Last year I wrote an essay for my course at Uni where I argued that the music video as a medium was dead on its feet. It was over. Done. Nobody paid attention to them anymore, they’d lost their power in attracting audiences, no label was prepared to put money into them, that they were surface-level tedium, and that they were obsolete as a promotional tool. In many cases I still maintain that these aspects are true; old ideas are recycled constantly and cheap performance videos multiply overnight. But I think I’ve changed my mind since then. I now believe that the music video is re-emerging.
After a decade of new internet services siphoning off the music video’s previous purpose, to expose and promote the band visually and to develop a band image they are able to sell, broadly the music video is still filled with the same old content, but the bands and their management are using them differently. Instead of drumming up hype before a release they are now utilising them as a means of remaining in their audiences’ consciousness. In an environment where there are hundreds of bands, nigh thousands domestic and internationally, vying for media attention, the videos have transformed from ‘ooh we have a new release check us out’ to ‘we’re here, we’re here, we exist!’. And so if a band receives any sort of attention it’s integral that they remain in the news in any way they can, and a music video serves that purpose. As Marshall McLuhan said, ‘the medium is the message’.
I don't think I can emphasize enough about how much I love the work of Italian screen printers extraordinaire Malleus. I narrowed down their portfolio just to focus on the posters they produced for the Roadburn festival back in 2009 and it is these works which first gained my attention of the art collective.
In my eyes I can see Alphonse Mucha's overt influence in all aspects, the consistent feature of semi-naked women, the explosive colours and the poster medium Mucha too favoured. It's also in the grace and beauty of the women and the subtle combination of the colours, though Mucha preferred earthier tones Malleus go psychedelic and burst with powerful, flourishing colour which is marvellous.
I totally recommend you to go check out more of their work at their cool website HERE
On top of their awesome art, some members of the Malleus collective are also in the drone/doom band Ufomammut, see a cool photo I took of them live here, they are psychedelic and heavy and worth your time.
Chapter I – A Thread 01. Nothing (We Are…) 02. The Heart Of Every Country 03. Get Down And Live With It 04. (In The Yonder Marsh) 05. A Letter Concerning Dogheads Chapter II – The Trap 06. Laying Traps 07. Born In A Hurricane 08. Release The Clowns 09. (What?)
CD2: Chapter III – The Blues Of Man 01. A Suggestion (Not A Very Nice One) 02. (Dig, Bury, Deny) 03. Operation Mincemeat 04. We Will Never Get Out This World Alive 05. Faced With Complete Failure, Utter Defiance Is The Only Response
‘Craft’ is one of my favourite words in the dictionary (my most favourite being ’clavicle’, it has such sweet phonetics). It denotes as skilfully producing something by hand, and it is this ‘by hand’ bit which I wholly endorse. ‘By hand’ leads to something unique, something which has been imbued with its creator’s personality and skill. However, ‘Craft’ can also mean deviousness and trickery in an archaic form, and I believe it is this denotation Crippled Black Phoenix had in mind with the name of their latest record, especially when they still consider us all as those primordial apes.
On paper, and by right, Crippled Black Phoenix should be a crushing doom super group, with ex-Electric Wizard, ex-Iron Monkey, ex-Gonga and ex-Teeth of Lions Rule The Divine members; you wouldn’t have expected then that they undertake an expansive Pink Floydian approach to progressive rock. Yet, within the lush psychedelic soundscapes and handsome guitars and thumping rhythms they have that element of deviousness, that feeling of a pretty mask hiding the ugliness beneath, which lends a cliff-edge to this warm flowery meadow.
The comic-esque record artwork is interesting to interpret. The wolf face echoes the same one that appeared on 2010’s I, Vigilante and is now attached to a human body, and though it is snarling and looking fierce it’s running away. In fear, perhaps. Maybe there’s something worse than a wolf-headed man, something scarier?
