply) (13:20)
10 Princesse Verte (D'Après Emile Spencer) (5:37)
11 Fée Verte, Vous Êtes Jolie (Chanté Par Affre) (2:10)

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from Athanor webpage:

Absinthe: La Folie Verte is a sonic and poetic invocation combining mind-altering music and powerful recitations of Absinthe-inspired poems of the fin-de-siècle.

These elements unite with a brilliant graphic presentation to conjure an emerald realm of euphoric delirium. It is also one of the most obsessive recordings ever made: the various melodies that float across these soundscapes derive from forgotten Absinthe songs of the past; actual elements of the latter, derived from old cylinder recordings and 78s, have also been carefully stirred and distilled into new formulations by Les Joyaux de la Princesse.

Furthermore, all aspects of this album (instrumentation, spoken recitations, and even the final mixing) were executed under the influence of the drink. The end result is an impressionistic tour-de-force and the ultimate aural hymn to la fée verte, the Green Fairy.

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from Compulsion:

Blood Axis & Les Joyaux De La Princesse release their long-awaited celebration of that intoxicant of aesthetes: absinthe. It is said Van Gogh sliced off his ear while under the influence, Hemingway, Poe, Rimbaud and Wilde regularly imbibed the green liquor, Picasso even painted The Absinthe Drinker. Long outlawed in many countries Absinthe is regarded as one of the most potent drinks ever, its psychotropic effect a result of the wormwood herb and exceedingly high alcoholic content.

Michael Moynihan has long been an advocate of the transcendental nature of absinthe, and has been instrumental in its resurgence in America. The debut Blood Axis album, The Gospel of Inhumanity, even featured an ode to this bedevilled drink. Like Moynihan, the other musicians on this CD have all become obsessed with the drink, distilling their own recipes and creating their own rituals to accompany their absinthe sipping evenings.

Absinthe: La Folie Verte is imbued with stirring orchestrations and lush string segments, while Moynihan with deadpan delivery recites poems culled from the late 19th Century. Absinthe: La Folie Verte evokes a turn of the century Parisian café with age-old absinthe songs salvaged from the past. Produced in collaboration with the Absinthe Museum, Auvers-Sur-L'Oise, this is a beautifully packaged and extensively researched document that should appeal to anyone transfixed with the mystique of the Green fairy. When one considers that the EU ban on Absinthe has been lifted, variations of the drink are available in UK public houses, and numerous books have just been published documenting the effects of the Green liquor it appears that Blood Axis and Les Joyaux De La Princesse have managed to capture the zeitgeist of today while conjuring an atmosphere of 200 years ago.

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from FluxEuropa:

In a collaboration with the French project, Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Michael Moynihan's Blood Axis forsakes militaristic bombast to deliver a homage to absinthe, the notorious fin-de-siècle tipple distilled from an infusion of wormwood. Michael reads from contemporary texts condemning or examining the gods and demons of the absinthe experience, against a dreamy mood-evoking ambient soundscape. With snatches of period music weaving in and out of the cacophony, the album successfully captures that sense of distance associated with intoxication as it takes us on a journey into the addled brain of the absintheur.

Absinthe had such a bad reputation - at least partly due to harmful additives - that it was widely banned for most of the twentieth century. An idea of the taste of historical absinthe can be gained from Pernod, a modern wormwood-free absinthe. Pastis is similar but the dominant flavour is liquorice rather than aniseed. Michael Moynihan and Annabel Lee of Blood Axis and Erik Konofal of Les Joyaux are all imbibers of the liquor and have long experimented with homemade varieties. Modern, commercially manufactured absinthe has only a tenth of the psycho-active 'thujone' present in the original, but my own experience suggests that even this has an effect more akin to drugs than alcohol.

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

ADDLESTON/MEUNIER/FAUSTMANN

17th AND 18th CENTURY WORKS OF FUNERARY VIOLIN

BABCOTTE/SUDBURY/EATON

THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF FUNERARY VIOLIN

Original Issue: unknown

Reissue: The Guild Of Funerary Violinists (No Number) Buy it here!

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Margot-meter: ? moons / 5

Read here the fascinating history behind the recordings.

If you have even one single drop of mittel-european blood running through your veins, you'll be moved (to death) by these sounds!

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Tracklists here and here

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from Aquarius Records (cut-up of various reviews):

What is more amazing than discovering a whole movement in music that had never been documented, let alone even heard of. EVER! No mention in any books, magazines, not a single trace. What if that music was in fact the music of Funerary violins. A music created and composed to be performed at funerals. The only evidence of these musics, some scratchy old wax cylinder recordings, some faded photos, and brittle sheafs of old sheet music.

Hard to say which would be more amazing, a wholly undiscovered hidden dark corner of musical history, quashed by the church and relegated to be lost forever, or an insanely detailed project, the ultimate conceptual art piece. Either way, we are in love with this stuff.
Simply from a musical standpoint, this is everything we could hope for. The recordings are fuzzy and staticky, bathed in layers of crackle and grit, and years of neglect and decay, but beneath the recording inconsistencies we love so much, are some truly moving and emotionally rich performances, the melodies are so intense and sad, minor key and mournful. truly funereal. It's impossible not to imagine some old funeral procession, a row of black clad mourners, trudging down a dirt road, with their deceased atop an old wooden cart, the sky grey, the music of the Funerary violinist winding around the procession like wreaths of black smoke. So goddamn lovely. We have been listening to this non-stop since we got it.

And then there's the story. The "history". Is it real? Is it possible that a musical movement could disappear so completely. So much so that not a single person anywhere EVER had heard of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists? Or is it all a huge put-on? A massive made up world? The ultimate outsider art project. Either way, we are completely blown away. If this is indeed real, HOLY SHIT! How utterly mysterious and romantic!! We do sort of want to believe it's real. It's so perfectly evocative of some other time, of death and sadness throughout the ages. But if it is in fact made up, it has to be one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed hoaxes of all time.

Wailing, plaintive funereal laments on solo violin, sad and morose, lilting and so completely lovely, bathed in all manner of grit and hiss, fuzz and antique distortion, sounding like the old wax cylinders these recordings purport to be. Imagine some old timey violin music treated by Tim Hecker, and spun in some ultra morose DJ set by Philip Jeck...
The music is so evocative, of dark clouds at dusk, rain swept fields, huge brooding stone houses, lush gardens beneath grey skies, and of course, funerals, and the slow stately trudge of the funeral procession to the grave site. We've gushed about pretty much every volume so far, and by now are probably just repeating ourselves, but we just love these discs, read the other Funerary Violinist reviews for more on the music and the mythology, and you'll realize just why it seems impossible to us to not fall totally in love with such a well executed piece of what ultimately amounts to performance art. The music, dark and delicate, creepy and so beautiful, even removed from the mythology is totally amazing, the story and the text is as well (there's even a book you can track down, detailing the entire recorded history of the Guild) but the two together, are simply magical....

Even without the fantastical back story, the music is worth the price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully, minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others, all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals the deal.