This experiment in dark textures was inspired by one of my favourite of Byron's pieces, his blank verse poem called ‘Darkness’ [1816, which has therefore just turned 200!]
For the sounds, I used a variety of guitars, basses, and a drum machine. It was in the mixing and mastering that the main shadings and transformations were done, to create a kind of aural monochrome.
And the march to hell begins.
: I had been in the house of death hours before ... I screwed all the sounds down.
: I have an instrumental versions where the sounds are not so compressed and pulverised ... that may yet see the light of day
Sometimes the wisest choice, as spirits do love to move things around!
Going to all the right places!
The headless one leads the throng, swaying
Almost becomes a thing akin to reading Joyce aloud with all that treatment.
Yes, the sibilant stuttering Celtisms, the nonsense syllables. the glossolalia
very effective use of this voice
: the voice is the most mysterious of instruments.
oh, that sawing!
: string scraping with a metal pick on my Tokai Tele
there is something righteously 70's in that solo guitar passage
: Thanks - my favourite tones are between 1966 and 1975! Mind you, this was done with an instrument not available in those days - my trusty headless guitar. The EMG pick ups and Steinberger trem get this 70s sound dead on.
: It is very interesting to me, how we can use gear that was unavailable at a given point in time, and still arrive at the sounds common to that time. Once it's in you, it's in you.
: It also helps to have a reactionary intolerance towards all modern sounds! {just joking ... a bit]. But yeah, I only noticed that paradox when I went to reply, thinking - hang on, you can't get more non-70s than a headless guitar. But it's the only guitar that does that metallic delayed sound total justice. There is also the thing of making sounds *now* which are more 70s than the 70s sounds that inspired them.
Whenever I hear "headless guitar", I think of the Invocation of the Borness (originally Headless) One, but my brain goes strange at times. Brains should go there ... why did I not think of that ... mundanely thinking only of a guitar without a headstock when I know, or should know, that a guitar is also a wand .. at the very least ... I had to look up your reference ...." -The Bornless Ritual, also known as the Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia, or the Invocation of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, is often considered the proper preliminary invocation to the Ars Goetia since it was introduced as such by Aleister Crowley. Originally, grimoire magick did not include this particular ritual but routinely advised the magician (or "exorcist") to have a close bond to the heavenly powers before he meddle with demons (e.g. the Book of Abramelin, the Keys of Solomon, etc.). As Stephen Skinner says, "The Bornless One" is nowhere mentioned, for instance, in his recent translation of the Goetia of Dr. Rudd, as the ritual is of Greco/Egyptian origin"
Yea, I've used the Bornless/Headless to great effect outside of that context - it's a centering thing with a lot of usage outside the modern pseudo-Goetia..
no smiles from that bass :) but one from me
an atmospheric mean machinery
I ground the sounds down ... grinded them ... like a heeled boot into desert sand .... all was dry stench and burnt umber ... and rusted iron
lyrics
Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;--a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful--was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expir'd before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.
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