I keep returning to Crippled Black Phoenix as, beside Colour Haze, I believe they are the classiest band operating today. Their I, Vigilante record was stunning, it was a descent, that weary journey from the zenith, and it reminded me of coming home from a long walk. No fanfare or crescendo, no blaze of fire but embers that smouldered in the dark and cast red across the floor.
I have found The Crafty Ape to have a much fuller and rounder sound than I, Vigilante, which was a more straightforward guitar record, now there are horns, organs, strings, choirs in places, female vocals stand out a bit more and the piano is beautifully played. It is this melding of orchestral sounds into a strong, cohesive stream or soundscape that, with recent forecasts in mind, makes me think of the weather and it’s forgotten splendour. All the elements have to be perfect, the temperature, wind, pressure, humidity, cloud cover, geography and only when they are all perfect does this pure, unique, white snow fall with it’s perennial aching beauty. Yet, of course, some sit in awe of the snow’s majesty whereas others stare in tragedy and it is this bi-polar beauty of snow that encapsulates The Crafty Ape for me. It is beautiful and psychedelic but also mournful and dark.
It isn’t all frosty, as there are sunbursts seen at the powerful end of ‘A Letter Concerning Dogheads’ and the visceral rhythm of ’Laying Traps’, but the British-instilled misanthropy and famous misery reflects most from this record. I care a great deal for Crippled Black Phoenix, their records are always stirring and The Crafty Ape is a continuation of their triumph.
Alice Duke has been one of those where I knew her work before I knew her. Her illustration work is fascinating, it deals in folklore and nature and human curiosity using engrossing detail and warm earthy colour. I enjoy her work, I love the mythical creatures and the transformation of the known to the unknown, especially with Exploding Shed at the bottom there, yet overall I can't help but find her work terrifying.
It truly is scary. How many heads does that scaly, hairy, feathered, winged, tangle of serpents need? And how much is the print because I want one!
Not gonna lie, this is just an experiment to see whether I can embed Bandcamp players. And it turns out it does work. Good times. And so I thought what better an opportunity than now to introduce you to the fantastic Drone band Horseback.
Horseback's type of drone is not the churning hatred spewed forth by Sunn o))) but it's misty and shimmers and dances. In some cases it's pretty. But a lot of the time it's huge and grinding like huge ice bergs breaking off the shelf.
This record needs to be listened to under the night sky; my eyes are drawn to finding the Hunter that has stood poised for a millennia or two. A sword raised and a bow drawn. An image drawn with stars captures rather elegantly the scope of Mastodon’s latest release The Hunter. Mastodon had explored flight and wide expanses of the sky with Crack The Skye, now on The Hunter they’ve strapped themselves on to a rocket and are falling through space with style.
Giant Squid’s music is as strange and rare and phenomenal as their namesake. Their works are subtle and nuanced, a delicate orchestration of oceanic sounds dancing lithely with the guitar’s heavy-handed jig. The band’s ecological philosophy deserts their urban surroundings of hometown Sacramento, California, you’ll be more likely to find them roaming a nature reserve or peering into rock pools by the sea.
It is that natural curiosity that shines through their body of work, most noticeably on 2009’s full length The Ichthyologist, where multiple guests leant their instrumentation to Giant Squid’s complex orchestration. Flutes, banjos, violins, cellos, trumpets, oboes, all additions that were explored to their limits and bent to main songwriter Aaron Gregory’s will. The Ichthyologist got them signed; it was that good.
Now Giant Squid return with the EP Cenotes (suh-noh-tees), a comparatively simpler record, the grandiose composition stripped away and no guests are involved. This is Giant Squid spouting their own black and inky concoctions.
‘Aion of Drakon’
Saturnalia Temple
[AJNA Offensive]
Have you ever had that dream where it’s really urgent and really important to get somewhere but things are holding you back? Cobwebs, mud, vines, family members, waves crashing down on you; you spend your strength fighting off and fighting through to get to do this really important thing. Desperation sets in and you feel hopelessly lost, the ground elevates around you and then you fall. Then there’s that stomach plunge feeling when you wake up and you literally jerk awake in the smallest moment of absolute terror.
