LIVE VIDEO: Factory Floor - Lying

If your enthusiasm needed rekindling this should light the fire.

FFFF: Teeth - See Spaces remixes

Two immense remixes of the track See Spaces, awesome Dalston based tropical acid club punk 3-piece Teeth (or T3eth or T33th, obvs. It's still 2010 innit).

SEE SPACES (AIDS-3D MIX) by TEETH

SEE SPACES (DOLBY ANOL REMIX) by TEETH

Limbo

Sometimes I see something that really makes me want to get back into playing computer games. This is one of those things.

Tri Angle Records announces debut releases!

Move over Disaro! After months of waiting, Robin Carolan’s Witch House trend-setter in waiting record label TriAngle has announced the full details of its first two releases, and they come from two of my artists of the year.

The first release is set to be the ethereal ghost-dub See Birds by Balam Acab. Alec Koone of Brooklyn's solo outfit works within similar ambient landsacpe as Mount Kimbie, but has a slightly more sinister edge to the shades of the sound.  The debut EP - for label and artist will be released on August 16, on 12” and digital formats.

Tracklist:
1 See Birds (Moon)
2 Regret Making Mistakes
3 Big Boy
4 Dream Out
5 See Birds (Sun)

See Birds is an intensely deep tune that plumbs deep into an occult subconscious, dredging around bass frequencies and tweaking them with ripples of filters and fx, flitting melodies, dreamstate vocals drifting between realms - very similar in tone and style to Forest Swords, whose new single I wrote about yesterday. Many shades of subtle:

Following See Birds comes the debut EP by the San Francisco based Christopher Greenspan's   oOoOO (disappointingly pronounced “oh”, rather than the far spookier...errr..."oOoOO"! - I read it as I see it; ghostly.) That drops on September 27th (another birthday treat for me, along with Deerhunter and Salem) with cover artwork from photographer Alison Scarpulla, whose visionary images are disturbingly evocative of the creeped out, spectral and magickal atmopsheres the genre has the potential to conjure. The NFR banner at the top of this blog is hers.

Tracklist:

1 Mumbai
2 Burnout Eyess
3 Sedsumting
4 Hearts
5 Plains Is Hot
6 Burnout Eyes (Visions of Trees Remix)

oOoOO may be responsible for my track of the year in Seaww; embodying all the most essential elements of Witch House, with the dragged deeply eerie vocals, hypnagogic guitar solo and 808 beats. Hearts comes pretty damn close to repeating that effect, minus the ghostslopped vocals, replaced with their haunting female shadow version, and it's on this release. Here's a youtube of it for you:




As a pre-release-release TriAngle recently put out a tribute album to Lindsay Lohan songs, artists such as oOoOO and Oneohtrix Point Never covering her songs titled Let Me Shine For You, which can be downloaded here.

VIDEO: Aktiv Dödshjälp - Honmonstret (Kvinnan som vägrade dö)

I told you I've been feeling a bit Metal recently. 

Aktiv Dödshjälp is Swedish filthy sounding blackened metallic hardcore project, with a bit of symphony and bombast that I seem to be a bit weak for at the moment. They've been around a few years, movgn their sound out of a more black metal dynamic towards the hybrid of this album; maybe becasue the hive mind of them is Roberth Karlsson who is in a shit load of other bands: Devian, Tortyr, Facebreaker, Pan.Thy.Monium, Incapacity, Edge of Sanity, Scypozoa, Kill, Solar Dawn, Darkified, Scar Symmetry, Tormented.  Busy man.  Their name means Active Euthanasia, which is  a bit ...meh and I would never normally pick this kind of thing out to listen to given that kind of description, or those related bands, but either there's something about this that is different (the extra black metal edge) I've been missing a trick.

New album Men Allting Har Ett Slut was released 1st July on Halvfabrikat Records and it's 25 minutes of grind encrusted blackness is a whole lot of fun,

Here's their single/lead track from the record.  Of course the video is silly.


Lynx:

WEB
MYSPACE

VIDEO: DJ Fresh - Gold Dust

HUGE!

