I have a problem w/ the term ‘psychedelia’ ; negative
associations of a ‘hippie’ falseness, nevertheless my arte is, I know, deeply
psychedelic in a true sense, a kind of synaesthesisia, a scrambling, an
overload that seeks Samadhi in its primal gush, that will reconnect one with
the all, or rather, a ‘black psychedelia’, substituting the elective current,
for ‘all’…
And now, what I wish to speak of, the Voltigeurs LP,
‘Carrion’, of which we are deeply proud. We had worried about the worthiness of
the material as it was all recorded in one day in the studio, then the release
had been subjected to lengthy delays, mainly our fault, an abortive first
mastering where overly good studio monitoring had led us to boost wrongly, (also
a pharmacological state that was linked to our pleasure thirsting, and possibly
not conducive to audial attentiveness) and a remastering that improved on some
levels but ‘seemed’ to lose some of the best original sounds... Similarly, the
artwork got lost between the original screenprinters, and had to be redone and
the secondary printing option seemed to be less ideal… BUT when we received
the finished article, it looks beautiful: full of nuance, the glyphs on the
front are as alluring, endless and puzzling as we could have ever hoped (it is
an embellished copy of a detail (a neck) from a Redon b/w reproduction in a
book, of a colour work, that may have been added to by a hand unknown,
suggestive of a necklace…) the photograph on the back seems even more
beautifully composed and focuses through a succession of ‘framings’ the notion
of mirroir as Gateway to other realms, and a smaller obsidian mirroir has
become… The black egg (girl w/ serpent), microcosmic cipher of the great work,
the figure more sphynxlike, and in the mirroirs depths, more phantasmal glyphs
that echo the front covers ones in their tantalising suggestiveness…
And then the SOUND of the LP: magnificent and rich, stately
and grand. To return to my original squirming about ‘psychedelia’ I have long
had a ‘block’ about some of my favourite formative sounds, namely the beautiful
cold power of the best early/mid seventies output of Pink Floyd, but lately
with joy we have returned to ‘Obscured by clouds’, ‘Wish you were here’ and,
most importantly, ’Meddle’, and it was with surprise and pleasure we heard the
unmistakeable heritage of side two of 'Carrion' in Roger Waters’ hypnotic one
note basslines and echoes of Dave Gilmours crying guitar lines in the wolfhowls
of ‘Sirius’. That our bastard noise could evoke the grandeur of the stars in a
similar mode to cold tropes of our ‘progressive’ heroes was an unexpected joy.
(Of course one must almost wholly disregard the opening
piece, ‘morning raga’ a slightly failed chaos, though I therefore enjoy the web
of meaning set up between sound and a title that in common usage might suggest
a healthful positive new dawn, though again I might draw a relation with some
of Pink Floyds self consciously ‘annoying’
pieces (solo pieces on 'ummagumma' etc) that offset the self contained majesty of
their most focussed black psychedelic masterpieces (‘one of these days’ and
‘echoes’)).
A strange footnote to all this is the U.S. black metal act
Nachtmystium's attempt of a similar alchemy with their recent ‘Black Meddle’
dyptich, 'Assassins' and 'Addicts', a working that we greatly appreciate, though
one that works on a more visceral, pop level, for us…
As to the future, our current recordings as ‘Black Sun Roof’
are our most ‘blackly psychedelic’ yet and certainly embrace the malevolent
machinery of Floyds ‘Welcome to the machine’ as well as Coil's ‘Musick to play
in the dark’ (and it is worth pausing to contemplate the fact that Pink Floyds
masterpiece of misanthropy ‘Wish you were here’ is graced, as were all their
classic period (70-75) works, by beautiful sleeve artwork created by the
Hipgnosis design company, who’s ranks included Coils’ Sleazy, who took the
spellbinding photographs, that make up the cold alchemy of that albums ‘four
elements’ artworks.)
- Matthew Bower
