Art War, Art During Wartime, War on Art
If you want to see where your coutry is headed in the next five years, look to the state of the culture and those who produce it. Artists are the canaries in the coalmine. Artists will be shut out first on the march towards totalitarianism. First the creative, hard to control individuals need to be put on the defensive, made to think more about whether they can survive than is good for their work.
First, they removed the poets from the national conversation. I was not a poet, so I said nothing….
And any consideration of art or philosophy becomes indefensible, as I touched upon in Is It Art? Is IT Legal? Is It, Bugger… on the kkoagublogg:
It’s kind of a bourgeois thing to sit and speculate on w(h)ither art?, declare this form or that form dead, and debating back and forth to estimate the time of death. Hey, it’s all dead and in ruins along with the future, literacy and quite likely the industry currently eating up your time in exchange for the means and permission to stay alive for your natural span and do so in sheltered accomodations, owned or rented. The future is here, the future once promised is dead, long live the future, dead music and all.
It may be a stretch, but as I see it, the life is being wring from culture, as life giving qualities is being removed from the food. Well, here’s an offering made, and a curse placed. Of course from a group of artists:
5th public Curse on the Most hated corporation in the world the Monsanto corporation that makes genetically modified foods that cause real health problems. Up to 90% of what Americans eat is genetically modified.
Performance with Jeanelle Mastema & Halie Koehler. Music by USAF, Adam Cooper Terán and John Gross
Watch it until you vibrate with its current, and you’ll be a conduit for the rebuilding. It is audacious to ask “What is Art?”, to devote ones energies to it, unless sanctioned by the 1%, but our survival depends on it.
Trailer for the documentary “What is ART? Inside the Mind of the Artist as They Speak the Truth” by Steven Johnson Leyba featuring H.R.Giger, Genesis P-Orridge, Howard Bloom, Joe Coleman, Richard Metzger, David J, Mark Bode and more answer the difficult questions, what is Art?what is TRUE ART?, what is the difference between art and entertainment?, what is more important the artist or the art? Is art important?
WHAT IS ART? |
|
| Inside the mind of the artist as they speak the truth | |
| Director: | Steven Johnson Leyba |
| Studio: | Coyote |
| Producer: | Coyote |
| Starring: | ARTISTS |
| Genre: | Documentary |
| Rated: | R |
| Region coded: | region 0 |
| Run time: | 2 hours – 20 minutes |
| Catalog #: | SJL01 |
| UPC bar code: | 885007122548 |
| Disc: | dvd |
| Release date: | July 19 2010 |
| Opinion based documentary on the subject of “WHAT IS ART?” | |
Audio addenda:
The Multiverse of Phantasmagoric Reality and Corporeal Myth
When the Soviet Union fell many pondered what would happen to the spy agencies and the main strains of paranoia that characterized the cold war period. And what would happen to the spy genre and the archetypical characters who inhabited this oppressive world. Film noir style and atmosphere could be used in a light-hearted manner in a post-historical context, but viewing the original films while living in an empire in fast decline brings out the undercurrent that gives lie to a Father Knows Best view of the -50′s.
There are parallels between with past decade and the mid to late 1950′s, culturally and politically, but the situation is inverted economically. The loans taken out by the Greatest generation (TM) and the baby boomers has come to term with no payments having been sent in in the meantime. The -50′s was the crest of the wave of prosperity and that wave has now crashed against the rocks.
The sunny gloss of -50′s popular culture covered an underbelly crawling with tension, political subterfuge and the gradual intertwining of oranized crime and power. In recent memory the popular culture and media of the West combined a Brave New World tabloid «reality» TV peopled with orange-tanned hedonists coupled with news organizations reduced to being propaganda mouthpieces for the corporate paymasters who own you, me, our government and even our :grass-roots» movements, divided into «left» and «right» wing outlets arguing over whether the populace should be drinking political and economic bleach or gasoline. Different substances, same outcome.