DOWNLOAD: Forest Swords - Rattling Cage 7"

Liverpool's incredible Forest Swords released his new record, Rattling Cage yesterday through  No Pain In Pop. Available on 7" limited to 300 copies and mp3, NPIP have also put out both tracks to download via Gorilla Vs.Bear, reposted here.

Rattling Cage
Hjurt

There's a video for the title track, which is suitably murky, tense and sinister. Filtered through chilling tones of Dario Argento and David Lynch, with a street-wise kick of Mario van Peebles, it is the perfect haunting accompaniment to the creeped out music of the Wirral resident - reconfiguring ghost-psych bands like The Shadow Ring through a shadowy hypnagogic prism of saturated delay, reverb and ethereal smoked out hip-hop memories. Imagine yourself swamped in soupy fog with ghostly martial drums clanging across the riverbanks - the rattling cage of the title referring to the opening baleful drum beat.  This is pretty mournful stuff, but it is also not a sound limited to just one sense of place or purpose.  There's elemts of dub(step) in the extra deep Shackleton-esque ambience and slowed beats, the aforementioned hypnagogy is there in those faded twilight hip-hop referencing beat rhythms. The previous Dagger Paths on Olde English Spelling Bee still gets a lot of listening at my place, and it's going to get a grand standing in my end of year lists for certain and this new release cements Forest Swords as one of my artists of the year.

 

Endless Endless Endless Live at Dixon's Place in the Lower East Side April 2010.

Ultra detailed, super cosmic hypnotic noise/drone/ambience from this NY based two-piece. Endless Endless Endless have been playing live for about a year but the microscopic sonic biospheres their music induce is the kind of thing bands can play for years together to create and never achieve. This is a band operating at a higher level of consciousness, on another solar plane of natural, effortless, organic creativity and existence.

Their new cassette is out now on Tired Trails in a sweet little felt bag, limited to 50 copies; so if this video melts your mind as deeply as it has mine you better hurry up. I can promise you that the album is equally potent, if not moreso - the length of exposure, distance travelled all enhance the experience and let more of the soundworld in.

LAST.fm

This weeks DiS Last.fm post had rules; real rules.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
(pmuj eht retfa srewsna)

1. This one is from that girl who split from that other girl and made a sunshine band. 25 minutes of beach baked no-fi filtered Spector-esqueness. With almost two hundred plays this week it’s been played more than the second place four times over - looks like this will be on repeat til it fades.

2. The hypnagogic cosmonaut’s new record is really starting to take hold of me now; getting fully sucked deep into its cosmic ebb and flow.

3. Gotta listen to what the boy wants a lot

4. This one will easily be in my top ten of the year – Romaniticised ~wave reinterpreted Smiths melodies that sound like they’ve been taped in an ice cave – shimmering reflections and cool echoes exquisitely carved and smoothed.

5. Yes, it does and you very much are. Cutting the long vapour trails out, leaving only the kaleidoscopic body of fizzing gas and steaming rock was a good move.

6. Still looks like this is my album of the year – or joint album of the year, along with that yoga teacher. About as left field as mainstream gloss-rock gets. A real headspinner/turner with a whole lotta Soul.

6b. Still can’t stop playing this all the time; its been over a year now and the magic isn’t dimming.

8. The 3 piece guitar/bass/drum combo album of the year – Velvets/Silver Apples/Fugazi melted down and recast. Guitar bands – if you don’t make as succinctly essential sounding music as this, give up now.

9. By far the best ever goth opera freak dub collaboration ever

10. “We didn’t have it this bad for most of the ‘90s and for most of the ‘00s, certain incidents notwithstanding, but now all of our noses are a little closer to the dogshit out on the sidewalks, and this band makes a strong case of how to react: with despair, howling resentment, and unshakeable fear. If they had any stage presence outside of “weird little craaaazy guy” on vocals, they might pack even more menace.” >>>


http://www.last.fm/user/Meatbreak

VIDEO: Klaxons - Echoes

SYD (age nearly 2): "Daddy? Where's the music?"
ME (Daddy): "I think there'll be a lot of people saying that"

