This evening traces a line from the Delta-blues of the 30s, to the psychedelic improvisations and the minimal music of the 60s, prog-rock and apocalyptic folk, to the cathartic sound storm of drone doom.
Here, dark realism is paired with refined imagination, romanticism of nature with occult esoteric, individualistic ethos with the search for transcendence and the sublime. Spanned both musically and spiritually between animism, the black magic of the Middle Ages, Christian mysticism, age-old folk songs, the dandyism of the Fin de Siècle, Robert Johnson’s "Devil Blues", the down-tuned riffs of Black Sabbath, Venom’s satanic spectacles, the radical paganism of Norwegian black metal, free jazz, John Fahey’s American Primitivism, Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising, the transcendent drones of a La Monte Young, the psychedelics of Velvet Underground, the dark spirituality of Current 93, black americana, the ritualistic improvisations of weird folk and the sub-sonic excesses of drone doom, is a vast and difficult to measure network of affiliations, alliances and inspirations.
The blues-drone of Lichens, created with acoustic guitar and voice, evoke the floating transcendence of unreal beauty. Like Attila Csihar’s tormented and demonic sounding alienations of voice, they seem to sound out from the unearthly beyond of a spiritualistic séance.
Monno, with their ethereal drones, cold doom-riffs and poisonous black metal blast-beats, create a dark undertow between nightmarish paranoia and mysterious transcendence.
In unbridled improvisations, Æthenor, the drone-folk super group made up of members from Guapo, Shora, Sunn O))) and – specially for this appearance – Norwegian cult band Ulver, pursue a cosmic alchemy of sound: nebulous, psychotic amorphousness, abstract rhythms, heavy drones, polyphone melodies and pulsating noise merge into a dark, occult sound ritual.
The pieces by the prog-doom-metalheads Asva, which were written specifically for this appearance, can hardly be surpassed in brachial violence of sound and monumental density. Their song-writing, inspired by the horror scenarios of global climate change, threatening destruction of the environment and wars likely to be fought over increasingly scarce resources, unleashes an fathomless maelstrom in which premonitions of imminent apocalypse wrestle with hopes for radical social transformation.
Produced in collaboration with Exile on Mainstream and Conspiracy.
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