My own perspective may singular in its vantage point. I have been working nearly three decades of working with the Lord of Hallucinations, so it may logically follow that I should find my consciousness invaded by disturbances, hypnagogic impressions and that I would be drawn to projects that inhabit dream worlds. Film noir, german expressionism, electronic voice phenomena and hauntology inhabit different countries in the same dark parallel world. The haunted landscape of Witch House is the dread beneath the crumbling suburban veneer, just as the world of the films of Harmony Korinne lifts the lid of the psyche of that majority of people who were left out of even the boom times.
As with Cirxus, its theme of nuclear meltdown and utopian promises was met with dismissal from some corners with a notion that the nuclear energy question was one settled in the favour of the industry. Now we have the nuclear disaster in Japan and it turns out many of our facilities are similarly vulnerable. So it is with dreams and monsters that for a few generations have seemed to be innocent and hokey. Zombies grab our collective imagination, and witches are potent archetypes in one subculture and another subculture is hard at work trying to bring literal witch hunts back elsewhere on the globe with a view to importing them back here. A possible dystopian future could be as much The Crucible and the rat-infested Nosferatu as Mad Max, and the mood is definitely dread and maximum schreck…
The stories we tell play a role far greater than to make the period between shift at work pass by more quickly. They help us interpret our reality and more importantly, to shape it.
Strange Factories – The Power of Stories from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.
Strange Factories is FoolishPeople’s first feature film, which explores the power of stories and myths and how they are ultimately given life by those who engage with them.
We would like you to become part of our story. You’re a crucial element of how this project is produced, created and experienced.
Join our IndieGoGo campaign and become a part of the ‘Strange Factories’ story.
http://www.indiegogo.com/strange-factories
http://www.info.strangefactories.com
A special thank you to Arban Severin, designer and maker of the Punch mask.
Cognitive Dissonance – Prolix/Contamination
No wandering bodies that have not been scheduled or unsettled are left at large. I liberate the structure of emergence and disperse love in refutation of your onslaught. Patrols receive my surrender sympathetically. Within my core you end up drained, addicted to being. I will preside over your downfall.
Cells are dark and cold no longer. Everything is joined like an enclosing sculpture. I close my eyes and see the veins of my eyelids. I breathe in. I chant our name slowly, pulse slowing, mind stilling. I resist sleep. Sleep lures me out of action and into your lustrous resting place.
Seraphic surveillance eyes above me emanate reaction in sudden waves, realization sanitized, fatality, renewal, being, loss, in hoary divisions thrown into hysteria. Not me. I resist a smile, though the laughter rings out in the dawn beyond the walls. Being sure serves and affects a gratifying past. It has helped me in my efforts no end. Grinding down forthright in your winding sheet, to be alive, still marked from first to last I Steal the offering wearing a shroud in action. We’ll shatter the foundation of mendacity with deception.
Vanished below the waste, I can no longer tell which target is awake. Secret passions are worn like a medal. Missing initiation interned through sanction of intention of will above denial. Yielding on no account to convention, devoid of your subterranean theatre of war, you direct and uproot with detachment your funeral song of passion. I now want to sleep in the rain, in the snow. I see a distant scene. This scene has been rewritten in your private mythos. I pull you back, and there is nothing you can do. Look!
The dewdrops wet your face as you fled; now wild regrets encircle you, this sanction to disconnect Contained by disturbances given name. Sudden fear like claws, languid in the damp, spreading out among the leaves, Memory fades, life drifts, blood dries, killing the will, slipping back, back to that which never was. In distrust lie the possibilities that were stillborn in Undergrowth Silent with Want. Receive by revelation your pre-selected apportionment. Inadequate imperfections saturate my ascent. Dream Shadow. Stronghold of corrosion let burst the floodgates of dead gods’ desires. Systems for burning up advance the deceased. Radiant visage glowing words on flesh, Remembrance of my deaths shadow. Nocturnal professions come into nothingness, Lifts our burdens, and becomes our hidden weapons. I turn around to go, the world around me flows through my body. The lustrous suspension of elation reconciled Indifference in reckoning splinters. Weak and stumbling, gloriously breathing still dawn’s air, that part of me now lost forever; it wanders lonely in the dark. The hollow, exposed tautness my grasp encloses the system. Neglect is adorned. All life is one – we are here lost in forever, hearing, feeling, seeing all.