Ice Dragon

Ice Dragon
The Burl, The Earth, The Aether




I seem to be going through a bit of a Metal phase at the moment, getting back into some doomy slabs of tidal wave sized riffing and gruff axe-wielding vocals.  The Sloath album has been begging for a post of it's own because its a monumental, towering breaker of blackened drone - but i will save that for its own moment.  For now I want to present Boston, MA based Ice Dragon and their pay-what-you-want album The Burl, The Earth, The Aether

The album charges out of the speakers riding a tapestry of Sabbath, Sleep, Cream, and Electric Wizard nostalgia - it's mix of the modern and thrownback - to a time past the 60's, way beyond; a time when bull horns heralded war and a shining blade signalled death or glory.  See, I told you I was getting deep into it.  First track is a fist pumpingly huge stadium filling anthem - as are several others including my current favourite Hexagon Riders that I embedded up there, which employs the wind as an instrument about 4 minutes in; also huge is The Watcher, which lurches across the speakers then gets sucked into an abyss of feeback popping out the other side in a grinding tectonic boogie. Beyond the grandiose there is the intimate, Led Zep Stairway style plaintive and acoustic. The second track lays down amongst a sedated interlude of romantically plucked strings, medieval folk that recalls the heathen or Viking metal of Enslaved or Falkenbach.  It's a classic combination and one this band have executed with a righteous warmth and heroic poise.  Great stuff.

Bandcamp
MySpace



And, as a bonus reference, because I can't help it because I have just relived and re-realised how epic it truly is (wait for the spoken word section):

Felt Drawings

Felt Drawings is the electronic/experimental/pop project of Los Angeles based Dominic Tiberio. The borderline twee name belies a darker sound behind it. Similar to other subterranean ~wavers like Cold Cave, Xiu Xiu, Blank Dogs or a downtempoed Railcars - by way of skittery beats, overloaded circuitry, guitar fuzz and blown out production it also shares a cleaner more serene claustrophobic atmosphere along the lines of the XX or Mount Kimbie. It's a combination of sounds that can trace a chilly path down your spine whilst keeping your synapses peaked - straddling current music memes like chillwave and witch house whilst cutting a bit of an individual road away from anything easily definable.

Here's a youtube of him at his most ambient, with In My Room that bears a strong resemblance to Basic Space, but ramps up the darker noisy elements, like the creepy cousin that never really opens it's mouth when it talks.




You can download three more songs for free courtesy of him here:

Forming
Momo
Walk

Another track Barriers can be heard kicking off Former Ghosts man Freddy Ruppert's SkinnyWolves mix We Stood That Chance. Download that from his Soundcloud HERE

MySpace
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Last.fm

Neon Marshmallow Fest (Chicago, IL)

Another in our long line of previews of amazing gigs that we can't go to is Neon Marshmallow - an experimental music and noise festival in Chicago, hosted by Red Electric Rainbow's Daniel Smith and Matt Kimmel of the DIY video site Acid Marshmallow.

It's the festival's first year of existence, but the ambition levels are already off the charts: Neon Marshmallow features more than 90 (ninety!) bands in two rooms over the course of four days (August 19-22) at the Windy City's Viaduct Theater. Expect unannounced special surprise sets and collaborations along with performances from these mindblowing astral voyages:

Astral Social Club + Burning Star Core + Carlos Giffoni + Dolphins into the Future + Ducktails + Emeralds + Excepter + Government Alpha + Keith Fullerton Whitman + Julian Lynch + Telecult Powers + Tom Carter (of Charalambides) + unFACT (David Sims of Jesus Lizard) + U.S. Girls

Full lineup and tickets are available at www.neonmarshmallowfest.com


This is a good enough excuse to post a youtube of the title track from Emeralds beautifully mindwarping album Does It Look Like I'm Here?:

Innumerable Forms - Contaminated

Innumerable Forms is a new Death Metal band from that sepulchral cradle of filth, the USA (Boston, Massachusetts).  Sounds and feels like the humid airlessness of Teitanblood with that rancorous texture, dripping sick sounding lead guitar squeals - literally, check the solo that claws across the foreground towards the end of this track here. Contaminated is the best, most fearsomely sculpted track from the 2010 self-released Dark Worship demo EP. The current lineup is just the one Justin Detore - heralding an era of One Man Death Metal Bands?  Unlikely.  This just begs to have a full band ploughing it out of a stack of amps in some sweaty decrepit club...with fencing in front of the stage!

