Mountain*7 - for the person with nothing better to do

Artist: Mamuthones
Album: Mamuthones
Label: Boring Machines

The mamuthones are ritualistic figures in a 2000 year old tradition that still takes place three times in year in the mountain community of Mamoiada, central Sardinia. Their origin and role is strangely obscure, but their hold over the community is anything but – though they appear only three times a year, their presence as an aspect of the villagers’ consciousness is a constant. They occupy something like a timeless present, suspended between ancient belief systems and a future that fails to truly accept what they stand for. There is something in the mamuthones’ costume – decked in pungent black sheepskin and carved wooden masks, shouldering 60 pounds of dulled gold sheep bells – that renders them figures of that half-light between worlds: spirit and human, man and animal, man and god; and during their thrice-yearly appearances, after extended street processions, they partake of night-long vigils dancing round vast bonfires, as if summoning the dawn before them. Having not heard the music that accompanies these rituals it’s difficult to imagine anything other than this forthcoming release from Alessio’s Gastaldello’s latest project, naturally called Mamuthones.

Read the rest of the review over at The Liminal.

Download/Listen: Mamuthones - The First Born

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 20:25 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Artist: The Mount Fuji DoomJazz Corporation
Album/DVD: Anthropomorphic
Label: Denovali

The Mount Fuji DoomJazz Corporation are the live improv wing of the Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble (names, again!) featuring various of that project’s myriad number, including Gideon Kiers, Jason Köhnen, Charlotte Cegarra, Hilary Jeffery, Eelco Bosman, Nina Hitz, and Sarah Anderson. The Kilimanjaro project has produced two albums since its inception, albums that wander the ground between noir-ish Bohren-style down-tempo jazz to more beat-inspired meanderings, coming close to The Cinematic Orchestra’s more loop-based experiments in places. The Mount Fuji wing is born of infrequent live improv sessions, and is much more fractured as a result, with the jams stretching out towards some indefinable horizon. Succubus, released in 2009 could be said to have bridged the gap between the two styles, but Anthropomorphic is certainly more experimental, and genuinely odd in places – featuring stretched and tortured trombone sections and damaged electronics worthy of Helge Sten.
Read the rest of the review over at The Liminal.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 21:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Artist: Erstlaub
Album/DVD: Sleepwalking into the Underworld
Label: Highpoint Lowlife

Traditionally, a sigil was a unique symbol created for a specific magical purpose. It tended to be made up of several discrete elements, each charged with meaning and intent, each working toward the larger effect of the whole. It might be used as a hexing medium, or a way of summoning or conjuring a spirit or demon. I wasn’t aware of the notion of a hypersigil before listening to Erstlaub’s latest record, Sleepwalking Into The Underworld but it was an idea popularised by Grant Morrison with his epic comic series, The Invisibles, the idea being that the work was an ongoing rite of sigilization, formed with the express intent of actually augmenting or even altering reality.

Read the rest of the review over at The Liminal and see the full accompanying film and soundtrack below.

Erstlaub - Sleepwalking Into The Underworld from thorsten sideb0ard on Vimeo.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 21:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Now through the grating of my cell
I look up at a strip of autumn sky
And often, chalked across the blue,
There’s a vapour trail,
A vapour trail…
And then, I don’t know why,
I start to think of you.

Dawn brings these planes from distant lands,
Red-eyed tycoons from far-flung ports of call.
Dawn lifts the luggage through the flaps
Onto the carrousel
The carrousel
And wakes the baggage hall.
Dawn will bring you, perhaps.

Perhaps that vapour trail is where
Your plane passed over me here in my jail.
That line is the trajectory
Of your breakfast tray,
Your breakfast tray.
Perhaps that is your trail
And you look down on me.

Look down on me, my friend, look down
And think of me now as I think of you
And think of us as we were then
From your vapour trail,
Your vapour trail…
Your line of chalk on blue.
Think well of me again, > My friend—
Whatever hurt I may have done,
For I intended none.
Forgive the hurt that I did not intend
And let it mend. Think well of me again.

Posted by poacher in poetry at 09:54 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)