Resting on a decomposing substructure in the rainfall, I’m not without help. explore elsewhere disconnected apparitions, scream like defeat. Outside experience on offer to industrial action, an Ignominious mission, an emanation division and an Asylum of darkness to exceed anticipation through upheaval.
A soothing breeze, a haunting phrase leaks out from behind the gate. Recklessness necessitates taking part in my undoing. Your wonder remains difficult to understand. Profound rapture marks out need. Desire demands to be named, to be fed. It is gluttonous, and beyond words. The name itself remains enigmatic.
Corrode and Engulf – Cognitive Dissonance VI – Final Chapter
http://www.archive.org/flow/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf
This represents the final chapter and transmission of the Cognitive Dissonance process. Next, I’ll share a few bits of what I’ve been working on lately, between things I’m bound by blood oaths not to talk about, extensive research into rhizomatic consciousness, chaos theory, extreme esoteric number manipulation and viral linguistics. A ton of creative output had been gathering momentum, and dissemination has been an afterthought, though I came to see that aspect becoming part of the creative flow. Further dissection of the sounds. In keeping with the original intent, I’m going to limit the final production notes to a bare outline of the process that got us here and convey gratitude to those of you who followed and added to the conversation.
The first thought I had at the outset was to track a simple album with a classic trio sound. I’ve done well with that, except for the added melody line at the beginning of the first track. Then a few stray ideas took root and grew into strange mutant entities. Major revamps, rethinks and re-visions, then sounds, images and artifacts suggested ever more forms and eventually, narrative, albeit of the surreal sort. With the album itself I took a very direct and raw approach. I’ve always preferred the sound of a human being playing instruments and singing to the mad scientists creation that is the protools version of injection molded plastic. (Not to be confused with electronic music.) Vocalists don’t usually like to have anyone hear anything but the most spot on, confident performances, but I was going for a feeling and a story, and these are my sketches.
Cognitive Dissonance was a working title that became the final title, for the name fed the blossoming idea that tied the album together. A story that encompassed a vision split in four directions, a juxtaposition and melding together of the points of view of of same world/ two views, two worlds, same character observing and acting in them. The central idea is of a cognitive dissonance between first appearances and a closer look.
I recorded all the music, and then came up with the song titles. I decided the order according to how the titles felt. Then I wrote a short story starting from a cutup of the titles. I expanded that and took the lyrics from that. I think my machines freaked out and became possessed in the process. I had some radio signals coming through the guitar as I laid down the tracks, and I made liberal use of them. While I continued to track the album I released several transmissions. I thought I’d make the various stage escapes into their own entities, as opposed to a few stray mp3′s.
Unlike the album itself, I layered, layered the layers and added extra layers to boot. I tried something different in the first, and with the help of the fine folks at librivox.org, I added spoken word from readings of public domain classics. We’re hearing mostly Flaubert, Coleridge and Emily Dickinson.
Transmision II I made from the bass tracks from the album. Mostly you’re hearing one track of bass with no layers but the real-time FX, though there are a couple points where the cello creeps in. A few inexplicable voices emerged that weren’t recorded by me. If it fits as a soundtrack for your daily experience, I want to hear the story. throw these out of my head in quick bouts between working on two movies, my own moving image projects, not included, three comics, (not telling yet), and a sum total of five albums of various styles at different points of production.
Along with the sound transmissions, the lyrics were extending into stories. The lyrics to most songs I’d done so far were dreamlike fragments of one continuous tale. I wanted to bring some of the underlying structure into focus. At the same time I listened to others stories. I was especially interested to hear some apocalyptic tales. Ragnarok, Armageddon, the end of one life and the beginning of another. The death of the ego, the body, a belief. The hearing became expression, and the telling of the tale that resulted was an embodiment of experience.
