Friday, October 2, 2009

The Gspot: John Harrigan

In anticipation of the upcoming performance of The Abattoir Pages, Joseph Matheny in conversation with John Harrigan about anything and everything that comes to their mind.

All music provided by Veil of Thorns
Songs, in order:

  • And the Beast of the Vision Still Roams in Dream
  • Intellectual Institutional Object
  • Thought Pollution Evolution

In Your Ear: Reviewing Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story

Guerrilla Zoo and FoolishPeople present The Abattoir Pages, a terrifying immersive Halloween experience, hosted in a vast, secret subterranean landscape that was once one of London’s largest abattoirs.

The Abattoir Pages combines immersive performance, art installation, haunting and treasure hunt-style activity to form a labyrinth of mystery and horror, exposing the earliest Gaelic and Pagan rites. Once inside, audience members will be free to explore the abandoned underground chambers, join the secret party or may be caught in the middle of the most terrifying of puzzles.

This Hallowe’en, the infamous horror author Helen Mayer will hold court at a debauched secret party. She will share the perverse and warped research conducted inside the old abandoned abattoir, which was the genesis of her greatest work. In this dark playground, the very nature of human terror has been tested, abused and fed into the living story ‘The Forest’.

The author invites you to solve the puzzle and unlock the terrifying history within the old and powerful pages hidden throughout the slaughterhouse. Each holds a key to learning the truth of an ancient tale, which will ensure your survival.

Tonight, a debt will be repaid to blood dishonoured. An eternal nightmare rises up from the depths of the dark boreal forest, in the shadow of the mountain. It comes to feed on new meat inside an old abattoir.

http://www.apocryphon.org/



The Gspot: John Harrigan

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

VEIL OF THORNS “NECROFUTURIST" Inner-X-Musick XXX 72 (2009)

Inner-X-Musick is proud to announce it's first release by Veil Of Thorns. And because I run this blog - and because P. Emerson Williams is forward thinking artist - and because we both agree in the importance of the free flow of musick - and because the musick itself demanded it... You (the reader) reap the benefit.

"NECROFUTURIST" by Veil Of Thorns is the second non /SLEEPCHAMBER release on the newly revamped Inner-X-Musick, the first being the outstanding "Medical Report" by Grammal Seizure. However, "NECROFUTURIST" is the first release that is being offered as a FREE DOWNLOAD before the physical release becomes available.

For those of you who keep track of this sort of thing.. it's catalog number is XXX 72.

If you are familiar with Veil Of Thorns this release may catch you off guard. It is, as I like to call it, "Neo Gothick", although truthfully - Veil Of Thorns has started their own genre with this recording, and one could easily call it "retro futurist". Veil Of Thorns sound has always been unique, but certainly Gothic. Williams abilities as a musician has always set Veil Of Thorns apart from your standard "goth rocker", but through the new millennium Williams has also become a master of the process as well. It has paid off. "NECROFUTURIST" was methodically prepared for and then assembled. Each piece of the puzzle placed with veteran precision.

As with any Veil Of Thorns release, there is an overriding theme to the release. According to Williams,

"There is a theme, but an as yet nebulous one. I'm pulling together phenomena and experiences connected with art movements of the last hundred years and the corresponding societal upheavals that ran concurrently and which had an enormous impact on the birth, life and death of those art movements."

"At the same time, I'm meditating on the similarities and interconnectedness of art and cultural groups and cults, magickal groups, religions, philosophical paradigm shifts and the growth they spur as well as the devastation they leave in their wake, both psychick and materially manifest."

"And there's a book I'm desperately looking for, don't know the name of it, but its effect on people who read it seems to have been similar to the fictional King in Yellow."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow

If you have been following recent developments with Inner-X-Musick - you would know that XXX 71 is already slated to be Veil Of Thorns "Salon Apocalypse". But this is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Williams explains "Necrofuturist continues the theme of Salon Apocalypse. TAZ in a warzone, flowers on a landmine, love & war. Time out of joint. it's therefore appropriate that this came together first."

There will be a physical release in the future. Probably sometime in the late fall, after the release of "Salon Apocalypse". Of course all the information will be posted here as it become available. See www.innerxmusick.com for all the goodies!