Hoping for massive things from the future of this band.

TONIGHT! Dre▲ms In †he Wi†ch House!

It is finally here. The debut Witch House DJ night descends on Brighton at the Penthouse, with your host FokkaWolfe:

Dre▲ms In †he Wi†ch House

An audio visual hex of Witch House/Zombie Rave/EBM/Tech Noir & Ghost Drone.

With LIVE Witch House remixing of classic 90s rave tunes

and a small smattering of classic goth for those who need to mourn the past.

20th July @The Penthouse.

Above the world famous Freebutt, Brighton.

+

Three film projectors throwing Witch House videos against the walls with backup from

David Lynch, Dario Argento and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Free.

(no) lastfm thread (?)

this weeks last.fm stats dis dual post

iPod didn’t scrobble 2 days of listening this week, so there’s a lot of Best Coast, Ice Dragon and Wild Nothing missing off here.

1. Best Coast - 118
2. Sing and Sign - 43
3. Roald Dahl - 40
4. Gonjasufi - 35
5. Mogwai - 31
6. Wild Nothing - 30
7. LA Vampires & Zola Jesus - 21
8. Ice Dragon - 20
9. Blackbird Blackbird - 19
10. Janelle Monáe - 18

1. This is the perfect summer record I was hoping for, even if it doesn’t have anything quite as outrageously perfect as Sun Was High on it.
4. This is developing into my album of the year. At the moment, in the middle of this, I can’t think what else is this great.
5. Always listen to Mogwai, this week a little more than most weeks.
6. Big album of the year here too. The rhythm and melodis of the Smiths, the production values of Atlas Sound. What’s not to love?
7. Amanda Brown taking her sound back to Pocahaunted’s murky lurking dub of Island Diamonds + the intensely convincing vocals of Zola. Really excellent.
8. Album The Burl, The Earth, The Aether available to download free from their bandcamp. Amazing Sabbath worshipping doom. – www.icedragon.bandcamp.com
9 Summer Heart lp available from their Bandcamp too. Really lovely female fronted Chillwavey stuff. www.byebyeblackbird.bandcamp.com
10. She’s no Gonjasufi is she? Disappointing in the face of the high praise I’ve been reading.


Track of the Week: Tennis - Marathon

Boa Drum 77 Preview

Thrill Jockey have put out this trailer for Boredoms' 77 Boa Drum: Like the bearded dude says; "It's the Birth of the Galaxy".

Directed by Jun Kawaguchi, it documents the preparation and performance of the massive 77 drummer Brooklyn event from 2007. Not as big as the 88 drummer fest at Le Brea Tar Pits in LA in 2008, but that's not the point - 77 drummers is more rhythm than a mind can focus on! An elemental transcendental force Yamantaka Eye's fractal hydra of a drum circle is essential viewing as much as listening for the vast spectacle of it all.

The DVD drops on September 7th.

DOWNLOAD: Cults - Cults 7"

And here it is. My Cults obsession. Another genuinely inspiring gem from the Gorilla Vs. Bear label Forest Family. New York boy/girl two piece, slickly Motown, and sugary like the sweetest Spector Pop. Awesome.  Think free, loose and sweatily sensual experiences - ephemeral, transient, tangible.

This kind of stuff, I have recently realised, is made all the more potent by it's limitations, the consciousness of its disposability and sense of finity. Pop music succeeds when it harnesses it's brevity, when it injects every ounce of energy and enthusiasm into each moment of it's brief life with the understanding that this is all the time it will have on Earth, like a mayfly that once hatched has to outperform itself in a perfectly executed performance of existence. If Pop music and it's practitioners cannot submit to their fatality of their art and reproduce that urgency within their music then they are cheating us all.

This is that 24 hour artistic perfection smashed onto tape.

You an download their full Cults 7" ep totally free from their BANDCAMP,or order the real life shellac from the label.