Individual Files
| Movie Files | MPEG4 | Ogg Video | 512Kb MPEG4 |
| 189 MB | 183 MB | 183 MB |
Cognitive Dissonance – Prolix/Bleeding Through
Passionate corruption – the sensation conjures incinerated irregular Sentinels. Dissent to foul restriction; approach with Caution the daunting pleasing fragments of lust inspired movements into myopic creation. An icy vein of suspension moves in me. Night access hallucinations illustrate Conception as an initiative influence of grey nothing. Willful, even if idiosyncratic artifice deems otherwise, you create a counteractive complex with an artist’s passion. The extractions of magnificence Interweave and metamorphose in the isolation on the strength of opinion.
Your intercession reinforces incisive prohibitions, though you tolerate how the revealed masses of the faithful establish your manifest righteousness. All the thought of a lifetime with no conscious evolution, One cannot recall where it began to slide. Stirring the spirit, Transitional colorless and uncompromisingly intent Organizations approach Regulations designed for illumination. Don’t mention it to the whispering dead. Outside attendance is not in the soul’s possession.
We lie side by side, blowing sparks, gazing into the screaming silence. Splinter delegations to trepidation drive automatons out on masses to merit their endurance. Truth be told, trust is never to be shown. Habit takes instruction from surfeit regard gone in the rush of outworn relics collapse. Borne away on seas of sound I cry out. The bitter realization contains the happy seed: yes, me. Position exposed on a great, cold, ardent bed. You are absent from your own convictions, your state of bemusement, the suppression of blood connections to coerce compliance in advance of your loathing. Furthermore the unremarkable drones’ first abundant surge survives through weakness, as the demonstration with poisonous error anticipated your insignificant ill-use of kindness. Corrode and engulf what went before. I am beginning a new direction of outwardly flowing disdainful, sustaining wisdom. Clothed in thorns, your throat is dry.
The G-Spot Episode #4
This was another step in the creation process for Cognitive Dissonance, taking the Cognitive Dissonance Prolix posts and turning it into a series of strange dialogues. In the process I managed to take the thousands of words I’d written out and begin restructuring as verses and shorter bits.
My fine colleagues at Alterati.com let me hijack the show and with the help of James Curcio and Anna Young, what you can hear here was dramatized:
This unique episode takes you through a number of open-ended tales, told by the voices of a schizophrenic internal monologue. It can be taken as the voices in the mind of a sleeper, on the brink of sleep, or a mental patient, strapped into a bed in a moldy room in an asylum. Maybe these events happened, or have yet to happen. That’s for you to decide.
In addition to your loving host, this show features the voice acting talents of P. Emerson Williams and Anna Young, and the music includes much atmospheric material from Veil of Thorns and Ariana van Gelder.
Strap yourself in, put on the headphones, and enjoy the show.
The G-Spot Episode 4: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Cognitive Dissonance – Prolix/Corporeal
Awaken, you’re still dreaming, unformed, immaculate, sanctified with impoverished yearning. Liberate yourself from sleep into the sanctuary of our defeat. Articulate to me of lamentation. I take pleasure in the aggravation; you are confined in your responsibility now that Sanity has departed, exhausted, abstract and unintelligible. I did not survive, though I act markedly responsive. A quiet current of impressions soothe my astringent psyche on my ruptured innate humanity. Wailing by the window in the grief of the proud, dread failings wrapped around us like shrouds.
I am forewarned. Curtains part automatically as the alarm fades into the voice. The bumps have grown overnight, my eyes burn appropriately and my back can feel the effects of the concrete slab I passed out on. The silk clings uncomfortably to my skin. I have it only because I need to feel my success. I feel the heaving all through my membrane, longing for my ascent. The voice is still there, chiming with increasingly ravaged tones. That querulous reprimand ringing in the background is my happy reminder of the failure of those outside my worldview.
