A huge thanks to those of you who have downloaded this album and sahred it with fiends & foes. We’re proud to find that as of this week, more than 6,000 of you have downloaded it. (Not counting the music blogs and Russian file sharing sites. They use their own uploads and we have no way of knowing how many downloads, or even how many sites are hosting this release by now.)
NOISE COVERED WORSHIP
INCREASINGLY BIZARRE POLITICAL THREAT RITES
PROCESS PRODUCT PROPOSITION
DE LEGE MOTUS
CREATOR-GOVERNMENT-CREATOR
A CRAVEN SLAVE DESIGN
SACRED THOUGHT OBSTACLES
DISSOCIATIVE MODIFICATIONS
ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENA
GRAVE PECULIARITY RECEIVED
APPARITIONS OF ART
PROGRAMMERS BELOW SIGHTS OF THE OPERATIONAL SECRET
VAMPIRE WARS
A NON-EUCLIDEAN FUTURE
Dj Vrhovny gathers an august assembly of sonic wizards to tune into the future to translate their visions into electronic tone poems.
Intro
Blinded – The Blood Of Heroes
Wrowd – Sielwolf
Flick – Scorn
Vanquished & Destroyed – PaPERHOUsE
Mind Control (Peeling The Layers) – Choronzon
Wounds Against Wounds – The Blood Of Heroes
I Cannot Do That – Bluebob
Omerta – Chemical Plant
Darkfall – Sielwolf
As Good As It Gets – Circus Boltini
Outro
HTRK’s Ghostly International debut Work (work, work) is a flat-lined study of desire and submission, sentimentality and dysphoria. The London by way of Berlin and Melbourne art-rock duo (pronounced “Hate Rock”) finished the album’s production while grieving the sudden loss of founding member and bassist Sean Stewart to suicide in March ‘10. And while that tragedy has certainly found its way into the music’s bottomless sonic void, Work (work, work), written from 2006-10 in Berlin and London, is about much more than abject darkness. Much, much more.
On Work (work, work), HTRK craft a stark soundscape: achingly slow 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, vaporous guitar noise, and Jonnine Standish’s androgynous, detached vocals, dripping with reverb. And yet it’s the careful way the pair combine those elements—organizing and juxtaposing them with a minimalist’s attention to detail—that makes their music so emotionally devastating. “Ice Eyes Eis” starts things off by enveloping you in a slippery erotic zone, in which a German sex TV babe splays herself over a molasses-slow beat and clouds of dry-ice atmosphere. The creeping “Eat Yr Heart” embodies HTRK’s touch with sonic unease, showcasing a high-pitched horror-movie synth obligato that flits like a swarm of bats around Standish’s declarations of longing (“glucose, cellulose, saccharine”/ “you fill me up then make me starve, eat yr heart”). Late-album highlight “Love Triangle” takes a more sensuous tone, describing a perfect three-person encounter (“he on she on me / she on me on he / bermuda bermuda bermuda”) over textured guitar swirls and a languorous drum-machine march.
The first rough mix of the next Veil of Thorns album. All instrumental but for one bit. You’ll find as I post developments that this will mutate greatly over time as I turn these ideas into an organic whole.
A bit more philosophizing shall no doubt ensue, with some conversion with you I hope. Some collaborators will be announced anon.
Click to Play The figure with the ugly shirt and big ears (you do love the mirrorkaleidoscopics) is Joe Six Pack and also every wino that nips at my heels and slobbers at me. I cannot believe how ugly he is. He is the bastard son of Wal-Mart and Choice Point. Anti-Choronzon, face of the Duh Beast. Death by marriage. Marriage by death. The kitchen floor and the ovens, oven cleaner fumes, clean as a whistle, she lies there under the faucet.
The serpent is escaping or about to, but the doors close too fast and it slides into itself…the end, the end, end, end, the one with no beginning or middle.
Michelle Remembers chronicles Pazder’s therapy in the late 1970s with his long-time patient Michelle Smith. Smith allegedly recovered memories of Satanic ritual abuse that occurred when she was a child in the 1950s at the hands of her mother (Virginia Proby) and others in Victoria, British Columbia. Among other things, Smith recovered memories of being placed with a corpse in a car that was then deliberately crashed near the Malahat highway, being kept locked in a cage with snakes without sleep or sustenance for weeks, being forced to ingest poison and other noxious substances, and taking part in bizarre ceremonies in a round room and at the Ross Bay Cemetery (e.g.: being placed in an open grave and having dead cats thrown on her). The book reaches its climax with the details of how in the fall of 1955, Satan himself appeared at an 81-day non-stop ceremony (allegedly involving hundreds of participants) attempting to claim Smith as his own, only to be opposed by Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the archangel Michael. The book concludes with Smith, having been saved by the Virgin Mary and Jesus, awakening to find she had no memory of the abuse that had occurred and to find her parents telling her that she was recovering from the measles.
Pazder’s therapy and treatment for Smith’s alleged experiences included hypnotism, exorcism, and conversion to Catholicism. During this time (the late 1970s), Smith was named as the co-respondent (the “other woman”) in Pazder’s divorce. Pazder and Smith later married (she had been married to Doug Smith during the therapy).
Pazder died suddenly and unexpectedly in his home in March of 2004 of a heart attack. Smith still lives in Victoria. Michelle Remembers is out-of-print as of 2006.
// About Newtopia: a definition n – a cultural review that examines how our politics and policies are reflected in our arts, government, and humanities. v – an experimental form of thought mutation and cross-breeding, providing a unconventional forum for a range of detailed and informed socio-political opinion and analysis. adj – words or ideas used for the development of new possibilities, theories, and solutions for a better world. Often confused with the word idealistic.