Here's a video of Go Outside:

Twin Sister - All Around and Away We Go

Yup. Just cottoned on to Twin Sister and how utterly gorgeous their music is. Sometimes I ignore things for too long at my own peril. Twice in a couple of weeks - Wild Nothing and now Twin Sister. I guess I really should pay more attention to GvsB. I'm about to get into Cults too....

Last FM World Cup winner is....

DiS Last.fm post

1. Wild Nothing - 108
2. Sing and Sign - 58
3. Women - 55
3. Washed Out - 55
5. Gonjasufi - 52
6. Xerbittert - 48
7. Real Estate - 26
8. Former Ghosts - 23
9. Tame Impala - 22
10. Roald Dahl - 18
10. Ólafur Arnalds - 18
12. Total Negation - 16
13. Laurie Fyke - 15
14. Actress - 14
15. Yo La Tengo - 13


1. Really beautiful, *lush* (a word in danger of becoming the new 'nice', if it hasn't already). But still, album and ep are wonderfully reverby and melodic - major listening experience all week, second only to...(S&S notwithstanding)....

3. Bit noisy and abrasive in a gorgeous way, but less good for dinnertime, so I've had Wild Nothing on more regularly for practical reasons, but otherwise it would be Public Strain nonstop. So many stunning moments, so many really cool instrument sounds; simultaneously dangerous and beautiful sounding.

5. Just got this album. Really is one heavy out-there psychedelic trip. Vocals are ridiculously great, like Beefheart fuzzed up. Going to be one of my albums of the year, top tenner, for sure.

6. This guy has put out about 5 releases this year and I've just caught up on them. Xasthur sounding walls of groaning ambience – don’t say 'depressive', say claustrophobic'.

10. Just picked up his new album and it hasn't disappointed at all. Pretty much speechless over this. Awe inspiring.

12. OMBMB! This guy is also in Trist, who make some pretty ace transcendental blackened trance, but on his own, with this 4 track ep, he rocks it up a bit with some heavy guitar tones, great bass riffs, drawn out drone sections and drummmachine shifts in a combination that totally slays!...leading me to:

Track of the week:

Painted Face

Painted Face is the moniker of Allie Alvarado, a D.C. based singer and songwriter who has roots in the Brooklyn art rock scene. Formerly a member of the bands Telepathe and Blood Lines, Painted Face is her self-anointed Glam & Bass collaboration with dance music producer Alvin Risk. Not heard what he's done in the past (that I know of), but this right here's the shit.

I haven't been convinced by Telepathe yet; I can hear the potential, but it's never fully clicked. I am enjoying this a lot more - seems more propulsive, kinetic, and tangible.

Check out the track Undreamt below.

Undreamt by Painted Face

When you say James Murphy I think

Guitarist in Death - one of the original and best Death Metal bands to set the template out on Florida at the end of the 80s.

Jus sayin'

Memoryhouse: I liked them so much I waved goodbye

I went to see Memoryhouse at the Hope on Sunday (rescheduled from Juine at the Freebutt). This was one of those gigs where I wasn't really expecting great things, just a very pleasant experience; but I massively understimated Memoryhouse! All three of them looked pretty cool up there - Adrian Vieni, the live bassist/guitarist should be a permanent fixture. He's got a good face! Mo reimportantly, his guitar tones are awesome too, really full and dense and he's got some fine control over his fx pedals, constantly warping the tone and texture to add extra rhythm and detail as a sumptuous backdrop to Evan's more trebly guitars. Denise actually looked pretty fierce, despite noncahalently firing off barrages of samples from her beatbox. Her vocal's were as rounded and soft as they are on record, no live harshness here, a really smooth voice that wasn't overwhelmed by the wall of noise the two boys were building up behind her, contrasting and complementing in equally effective measure. I was expecting gentle and dreamy but this was much closer to the roar of My Bloody Valentine than I had anticipated; much more shoegaze than chillwave it was a propulsive, energetic show with a New Order beat machined momentum that pushed through into the slower tracks, which seemed faster, grander and more aggressive than on record; took me a couple of bars of singing to realise it was Lately and not something new.

So yeah, really great. I liked them so much I actually waved goodbye.