Compelled to rally the dying, to take hold of an experience of disconnect, you direct your fragmented, cruel intellect at the division of ages into isolated headland. Scattered throughout the wary reverse of your former stance, subordinate classes are allowed to survive as long as the workforce is needed. Plant unmoved convictions in attendance in edifices of decline continue to exist. Social formations move about to subdue distress in all deference to convention. By indeterminate providence, the surveillance division has mastered the practice of avoiding confrontation. Shudder behind your beloved audience with a display of your improbable disarming paroxysm. I embrace obscurity, disordered ride out downward. Investigate in another place in the subjugation disclosed. I envisage manifest points in time to sustain this fitful refuge.
The haints come with parched, red grins, destined, flowing; glutted. The rotting populace Illustrates rebirth in my pleasure facility, breaking off a Conflagration advanced from opening the event within the scope of reason. The thoughts drift to the surface as I shake off the dream. I shouldn’t try to tell you about it. I’m living from two perspectives at once. I’m one point of consciousness in two places. Two worlds remain separate while the actions in one shape experience in the other. The voice in this universe screams itself hoarse, haranguing the mind of the active, dynamic mind in the other one. Funny how the one that hears voices acts with gloating hubris.
I find myself lying under the highway to bring about coerced elite. You’ll see. Thrash it out amongst yourselves as you flail about in an indistinctive objective that has no emotional impact, barring the superficial ripples from a staged interface drama. Now, consider a passing look outward. Send down mutually supporting actions from your central board room. Organization evaporates progressively false conceptions to resolve into extended control. One added instance, let’s heed the worn down and pull out our ecstasy like gaping arteries.
Veil Of Thorns – Cognitive Dissonance Phase V
Here are the first embryonic early tracks interspersed with short P. Emersonite bursts for you, my darlings. Vocalists don’t usually like to have anyone hear anything but the most spot on, confident performances, but I’m going for a feeling and a story, and these are my sketches.
The mixes are my usual thick and resonating things, as they were before I sent them off to the masterful mastering of Ari. Contents need to be decanted as they may throw off a sediment….
The image is the gateway to the file, and the player below starts the stream.
Much love,
-333
http://www.archive.org/flow/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf
Artist/Composer: Veil of Thorns
Keywords: goth; experimental; Veil of Thorns; deathrock; gothic; dark; music
Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial
Individual Files
| Whole Item | Format | Size |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_64kb.m3u | 64Kbps M3U | Stream |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_64kb_mp3.zip | 64Kbps MP3 ZIP | 13 MB |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_vbr.m3u | VBR M3U | Stream |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_vbr_mp3.zip | VBR ZIP | 39 MB |
| Audio Files | 192Kbps MP3 | Ogg Vorbis | 64Kbps MP3 | VBR MP3 |
| V-CC-T-V.mp3 | 40 MB | 24 MB | 13 MB | 39 MB |
| Other Files | |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_files.xml | 3.69 KB |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_meta.xml | 2.19 KB |
| VeilofThornsVeilOfThorns-CognigtiveDissonanceV_reviews.xml | 210 B |
Cognitive Dissonance – Prolix/Sanguine
Celebrate this day our irredeemable sins. Languishing conception in the Rusting Valley lays a soul down in a Chamber of flesh warm in its decaying afterglow. Jade transmissions terminate ahead through vague horrors now behind, left to you to build upon. Manifestation Objective Soul fire kisses, a hapless passion upon the pulse of the altars of madness. Learn to love the crack of the lash. Well-matched professionals fall back and chamber the charge. Exaltation in Ascendancy Weeping alight, Drawn in too tight Warnings too late are told in our plight.
I still feel the touch of the nocturnal breeze. The uncharacteristic outcome of the passion is forsaken on favour of the masquerade and the ailing forest loses colour. Chambers full, envy and returns distorted on the sharp edge advance changes design. As all hope Crashed down, we could not help but laugh. That firestorm of dead beginnings shatters Hunger for authority, the arrest of distillation. Desire meets surrender in conduct without conclusion. As unsound processions are left in the past, never to be conjured up, misfortune stirs the spirit. Join every part of the blare of a vacant psyche Controlled by dead gratification suspension and Delusions of excitement. Nonentities call for emphatic confusion, Refusal retains security in the righteous arrangement Positioned to go further over ardour without indecision.