Saturnalia Temple is the deluge of mud that surrounds your knees and forces you into a crawl. They tap that desperation and play on your astral paranoia, they channel the occult and raise their altars and pillars and summon the beasts in the forests. They tether you down, they plunge their knife, then you wake in terror.
I'm always astounded when I return to this often forgotten, tiring little corner of the Internet that I call mine. It sits ticking away gaining a frankly unbelievable amount of pageviews that are wholly undeserved. Since (((Hyperpower)))'s carnation there's been over 14,000 visits of which I am wholly thankful for each every one. I hope, like I keep on promising, to fill these pages with more content over the next year, there'll be more art, music and I will probably be using this space as a gathering place of all of my writing that is published on other sites.
But, that's saying and not doing so I'll leave you with a cool tune off a cool record.
Chelsea Wolfe - 'Pale On Pale' off the record Apokalypsis
Quayola is a visual artist who experiments with video, photography, design and live performance mediums and I find some of his works to be stunning. An emphasis on some mind. A good example is his project 'Partitura', a video of which you can see above.
Partitura is a custom software to generate realtime graphics aimed at visualising sound. The term “Partitura” (score) implies a connection with music, and this metaphor is the main focus of the project. Partitura aims to create a new system for translating sound into visual forms.
I do find this to be incredible, and something I want immediately. We have all experienced the crappy visualisers of audio on our media players and I for one can see no correlation of what is projected visually in relation to whatever I play. It doesn't actually transform the audio, there is no visual actualisation. What is cool is Quayola has seemed to have created something that does generate the audio into something visual.
I always imagine a film that is imbued by music, I always feel music has a story to tell. Sometimes the film isn't always a narrative, sometimes it is just shapes and colour and abstract form, a good example of this is Electric Wizard's 2010 record 'Black Masses' which in my head is a giant black ball of sludge.
I like this a lot, I would buy the 'Partitura' software if I could. I've already watched that video three times.
Hit up Quayola's website to read up on his works, they are very interesting: here
This music is the blackness that is depicted in it's record art. The thick, sludge-like blackness which sticks to you and burns you. This music is dearth and fire, emaciation and immolation.
Around here are the borderlands; bleak, barren and bitter.
This is Sunn o))) and the time is 23:49, I am at home, in my room, at my desk. Safe.
Ulver's 'Shadow of the Sun' is one of the most stunning records I've ever listened to. It is so achingly melancholic, gorgeously warm and just beguilingly simple! Nothing here is conventional yet nothing here is out of place. As a vocal performance, Kristoffer 'Garm' Rygg is probably the hands down best at making grown metalheads weep with joy.
So it is perfect for midnight listenings! The above track is a cover of Black Sabbath's Solitude, but not in the way we're used to it. It is painfully beautiful, so try it out.
You can hit up the rest of the record on Youtube, or if you know how to fiddle with .rar files, well you know where to find them: here.
A note on the record art: It is simple but has powerful elements at work, showing two works of nature coincidentally forming a frame and an image.
In recent years I made the mistake of not really recognising the beautiful weather we get in Spring, expecting it ten-fold in the Summer, when in reality each Summer has been rather dour. So this year I'm not going to be fooled thrice.
We all have our favourite Summer music; music which I feel epitomises the essence of what Summer is all about. Trips to the beach, hot weather with the sun beating down, a more general laid-back approach to damn near everything, shorts, sandals and sunglasses. What's more, I think music is more pronounced in the daily routine, thus why we have favourite Summer music.
Colour Haze are a desert rock band hailing from Germany who I feel capture this hypnotic daze our general state of mind is in during the Summer. They capture the mirage in the desert and they capture the soft warm glow of the sunset.
Enjoy the above track 'Mind' from their 2006 record 'Tempel' [Elektrohasch Records]....