For all the fucked up children of this world we give you, another nute c60 (c60004)

Originally started as an LP offshoot of the now defunkt, Trensmat Records - Nute is now on it's fourth CD release and on to its sixth c60 mixtape download.  Here's it for y'all. A scan of the tracklist should prep yr mind for a well blown time.

DOWNLOAD

Mugstar - My Baby Skull Has Not Yet Flowered
Vvv - Desperate Nation
Tony Mc Pheee - The Hunt
No Fun Acid - This Is No Fun Acid 3 Part 1
Alva Noto - Sonolumi (For Camera Lucida)
Emeralds - Genetic
Thomas Brinkmann - Birth & Death
Trans Am - The Silent Star
Sand - Helicopter
Pan Sonic - Suuntaa
Mugstar - Furklausundbo
Ty Segall - Finger
Circle - Stimulance
Stereolab - (Varoom!)
Machinefabriek - Allengskens
Spacemen 3 - Feel So Good
Spacemen 3 - Ecstasy In Slow Motion
Beach Boys - Wouldnt It Be Nice (A Capella)

White Ring - Suffocation (Los Campesinos! Remix)

White Ring - Suffocation (Los Campesinos! Remix)
Download from RCRDLBL

Yeah, you heard right. Welsh tweesters Los Campesinos! getting involved in rescrubbing Witch House.


Today, White Ring release Suffocation featuring remixes by the aforementioned Los Campesinos!, venerable Witch House luminary Mater Suspiria Vision as well as Fostercare, Vitaminsforyou, Guy Dallas, and Unison.

The Los Campesinos! remix has been put out for free download as a teaser, and tease it does. As soon as you press play you'll be hit by the distance they've taken it from the original, but the prettiness they've dusted over it enhances that underlying feminity hidden inside Kendra Malia twisted bone dry deliveries of all White Ring tracks.  

Available digitally today and on vinyl on August 3rd from Hi-Scores Recording Library in a run of 500 colored white vinyl records. The physical version will feature the original track and the Haunted by Unison remix on the flip. Adding to the offering, Hi-Score will also be including a download card for all six remixes with purchase of the physical record. You can pre order the record now, which I would if you want it. White Ring + Mater Suspiria?  That's a combination that's going to shift.


7” Vinyl Release Tracklisting
1. Suffocation
2. Suffocation (haunted by Unison)

Digital Release Tracklisting
1. Suffocation
2. Suffocation (haunted by Unison)
3. Suffocation (Los Campesinos! Remix)
4. Suffocation (Fostercare Remix)
5. Suffocation (Guy Dallas Remix)
6. Suffocation (Mater Suspiria Vision Remix)
7. Suffocation (Vitaminsforyou Remix)

last frigging fm

This weeks Drowned In Sound/Blog last.fm stats double post:

1. Sing and Sign - 108
2. Laurie Fyke - 39
3. King Kong Ding Dong - 24
4. Will Haven - 17
4. Gr†LLGR†LL - 17
6. Sun Araw - 16
6. Washed Out - 16
6. WHITE FENCE - 16
9. Wild Beasts - 13
10. Rudi Arapahoe - 12
10 - P For Persia - 12

Spent the last week on holiday so Syd has held strong sway over the ipod. This is probably a more accurate representation of what I spend my time listening to, it’s just usually the baby stuff is played on cd so they never got scrobbled but now they’re all on itunes it looks like that’s all about to change. Also, on holiday we tend not to listen to albums and shuffle the pod instead so that’s why the numbers are low. It's the only time I ever do shuffle; makes it feel more like holidays. Seemed to love Electrelane’s Axes a lot, played 4 tracks off it in one day.

1. Sasha Felix, baby signing queen of Brighton. www.singandsign.com Syd’s favourite thing in the world. I have half these songs going round my head all the time, they're surprisingly catchy, although the influence of having a real baby may influence that rosy opinion somewhat.

2. aka Jolly Phonics - letter sounds cd - reworked nursery rhymes that last about 10 second or less and there's 40 of them, so this should be way over 100, if not more.