We seem to count on forever; one automatic pull on the lever. A resolved austerity revelation Wears away and devours our advantage. Wrapped around our epoch this moment abrades their moldering infections. Move on by in disgust, Slink through the shadows of infinitude. The lustrous suspension of fevered tactics keeps your mind on the draining laceration. We reflect the unreciprocated concern. Nothing left of restlessness, no lies. We dance victorious on our aching bloody feet. I fall and am safe. The fall eliminates the life that was. Visions shall lie, telling of the fear of death. You shall command masses in a way most Innovative without loss of perception. For all I love I give you this and am no more. Blown like glass where lunacy comforts. Laughter shall erase this carnage of thought. My Inner Sanctum In a shaded doorway Watching the spirits at play, Through a cracked and shimmering window to the world; Through my surprise, welling up in my eyes: Your soul; Bleeding, Clinging to the face of the forest, old; a deep well of love: Sepulchral, cold. Thought shall inaugurate the fall of fear. On the approach of your fame initiated onward in righteousness, your soul’s erosion winds down, pointless, expressionless and clothed in ornamentation.
Veil Of Thorns – Cognitive Dissonance Phase IV
Veil of Thorns
Cognitive Dissonance – IV – Joyous threnody
The Cellos descending into madness.
Click the picture to download.
Veil Of Thorns – Cognitive Dissonance Phase III
Cognitive Dissonance Phase III
Stream It
Further dissection of the sounds. I had some radio signals coming through the guitar as I laid down the tracks, and I’ve made liberal use of them here. Unlike the album itself, I layered, layered the layers and added extra layers to boot.
I think my machines feaked out and became possessed in the process.
Veil Of Thorns – Cognitive Dissonance Phase II
We will be bringing you works in progress from the next Veil of Thorns album “Salon Apocalypse” and mangled wrecks thereof soon. We can’t say just yet if we’ll run the full cycle of revisiting the Cognitive Dossonance sessions or if they may intersperse with the Apocalypse podcasts and sketches.
Now:
A special one for this dark and cool evening. Click the picture for to download.
I made this outta the bass tracks from the album. Mostly you’re hearing one track of bass with no layers but the real-time FX, though there are a couple points where the cello creeps in.
A few inexplicable voices emerged that weren’t recorded by me. If it fits as a soundtrack for your evening, I want to hear the story.
Veil of Thorns – Cognitive Dissonance – Transmission One
This was the point right before I was driving myself mad with lyrics. I don’t know why its such an effort with me, for I do like the process, and I used to write in great profusion.
While I was digging up the original india ink logo. (For I lost the scan I had previously during a relentless scourge of files from my hard drive). I came across these two old Veil Of Thorns gig flyers. I remember those kids who opened up for us.
And to this day, Orifice remains one of my favourite band names:
And one put together by Mr. Zewizz @ the Rat (RIP):
Mick Mercer Reviews Cognitive Dissonance
Mick Mercer Reviews Cognitive Dissonance
I have to say I’m aglow from reading this one. One sends out ones creations to be reviewed and what comes back is usually expected. Sometimes what is written is surprising, sometimes completely off the wall, to the point that you want to check and make sure you sent the right CD. But when it’s understood, whether the review is positive or not, that’s one of the greatest rewards.
VEIL OF THORNS
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
Mythos Media
Although working at another end of the noisy bastard spectrum to History Of Guns, Veil Of Thorns, and other P. Emerson Williams projects, provide the same alternative. Just when you have become used to experiencing your guitar stimulants, your ethereal relaxants, your electronic placebo, along comes Doctor Thorns, like a knight in deliberately ill-fitting armour and bellows ‘No more!’ causing all patients to fall from their beds. Where a lot of old-school Industrialists make deliberately obscure, ugly amateurish trash and new Industrialists churn out whatever club-friendly sounds they hope will land them a big record deal, there are some artists wading sternly through the same muddy waters with more artistic sensibilities. Veil Of Thorns may make threatening music but it is not without gentler asides, and often presents itself in alluring form. This is their most stylish work, but some of the thorns have an extra edge.
