My second collab. with Hot Os who always puts up so many atmospheric and suggestive sounds.
Here I improvised guitar, bass and vocals over parts of three of his tracks:Hotos – A-new-dawn-awakens; Hotos – Ground-controll; Hotos – Shadow.
Guitars used were my cheap Yamaha ERG1 for the lead lines; the metal sounding guitars were my Dean ML. Any jazzy noodling was done on my Indie semi-acoustic with P90s. The bass was my Squier Jazz bass.
'Spikenard' - the word got into the poem through word association and a dim Biblical recall. It was a very precious ointment that was used at one time to anoint the feet of Jesus.
The lyrics are from a poem I had written when I couldn’t sleep.
I can sleep now.
love the words here and the imagery they conjure.
The words are in a notebook I kept when I was going through a tough period ... yeah, yeah ... I scrawled down quite a few poems then. I can only use them now because there is enough distance - time - between then and now ... I wrote them for now - futurity
Haha, so freaky! I love it, like some sort of demented dream.
As the words say, 'walk upon nightmares' - when I wrote the words being awake was a nightmare, and yet I couldn't sleep! I was kind of demented then, too .. 'then'?
Definitely works, sir. Whatever you did, a good cap to this morning!
There's a strange mid 70s Jethro Tull meets Sun Ra going on, I do not think it is wrong!
I'm glad you think it strange!
Rock on, sir. let that fade!
And that is a long fade - you heard it straight off
You had me at the near singing bowl,.
! Ring Mod and pitch shifter approximating singing bowls!
: Makes sense to me, I've gotten in the ballpark more than once but never chased the bowl that way!
I'm not even sure where that repeated bit came from at that point - I love those kinds of accidents in sound - keep it in!
it's that bit of dada which makes things move I guess
Great drums on here, really adds a different dimension in this sea of strangeness! Fantastic work as always Bill L)
Thanks, much appreciated - the drums are Hot Os - his sounds are so different to mine that the combination makes for even stranger outcomes!
Exactly, in yet the meld so wonderfully!
drums in orbit.... fun to listen to w/ headphones!
I defintely make my tracks for headphone listening - the drums there are Hot Os'
Yes!! Love hearing your voice on this Bill!
Took it down a few semitones there!
we welcome a new element
I feel my own American Prayer coming on ...
:
yes. so much of what you do/are comes together here.
: plucking, poetry [this must always be spoken - like Jim] and painting ... oh, and philosophising ... yeah, they're all different facets of the same thing
would this be your voice?
It is moi! I have long been a declaimer poetry, so I thought I might get away with spoken vocals
opening is equal to the title, no small feat.
That's mainly the Indie semi through a bass amp with ring mod - sounds a bit like a - yes, spikey, - electric piano - I then [rather audibly] turn off the ring mod for some mellower noodling
lyrics
Sleep on spikes of Unicorns!
There is a knot in the wood,
Like an eye, an eye of a whale,
Or an old man,
Or Odin’s eye.
Plucked out and thrust
In the side of the tree of wisdom,
Yggdrasil
Unicorn,
Your shaft, your mind-shaft, sharp,
Spears mine eye,
Gouges into its iris,
Spurting the blood of poetry,
It trickles down and waters the ground.
And all kinds of flowers and plants
Upspring: toadstools, devil’s mushrooms,
Nightshade, worms, snakes and
Reptiles, squelching on the sod,
Walk upon nightmares,
Sleep on spikes of unicorns!
Spikenard!
[Lyrics by Bill Boethius]
credits
from Unsound Experiments in Sound,
released October 16, 2016
Bill Boethius: vocals, guitars, bass
Hot Os: beats, beds, synths
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