3. Put out their album for free. It's great. Sounds like a loose combination of Black Dice and Animal Collective with the annoying bits reigned it. Get it here: http://www.kingkongdingdong.net/music

the rest you already know, so...

10b. Brighton based 3-piece pay loud and heavy across a Lightning Bolt/Melvins/Boredoms axis. Picked up their album when they played with Wolf Eyes. http://www.myspace.com/pforpersia

Shit and Shine, SXSW 2010

Clockcleaner - Daddy Issues

Twin Stumps - Live!

Pissed Jeans - Dream Smotherer

Mayyors - Airplanes (Live)

Francis Harold and the Holograms @ Wills Pub #1. Orlando, FL. 6.21.09.

Having a bit of a messy noisy sludge punk day on the blog. Brace yourselves

Black Metal Theory Symposium II: Melancology

A new Black Metal Sypmosium has been announced on the Black Metal Theory blog, this time it's being held here in London.


MELANCOLOGY
Black Metal Theory Symposium II

13 January 2011
The Fighting Cocks
Old London Road
Kingston-upon-Thames, London
1-11pm

Another gathering dedicated to the mutual blackening of metal and theory

Live Act
ABGOTT

Plenary Speaker
REZA NEGARESTANI



‘Earthly thought embraces perishability (i.e. cosmic contingency) as its immanent core .... such perishability ... grasps the openness of Earth towards the cosmic exteriority not in terms of concomitantly vitalistic / necrocratic correlations (as the Earth’s relationship with the Sun) but alternative ways of dying and loosening into the cosmic abyss ... The only true terrestrial ecology is the one founded on the unilateral nature of cosmic contingency against which there is no chance of resistance – there are only opportunities for drawing schemes of complicity.’ ...

‘Hence, the Cartesian dilemma, “What course in life shall I follow?” should be bastardized as “Which way out shall I take?”’

Reza Negarestani, ‘Solar Inferno and the Earthbound Abyss’



MELANCOLOGY

Black metal irrupts from a place already divested of nature, a site of extinction, ‘a place empty of life / Only dead trees ...’ (Mayhem, ‘Funeral Fog’, 1992); ‘Our skies are forever black / Here is no signs of life at all’ (Deathspell Omega, ‘From Unknown Lands of Desolation’, 2005). As such black metal could be described as a negative form of environmental writing; the least Apollonian of genres, it is terrestrial – indeed subterranean and infernal – inhabiting a dead forest that is at once both mythic and real unfolding along an atheological horizon that marks the limit of absolute evil where there are no goods or resources to distribute and therefore no means of power and domination, a mastery of nothing.

A new word is required that conjoins ‘black’ and ‘ecology’: melancology, a word in which can be heard the melancholy affect appropriate to the conjunction. A new word implies a new concept and we know from Deleuze and Guattari that concepts have to fulfil three criteria. Accordingly, the plane of immanence of melancology is extinction and non-being. All things are destined for extinction; immanent to all being is the irreducible fact of its total negation without reserve or remainder. The development of the characteristics of melancology is to be addressed at the Symposium, of course, but there are already a number of apophasic determinations: it is not ecology, it is anorganic; it is not political economy, it is anti-instrumental; it is not love of nature, environmentalism, Gaia, geophilosophy ... But it implies an ethos and a style that delineates the third aspect of the concept, its embodiment in a conceptual personae: the black metal kvltist whose ethos runs across the spectrum of melancholy from bile and rage to sorrow, depression and the delectation of evil all the better to affirm the desolation s/he contemplates in the sonorous audibility of black metal’s sovereign dissonance. This environment of absolute evil is exactly the same as the absolute good of black metal itself: the expenditure of a sonic drive that propels a blackened self-consciousness, a melancological consciousness without object that is the necessary prior condition to any speculation on or intervention in the environment.

The Black Metal Theory Symposium thus invites speculation and interventions on the blackening of the earth, landscapes of extinction, starless aeon, sempiternal nightmares, black horizons, malign essences, Qliphothic forces from beyond ... in a general re-conceptualization of black ecology.

Inquiries & abstracts to Niall Scott & Scott Wilson
NWRScott@uclan.ac.uk
S.Wilson@kingston.ac.uk