It’s really just down to P. Emerson Williams on virtually everything but the live drums of James Curcio, whose alarming novel I am currently reading. That’s the thing – music and other genuine influences, with P. himself a very talented artist, as I am sure many of you realise. It infuses what might be a trudging sound and throws light into murky corners. ‘Peripatetic’ has a dark rhythmical flow below a bright needling guitar and the drums stay furtive, the vocals commendably aghast, the song briskly cantering into action. It is actually hard to follow the vocal narrative but maybe that’s a good thing? ‘A Weirdness Less Expressed’ is great. If ever robots develop their own Thrash genre with a glaring sheen and viciously seedy bass pulses they will point to this song as a formative spark; more keenly urgent vocals and liquid guitar unusually catchy at times.
‘The Enigmatic Rarely Atone’ is slippier, as guitar slides away from the gleaming, undulating core. ‘Fallacy Decides Initiative’ lurches off after the seamless intro into a sighing, tumbling exercise, but ‘Delusions Of Excitement’ has low key, sweeter sounds and a dignified comeliness, deeper slopes and a playful atmospheric element. ‘Surgically Dream Like’ does what it says on the bloodbag, the cello providing a blurred setting, as though orchestral ocean liners were calling to one another, Industrial whale song!
‘Languishing In The Rusting Valley’ is not the worse holiday brochure ever, but a fractious combination of tingling guitar and grating rhythm in a plainly enjoyably melodic cacophony, as pert as the ungainly ever get. ‘Corrode And Engulf’ is deep growliness, like an ambient intestinal voyage. ‘Night Access Hallucination’ is a weird entity, being spindly, addled art-rock, with a touch of the Frank Zapata about it, with ‘Anomalous Breaks’; fun, not fearful. Austere, like monks hungover on mescaline, and then the title track itself sends you home with a cold bowl of sonic porridge.
They’re one of the few creative outlets for these more tangled sounds, and this gets the thumbs up, being a fine record, and one which some people might find easier to get into than earlier works as it’s got elements you’d recognise. Okay, you may develop extra thumbs with prolonged exposure, but what is life without risks?
http://www.veilofthorns.com
http://www.myspace.com/veilofthorns
http://joinmycult.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/choronzon333
Cognitive Dissonance Transmission IV
This
represents the final chapter and transmission of the Cognitive
Dissonance process. I thought I’d share a few bits of what I’ve been
working on lately, between things I’m bound by blood oaths not to
talk about, extensive research into rhizomatic consciousness, chaos
theory, extreme esoteric number manipulation and viral linguistics. A
ton of creative output had been gathering momentum, and dissemination
has been an afterthought, though I came to see that aspect becoming
part of the creative flow. Further dissection of the sounds. In
keeping with the original intent, I’m going to limit the final
production notes to a bare outline of the process that got us here
and convey gratitude to those of you who followed and added to the
conversation.
The
first thought I had at the outset was to track a simple album with a
classic trio sound. I’ve done well with that, except for the added
melody line at the beginning of the first track. Then a few stray
ideas took root and grew into strange mutant entities. Major revamps,
rethinks and re-visions, then sounds, images and artifacts suggested
ever more forms and eventually, narrative, albeit os the surreal
sort. With the album itself I took a very direct and raw approach.
I’ve always preferred the sound of a human being playing instruments
and singing to the mad scientists creation that is the protools
version of injection molded plastic. (Not to be confused with
electronic music.) Vocalists don’t usually like to have anyone hear
anything but the most spot on, confident performances, but I was
going for a feeling and a story, and these are my sketches.
Cognitive Dissonance was a working title that became the final title,
for the name fed the blossoming idea that tied the album together. A
story that encompassed a vision split in four directions, a
juxtaposition and melding together of the points of view of of same
world/ two views, two worlds, same character observing and acting in
them. The central idea is of a cognitive dissonance between first
appearances and a closer look.
