the whisperer in darkness

there is snow on the ground,
and the valleys are cold,
and a midnight profound
blackly squats o'er the wold;
but a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings un- hallowed and old.

there is death in the clouds,
there is fear in the night,
for the dead in their shrouds
hail the sin's turning flight.
and chant wild in the woods as they dance round a yule- altar fungous and white.

to no gale of earth's kind
sways the forest of oak,
where the sick boughs entwined
by mad mistletoes choke,
for these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost druid-folk.

words by h. p. lovecraft / fantôme de lapin dans l'appareil photo by m m swiezynski

wards off madness by dulling the memory

most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways,

they are almost hidden now in lawless shrouds of shadow.

(text fragmented from lovecraft, image from dulled memory)

so through endless twilights, i dreamed and waited

an awful torrent of blackness

only alternations of unconsciousness and delirium

 hangs a blasphemous "dream landscape"

heard all night, a faint deep insistent note

(pictures from my home town, words from  lovecraft)

our work starts in darkness and in death

i'll probably never see you again (ask me why and ill spit in yr eye)

boomkat best of 2012 (via richard skelton)

here's one of those beautiful drone albums that should resonate with anyone keen on something to follow stars of the lid, the caretaker, or basinski. the ingenting kollektiva remains something of a mystery both to us and, so it seems, to the rest of the world. some information about their ideas are available (thanks to the impressionistic "art of memory" blog run by the kollectiva's m. swiezynski), but much remains purposefully arcane, which suits their smoke and mirror approach to sound design. the kollectiva's first album seemed an homage to ingmar bergman's definition of nothingness, in spanning the existential gap between the mundane and the eternal void. it also channelled a zeitgeist that threaded together various pieces of music and film from 1969, but the results of that project formed an ethereal set of dronemuzik that found a particular voice that transcended the cultural references.

the ghostly mood and nocturnal spell of their first album continues here on lost beyond telling, tracking further back in time with references to messiaen and baudelaire. and again, the kollecktiva finds itself making a slow, almost liturgical album of minimalist serenades through heavy processed instruments (guitar, cello, psaltry, etc.), field recordings, and manipulated pieces of crusty vinyl. a beautiful night sea music opens the album with pools of deep drones that gradually fracture into basinski-like looping patterns phased through a refined use tremolo and delay. comparatively scabrous textures churn through spiralling bird-song-like twitter on "the dark backward abysm of time" all leading up to the somber, twenty-three minute conclusion of damp field recordings and backmasked bells dragging through a darkened loveliness of oceanic driftscaping getting close to a salt marie celeste vibe. so nice!

the dvd portion of the program features two distinct visual aesthetics from within the kollektiva. the first four short films come by way of tarrl lightowler, who operates with an intense stroboscopic flickering of ever magnifying, ever vibrant images. thickets of wire, bright petals, chunks of ice, and piles of leaves are just a scant number of the images that lightowler projects in his videos, all siphoning out of a violent vortex of pulsing light. for all of its natural source materials, his videos are quite violent, countering the hypnotic wash of the sound, much of which originates from the material on the cd. brilliant stuff for sure, but please watch carefully, as retinal fatigue comes on very quickly with these films. the two latter films are from matthew swiezynski, whose videos are far murkier with whisps of fire and shadows of the landscape dominating the darkened field of vision. on both of his films, the sounds are wholly unique based on creepy sounding loops that could have been culled from tibetan horns and harmonium.

jim haynes on lost beyond telling
aquarius records

2 more reasons to buy an ingenting kollektiva release

follow me in pain, best of 2012

in no particular order, fire at will

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(birds related) 

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