Showing posts with label cutups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cutups. Show all posts

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Veil of Thorns History: BIRTHED (2002)



Throughout the -90's we were gigging a lot with a few revolving s-pots in the lineup, Veil of Thorns remained a band focused on playing live. In the period between -94 and -98 we wrwe gigging and rehearsing so much, it ended up cutting into the writing and recording. Contrast that with the output in the last decade - six full albums, a string of silent film scores and about a dozen compilatioin tracks vs. four cassette demos, three of which were widely released, five compilation tracks and one 7" in the 1990's with some overlap of cuts from recording to recording. If I had been more forward thinking, I would have had these shows recorded in audio and video. Many of the gigs included guest players and extensive improvisation. We have put out the call several times for footage around Boston, New York or New Orleans from that time. There were dozens of gigs caught on video, but none of this footage has as yet surfaced...


We were slated to release our debut CD through Misanthropy Records by the end of this period, but was not to happen as Tiziana, head of Misanthropy decided to close the label. What ended up as Cafe Flesh and The Dead God Sessions (tracks not on Cafe Flesh were later released as part of Dead God) demos done for the label for this album. There are more than a hundred hours of material not included in those releases I have on DAT tape, some of which that may see the light of day at some point.

In 1997 I signed with Nocturnal Art Productions and released the first Choronzon album in 1998. This brought much more attention than Veil of Thorns ever got, and I focused on that for a bit. I recorded the Choronzon albums Lilith, Era Vulgaris and Larvae in 1989/1999, after which I dropped out of all normal society for a few years following.



Basically I went into the woods and was deep in the grip of the Gwyllt. By the time I re-emerged, I was psychically stripped down to nearly nothing. There's a world of difference between the work prior to and following this time. Musical habits and even my usual instruments were largely abandoned for the Birthed recording sessions. My methods continue to evolve from what I established with Birthed to this day.

For the first time, new technology meant I could use the cutup method simply with sound, and spot new patterns and create arrangements from them. More subconscious currents bubble forth on Salon Apocalypse and Necrofuturist, perhaps, but the danciness of the tracks on Birthed was a celebration of rebirth.
Within the tracks on "Birthed", a CD by Veil Of Thorns, you can hear parallels to industrial bands such as Pig, Razed in Black and Nine Inch Nails and, more often than not, you can hear the pure creativity of P. Emerson Williams. Anything created by this man, the brain behind Choronzon (black metal tinged with experimental, ambient and industrial edges) , you would expect to be eclectic and creative. It's his trademark. Herein you'll encounter thick, pummeling, distorted spears of electro/guitar industrial, D&B, goth, dirgey slow industrial moodiness, etc., etc., etc., etc., in fact, etcetera ad infinitum. What's persistent in Williams' smooth, creative and original fusion of various elements is the sustained tone and mood, like that of a soul resigned to nihilistic fate. None of Emerson's creations are quite like anything else, even when you're hearing touches of something else in there. His fierce originality score another point for the underground.
Review by: Kristofer Upjohn, www.chaindlk.com


credits:
released 01 January 2003
Drums – Ruddy Bitch
Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Keyboarding, Programming – P. Emerson Williams

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Movie Saturday - Only From the Outside Can The Truth Be Seen


In "The Gun Is Loaded" Lydia Lunch delivers a brutally frank manifesto in a journey through the heart of contemporary American darkness. Her poetic nihilism is set against a barrage of real-life street-action, scenery, news footage, and the deranged music of J. G. Thirlwell.
The last Movie Saturday I brought you a couple examples of myth creators, artists who dive deep into our common well of stories to form a vision of what's happening to us beneath the surface. When we contemplate the myths that surround us we get a sense of who we are and where we are going. Or, rather, on the passive and of the larger mediated culture, where we are being taken against our will and against our best interest. Well, this week, let me show another approach.