Track Listing ...
1
Thought Pollution Evolution
2

Through The Fire
3

Standing
4

The Vandals Exquisite Corpse
5

The Lifeless Trio Kept Playing
6

Wailing In Glass
7

Waltz
8

Pleasure In Nightmare
9

Giving Ascent
10

Dancing Revelation
11

Let Loose Into That Good Mourning
12

The Reflection
13

Deny Fascination
14

The Only One Left
15

Die As One
16

Entertainments Subsume Concern
17

Head Up Get Out
18

The Dead Channel

Get it HERE

Read about Veil Of Thorns HERE

SALON APOCALYPSE:

"Secret Theater"

by Hakim Bey


As long as no Stalin breathes down our necks, why not make some art in the service of... an insurrection?

Never mind if it's "impossible." What else can we hope to attain but the "impossible"? Should we wait for someone else to reveal our true desires?

If art has died, or the audience has withered away, then we find ourselves free of two dead weights. Potentially, everyone is now some kind of artist -- & potentially every audience has regained its innocence, its ability to become the art that it experiences.

Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols (in this case, the images we've been "given" by the organizers of this salon -- murder, war, famine, & greed).

We might now contemplate aesthetic actions which possess some of the resonance of terrorism (or "cruelty," as Artaud put it) aimed at the destruction of abstractions rather than people, at liberation rather than power, pleasure rather than profit, joy rather than fear. "Poetic Terrorism."

Our chosen images have the potency of darkness -- but all images are masks, & behind these masks lie energies we can turn toward light & pleasure.

For example, the man who invented aikido was a samurai who became a pacifist & refused to fight for Japanese imperialism. He became a hermit, lived on a mountain sitting under a tree.

One day a former fellow-officer came to visit him & accused him of betrayal, cowardice, etc. The hermit said nothing, but kept on sitting -- & the officer fell into a rage, drew his sword, & struck. Spontaneously the unarmed master disarmed the officer & returned his sword. Again & again the officer tried to kill, using every subtle kata in his repertoire -- but out of his empty mind the hermit each time invented a new way to disarm him.

The officer of course became his first disciple. Later, they learned how to dodge bullets.

We might contemplate some form of metadrama meant to capture a taste of this performance, which gave rise to a wholly new art, a totally non-violent way of fighting -- war without murder, "the sword of life" rather than death.

A conspiracy of artists, anonymous as any mad bombers, but aimed toward an act of gratuitous generosity rather than violence -- at the millennium rather than the apocalypse -- or rather, aimed at a present moment of aesthetic shock in the service of realization & liberation.

Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.

Is it possible to create a SECRET THEATER in which both artist & audience have completely disappeared -- only to re-appear on another plane, where life & art have become the same thing, the pure giving of gifts?

We take Kirkegaard's "leap of faith," but absent the old existentialist's Fear & Trembling & Sickness unto death. Our leap of faith into sorcery & secret theater is more like a wet dream than a nightmare, "awe-full", not awful.

We name our peerage of this new plane The Seven Dramaturgs. But no Peer Panel here, please. We prefer, like Jacob, to wrestle with our angels, & if our tussling turns amorous, all the better. Let the games begin. The Seven Dramaturgs show us that the universe wants, more than that, intends to play with us. We can be pawns or partners in this intention of The Seven Dramaturgs.

In Sufiism there is a belief in The Forty Guardians who protect & keep mankind from destroying itself. What's interesting is, these Guardians are human, but they remain completely unknown & are constantly in flux. Anyone in the world could be one of The Forty at a present moment, including oneself. Of course you would never know if you had been one of The Forty -- they remain anonymous even to themselves. That is why Sufiism calls for you to bow your head whenever you meet a stranger -- he could be one of The Forty Guardians.

Do we lead or follow The Seven Dramaturgs in their sorcery & secret theater? Ali Baba is merely one of The Forty Thieves -- each of The Forty Thieves is Ali Baba. The text does not begin or end here -- the pencil is passed like a baton amongst The Seven Dramaturgs. The universe is still being written.



Saturday, August 15, 2009

VEIL OF THORNS SIGN WITH INNER-X-MUSICK

[SalApoc.cover.jpg]


Url: http://www.veilofthorns.com/blog http://www.myspace.com/veilofthorns

Eperimental Gothic.Industrial act Veil of Thorns have formed a creative alliance with INNER-X-MUSICK. P. Emerson Williams, Veil of Thorns frontman and multi-instrumentalist is currently completing production on the first album to be released on Inner-X Musick, Salon Apocalypse, which is the first new release since Cognitive Dissonance in 2007.