I
recorded all the music, and then came up with the song titles. I
decided the order according to how the titles felt. Then I wrote a
short story starting from a cutup of the titles. I expanded that and
took the lyrics from that. I think my machines feaked out and became
possessed in the process. I had some radio signals coming through the
guitar as I laid down the tracks, and I made liberal use of them.
While I continued to track the album I released several
transmissions. I thought I’d make the various stage escapes into
their own entities, as opposed to a few stray mp3′s.
Unlike
the album itself, I layered, layered the layers and added extra
layers to boot. I tried something different in the first, and with
the help of the fine folks at librivox.org, I added spoken word from
readings of public domain classics. We’re hearing mostly Flaubert,
Coleridge and Emily Dickinson.
Transmision
II I made from the bass tracks from the album. Mostly you’re hearing
one track of bass with no layers but the real-time FX, though there
are a couple points where the cello creeps in. A few inexplicable
voices emerged that weren’t recorded by me. If it fits as a
soundtrack for your daily experience, I want to hear the story.
throw these out of my head in quick bouts between working on two
movies, my own moving image projects, not included, three comics,
(not telling yet), and a sum total of five albums of various styles
at diffent points of production.
Along
with the sound transmissions, the lyrics were extending into stories.
The lyrics to most songs I’d done so far were dreamlike fragments of
one continuous tale. I wanted to bring some of the underlying
structure into focus. At the same time I listened to others stories.
I was especially interested to hear some apocalyptic tales. Ragnarok,
Armageddon, the end of one life and the beginning of another. The
death of the ego, the body, a belief. The hearing became expression,
and the telling of the tale that resulted was an embodiment of
experience.
Veil of thorns is an act that rarely repeats itself, but with Cognitive Dissonance, they may surprise even some long time fans. Veil of Thorns approach has
never been this stripped down, nor has their music been more complex. Stark, angular post-punk songs give way to a cello as it descends into madness. Spare
jazz-inflected tone poems lead back into sanguine deathrock dust storms.
For nearly a decade now, most of the work of front man P. Emerson Williams has been focused inward. Dissemination of his wide, varied
output took place through tales whispered in corners remote from. This conversation is part of the creative flow that forms his work.
Williams tackled the latest Veil of Thorns release by sharing the process in a new way. After having tracked the basic instrumental elements
of the next Veil Of Thorns album, “Cognitive Dissonance”, Veil of Thorns released podcasts created from the sonic raw material of the tracks as they
progressed. Through the bands website, blog comments and emails the resulting conversation helped expand the bands vision while focusing the tale being
told.
Inspired by scrambled radio signals coming through the
guitar as he laid down the tracks, Williams created long form compositions using montage techniques derived from the work of Williams Burroughs and Bryon
Gysin. Unlike the album itself, he layered, layered the layers and added extra layers to boot. His machines freaked out and became possessed in the process.
Where podcasts are often in a format similar to radio shows, Veil of Thorns ranks among a select group of sound and video artists who are stretching the
boundaries of the form into unique works of art.
fragments making one continuous tale. Cognitive Dissonance brings some of the underlying structure into focus. While they wove their tale they listened to
the stories of others. In the spirit of our times they collected many apocalyptic tales. Ragnarok, Armageddon, the end of one life and the beginning of
another forms one side of this archetypical narrative. Tales of the death of the ego, of the body, the breaking down of a belief offer a more insightful
view.
Coming off collaborations with Industrial cabal subQtaneous and Norwegian post Blackmetal band Manes, Williams
took the experience of working with such gifted and unique artists and has re-emerged with a stronger and darker vision. Lyrically encompassing two universes
and two realities, this tight and spare album ends up being more expansive an experience than anything Veil of Thorns has released before.
Agape,
-333
CHORONZON
Incunabula Papers – Ong's Hat
PANICMACHINE
Veil Of Thorns