Lydia Lunch will blast your defences and strip your pretences. She's talking to you, yes you! It will do no good to avert your gaze sheepishly. What she offers is a cleansing. You should thank her.



Edited by Adam Cooper-Terán
Featuring clips from the films:
"Unspeakable" directed by Marc Rokoff
"What is Art?" by Steven Johnson Leyba
"PAINing POORtraits" by Leyba + ACT 
Music by: 
David J
Jeanelle Mastema
Adam Cooper-Terán
Project 9
A Fallen Mind
and
United Satanic Apache Front
Including samples from Omar Souleyman's "Labji Wa Bajji Il Hajar"
and Eric Brosius' "Trail of Blood" 
Featuring Interviews with:
Barron Storey
Billy Warsoldier
Charles Gatewood
Chris Trian
Crazy Benny
Dave Archer
Durk Dehner
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
Geraldo Rivera
High Priestess Blanche Barton
Hollie Stevens
Howard Bloom
H.R. Giger
Isabella Sol
James Luna
Jeanelle Mastema
Jennifer Fox Bennett
Joe Coleman
Leslie Leyba
Richard Metzger
and
Ugly Shyla

Unless an artist has the favour of the money that owns you, me and everything we survey, s/he is an outsider. Here's the mythological construct through which most in the Western world see society through that hides a basic truth - unless you're one of the top one percent earners, you are an outsider. You are owned, your children are owned, your house is owned jointly by the government and the bank. (It's an imaginary distinction that separates the latter two.)

What can an artist do in this age of institutionalized theft and militarized enforcement of subjugation but strip mythology of narrative until the superimposed patterns burned on the mind by conditioning and indoctrination  fades enought to show the actuality of how much you've been fucked. There is nothing for you in acquiescence. If ever there was a moment when you had to stop and take a close look at who and where you are this is it. You don't need to become an artist, live like Lunch or Leyba, but the only hope for any future lies in each one of us living our own truth. Step outside.




Featuring one of the last interviews with Willaim Burroughs and previously unseen vintage footage of him during the 50s and early 60s. - The great Beat Generation experiments took place in Tangier, the Moroccan city where William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and the Moroccan painter Hamri taught Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg how to live outside the law. This DVD features one of the last interviews with Burroughs and previously unseen vintage footage of him in his prime during the 50s and early 60s. Also featured are The Master Musicians of Joujouka collaborating with avant garde Dublin musicians, veterans of the Tangier Beat Scene, and cutting edge writers. In addition, there is music from Bill Laswell, The Baby Snakes, plus contributions from Ira Cohen, Hakim Bey, Brian Downey (Thin Lizzy) and many more.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Cognitive Dissonance - Prolix/Cycles

My malevolence deigns to allow an allocation of resources in conception migration. The seeds are flung at the remains; reasons found. Fallacy decides Initiative In support of destitution in Relation to an end. Isolated controverter of an era may be seen to be hallowed. The end begins, birth is everywhere.



I smell the rain and hear its song. Inner strength, all-consuming turmoil pulls me down, pulls me under the black surface. Deadpan assemblage of our best joined in a bond for our destruction sustains advancement to reduce our past to rubble. A device for burning up Influence Deplete to pour out acts in certainty, Factious blood counters all entreaties. Reason touches on comprehensions cool elegance while you nail yourself in fanatical devotion to the instrument of your execution. Unbroken restlessness atrocity corruption I overstated my own destruction. Suggestions of purity eradicate ascendancy. Under the birthing moon we pray, pray to be together for all time. To my knees glancing upward, there flies pain: mine.



The warhead forest formulates a declaration to make you to lie down out under the surface device. Come, let us wait here hiding beneath the snow. Fear ridden spectres flitting by; still their fetters bind your soul. Wrapped in those I love I awaken to dawn caresses, and they are no more. Centuries shall pass maddeningly as we watch them grow. Hidden places, lost hold; No one to sustain reality, my love erases me. Anomalous breaks Venture Into the system of sentience.

 
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