On this track I vocalise some of my poem ‘Above Snakes’ [I did it all but sometimes it became silent for other sounds, so the poem is there silently].
The poem speaks of being hanged and how that experience compares to life and existence – and how, at the moments of brutal hanged death – each microsecond is hung out and seems an aeon.
This is what the Hanged God asks us to contemplate in our daily meditation upon his Rune. It is also analogous to making sounds, particularly on the sky guitar.
Damn, Bill. This just "accidentally", linked to someone else's music. The first half second took me aback and lit me up, in the second half second I knew it was you. What higher compliment?
: I don't know who should be more complimented, man - me you or that someone else! But my sounds disown me as soon as they're out there!
One damn bold player and diviner...and obviously sensitive too!
:
Ahhhh Boethius Excellence! Thanks for this !
That exact weeping, tears into glorious shreds!
That 4 pick up guitar is very sensitive to the touch
The slow rhythm works well with the various guitar lines flying in and out giving a David Lynch type musical theme.
Another Floydian thing with slow beat, which is reiterated more recently in Stoner, Doom etc., - it's about getting close to the pumping of the blood around the body, and wanting bring that pulse down, slow it down [not hype it up with white powder punk]. How in meditation the pulse rate slows ... and how one might face death in that way. And how when in close to death experience every microsecond is eked out - a survival mechanism - but imagine living that all the time. To see a world in a grain of sand, and so forth. So altering perception, of course. And then in the clean clustered guitar lines, I tried to get them to swing in contrast to the 4 on the floor primal beat and fuzz bass growl. That was the main experiment, that contrast. I take Lynch as being cinematic surreal, so yes, certainly.
: I meant Angelo Badalamenti, who is Lynch's composer in residence, but the surreal aspect is apt.
First impressions are of a Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. This is quite a soundscape with lots of interesting things to listen to.
I do like that era of Floyd - Syd had listened to Keith Rowe of AMM and had applied some of that to Acid Rock; kind of where I'm at.
Posted 3 months ago3 months rfurtkamp says at 8:59:Feels like Marley's ghost in "A Christmas Carol" walks into a jazz lounge.
: as incongruous as it gets
Love the dancing high notes, they really make the revolution work.
: Yeah - Les Paul neck pup - treble rolled right off. In post production I coloured the patterns with phase or cocked wh depending - not to get those effects, but just to break up the sound, give it slightly more texture, but not ovetly
The blocks crumble, it's a 70s Kool Aid Man harmonizer busting through the walls!
i like the poem, and the music certainly serves it.
: I jotted all these verses down in a notebook a couple of years ago when I was trying to imagine the experience of dying by hanging by the neck. I read it yesterday and thought it had something in common with this track, so I recited the poem [actually a collection of verses] over the track. I certainly belive the words and sounds are connected - indeed, the words were waiting for these sounds.
: They were darkly imaginative verses, well imagined.
almost sounds like a Rhodes
: yeah - the Les Paul in jazz mode - it was Furtkamp who pointed out hos the Paul can do a very straight jazz tone - I had noticed it instantly when I played one. Must be to do with the construction, carved top or whatever
will these notes sustain forever?
: That's my new Epiphone Les Paul - I am a new convert to the Les Paul - you can't get that kind upstanding sustain on any other guitar - any other guitar will sustain on a downward curve somehow - which can sound great too, but you need to coax it out. The Paul wants to sustain - thinking of Nigel Tufnell in Spinal Tap - with his flame top Les Paul : "listen to that sustain!"
: Yep, it gets silly, you can eat a sandwich literally most of the time
it's all going down the drain, to an unthinkable place
: production secret - the whole track is slightly slowing down the whole time from start to finish! It is not obvious, but your subconscious can hear it - you midbrain knows this death in sound
some of these guitars are so very vocal... but not human
- that bit with the whammy bar is the 4 pick up Jag type Revelation guitar on the track which I bought a couple of weeks ago - 4 pick ups and varitone switch allows you to quickly get tones. I don't use a pick as I am changing the switches in the middle of playing and also have my hand on the whammy the whole time. It begins to express the machine. I think it was Scruton who said an electric guitar sounds like a machine singing
:
that riff is certainly whipping those silver fish around
: Teach those pesky blighters for nibbling at my intro! This 5 string bass just goes lower and lower!
lyrics
Above Snakes
Strung out
Grip the taut twanging, line.
A rod scythes skies
Plunging perspective
Alone, above, below.
Hover like a bee,
Blindly buzzing around
In haphazard fits
Maddening.
The trapeze, concentrated,
Elemental
In pure air,
The stretched rope,
The hanged man.
Writhing tree
Coffin-spider
Conveyor-belt
Quiver.
All falls back
Through the Earth
To the bottom
Endlessly.
Layer upon layer,
No finality
Dropping trap-door hatch
Sewer
Hole
Bird bone-yard.
Dust
Dead skin
Life’s eternal flux
Downward fleeing
Continual decline
Shudder the rope
Legs kicking
Noose throttling
Purple-tongue
Final evacuation of
Spirit surrender.
The drop
Pierrpoint’s shilling
Total condemnation.
This life is punishment
Enough
Wronged, wrung-out
Fool’s errand.
Past resurges, backs-up,
Ebbing basin
Vomit-spiced nostrils
Quick-sinking
Slow death.
Breaking off the noses
Iconoclasts
He hit every ledge on his way down
Chipped away
Worn away by the rain
Attrition.
Make a bomb
Look what they done
It's only atoms
Rearranging
Order is only a tidier
Form of chaos
Burned bridges
Void
Ovid’s dove descended
Delenda
Devastation
Devoid of recognisable features
Footless, unable to
Land
Landless in flight
Fleet unable to dock
Prison ship pallor.
Siege mentality
Hovering in limbo
Cosmo naught
The umbilical cord
Un-severed
Without gravity
Nor ground,
Void
Silence
Wistful whisper of wisdom on the silent wind
Shh- peaceful
Pray like you don’t know how to pray
Pray quickly
Silently
Golden silence
Sniff, snort, creep around
Without a sound
Pin-drop
Library shuffle,
Wall of silence.
They know each other so well they don’t speak
He communicates by smiles and grins
She glares in return.
Vision is my wisdom
Looking and learning
Gazing and yearning
Eyes tightly shut as colours explode
Behind my lids.
I hear your voice in my head
Dolor
Life’s funeral
Sadness
Snuffle, snuffle
Enough said.
Thus unspake
Tied his tongue
His rude ruddy
Tongue
Lolled.
[poem by Bill Boethius]
credits
from Dark Engines,
released December 17, 2016
The sky guitars used here were an Epiphone Les Paul for all the crunchy riffs, reverbed leads and some of the wails along with the Ibanez GAX. The cleaner jazzy patterns were also the Les Paul [it’s a versatile beast, as Furtkamp would say]. The whammy bar stuff was a new four pick up Jaguar/Jazzmaster type guitar I just got from Revelation [on cover pic]. That is what is known in the biz as a ‘tone monster’! The bass is my trusty 5 string Crafter. I dedicate the bass riffs on this to Solar Maximum as they are in their ballpark.