Approaching the twenty year mark in their career, Veil of Thorns continue to build on an ever expanding pallette with their most v aried release to date. From the stripped down, back to the guitar driven psychedelic heaviness of old the last release, the band reurn to to the organic shifting soundscape melding shades of electronic, classical, hiphop with a darker than ever gothic sensibility.

Salon Apocalypse is set to be released in September, 2009 and will be preceded by a series of podcasts and a digital only EP in late summer.

Salon Apocalypse track list:

Still Bloody Action

Intellectual Institutional Object

Ideological Corpses (Nearer To Hell)

Ultraviolet Nocturne

Rite of Spring (Fall of Empire)

And the Beast of the Vision Still Roams In Dream

The Play Is the Thing

The Wails of the Dying Merge With the Song of the Vandals

Experiment In Colour

Infernal Seduction

Induction

Abandoned Places

Doors Blown Open

previews of track for the next two Veil of Thorns releases can be heard at their MySpace profile:

http://www.myspace.com/veilofthorns

About Inner-X-Musick:

INNER-X-MUSICK is a record label/mail order catalog run by Industrial musick pioneer John Zewizz. Over the years INNER-X-MUSICK has a back catalog of well over a hundred releases, by bands such as Sleep Chamber, Controlled Bleeding, Jonathan Briley, 7 From Life, Daze Of Trance, The Flagellents, Hideous In Strength, Women Of The SS, Cult Ov The Womb, Mahcanik, Dokument, Noizeclot, Hunting Lodge, Human Flesh, and PSI Field. In the 1990’s Inner-X-Musick was the solely promoting Sleep Chamber musick, sharing releases with other labels (the Italian label Musica Maxima Magnetica,the German label FünfUndVierzig, and Cleopatra Records). Inner-X-Musick is back in 2009 with new releases by SLEEPCHAMBER and a new group of artists – including Choronzon, Grammal Seizure, Veil Of Thorns, and Batcheeba.

Url: http://innerxmusick.com

###

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Nightbreed Alldayer 2009!

Nightbreed Recordings, in association with Pray Silence.org, The Church Of Nightbreed and Radio Nightbreed present
“The Nightbreed Alldayer 2009!”
(and Gothic Sounds Of Nightbreed 5 launch party)

On Sunday, 6 December 2009
At "The Purple Turtle" Camden, London, England!
Doors open at 3pm, event ends at 1am. There will also be a pass-out system until 7pm.
Tickets cost £15 in advance and £20 on the door (subject to availability)
Special launch party for the long-awaited "Gothic Sounds Of Nightbreed 5"!!!!
Everyone who buys an ADVANCE ticket for "The Nightbreed Alldayer" will be given a FREE copy of "Gothic Sounds 5" as they enter the club on the day of the event!!!!!
Running Order:
Two Witches (Finnish Gothic legends-first London show in 8 years!)

Midnight Configuration (Satanic Gothic stalwarts-first London show in 7 years!)

13 Candles (Legendary 90’s Nightbreed Gothic band – first London show in over 10 years + re-formation gig!)

Lupine (Top Nightbreed Gothic crew- first London show in 4 years !)
+ surprise guests
+++ The entire event will be streamed LIVE over the Pray Silence website for those members unlucky enough not to be there!!!!! To join go to:
www.praysilence.org
Also DJs will be setting the floors alight in between bands with a collection of classic goth, 90’s gothic underground, quality 80’s and darkwave only.
NO TECHNO, NO TRANCE NO WOOLLYHEAD! PURE GOTH AND GOTHIC-EVOLVED MUSIC ONLY.
DJs include (with more tbc):
Jon the Goth(Inquisition),
Zynthexia (From Finland)
DJ PO (Carnival Of Souls)
This event will be THE event of the year, be there or miss out on what will be a legendary night!
Tickets can be purchased from the following:
Stargreen Box Office Ltd
020 7734-8932 (Credit card hotline)
www.stargreen.com
(Internet credit card orders)
In person:
Stargreen Box Office Ltd
20-21a Argyll St
London
W1F 7TT
Or
Resurrection Records
Rear Basement
228 Camden High St
London
NW1 8QS
Or via mail :
Nightbreed Recordings (cheques and postal orders only + include a self addressed stamped envelope)
44 Ogle St
Hucknall
Nottingham
NG15 7FR
For all the latest info on this event and anything else to do with the Global Gothic Underground join:
Pray Silence/ The Church Of Nightbreed at:
www.praysilence.org

Nightbreed recordings reserve the right to change the line-up of the event, no refunds given. Refunds will only be furnished in the event of cancellation

Friday, July 24, 2009

The GSpot: Solipsistic Nation

Joseph Matheny interviews “another Joe”, AKA Bazooka Joe, from Solipsistic Nation and formerly of the smallWorld. They talk about music, podcasting and get into a weird Joe to Joe cross interview feedback loop.

Also, another episode of In Your Ear, this week reviewing “Variant Frequencies” a podcast of (mostly) short fiction in the horror/subgenre sci-fi vein. From Puske: I pay special attention to the podcast novel which they debuted - “The Failed Cities Monologues” http://www.podiobooks.com/title/the-failed-cities-monologues/) - link is to the podiobooks version.

Read the rest of this entry »

Veil of Thorns had the pleasure of playing live on Bazooka Joe's show on WMFO in Massachusetts way back in the dark ages. I'll include those here:


Veil of Thorns first radio appearance one dark Saturday night on Tufts college free-form radio. The second guitarist was Jarrett Laitinen, who I recently learned died of a heroin overdose in 2004. In his final year he lost his father and stepmother in fucked up circumstances. I wish I had recordings that could give a good example of what an otherworldly amazing guitarist Jarrett was. He was the second guitarist on the first two Veil of Thorns demos from 1991 and 1992 respectively.

This is the original lineup:

P. Emerson Williams - Vocals, guitar
Jarrett Laitinen - Guitar
Catherine Chenoweth - Bass
Ruddy Bitch - Drums

Sourced from a reference tape recorded at the station. Some glitches and noise were minimized to the extent possible.


Whole ItemFormatSize
VeilOfThorns-LiveWmfo1991_64kb.m3u64Kbps M3UStream
VeilOfThorns-LiveWmfo1991_64kb_mp3.zip64Kbps MP3 ZIP15.4M
VeilOfThorns-LiveWmfo1991_vbr.m3uVBR M3UStream
VeilOfThorns-LiveWmfo1991_vbr_mp3.zipVBR ZIP77.0M
Audio FilesVBR MP3Ogg Vorbis64Kbps MP3
Veil of Thorns - Live WMFO 1991- 1 Obsession-Possession20.9M7.7M4.2M
Veil of Thorns - Live WMFO 1991- 2 Tear the Cities Down16.4M6.2M3.3M
Veil of Thorns - Live WMFO 1991- 3 Utopia15.1M5.7M3.0M
Veil of Thorns - Live WMFO 1991- 4 Study In Decay16.5M6.3M3.3M
Veil of Thorns - Live WMFO 1991- 5 Youll Never Know8.1M3.0M1.6M


Veil of Thorns radio appearance a stormy night, Halloween, 1992 on Tufts college free-form radio. On second guitar we borrowed Dave, (can't remember his last name), the guitarist from Chuck.

This is the lineup:

P. Emerson Williams - Vocals, guitar
Dave (From the excellent Boston funk rock band Chuck) - Guitar
Catherine Chenoweth - Bass
Ruddy Bitch - Drums




VeilOfThorns-LiveHalloweenWmfo1992_64kb.m3u64Kbps M3UStream
VeilOfThorns-LiveHalloweenWmfo1992_64kb_mp3.zip64Kbps MP3 ZIP23.2M
VeilOfThorns-LiveHalloweenWmfo1992_vbr.m3uVBR M3UStream
VeilOfThorns-LiveHalloweenWmfo1992_vbr_mp3.zipVBR ZIP116.1M
Audio FilesVBR MP3Ogg Vorbis64Kbps MP3
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 1 Obsession17.0M6.1M3.4M
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 2 Possession4.9M1.9M981.6K
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 3 Utopia15.9M6.0M3.2M
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 4 Void15.8M5.7M3.2M
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 5 Nothing Is Real19.3M7.6M3.9M
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 6 Sanctify (Drowning)24.1M8.7M4.8M
Veil of Thorns - Live Halloween WMFO - 7 Souls In Flight19.1M6.7M3.8M
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