DJ gig in Belgium, September 6

Just a quick note to say I will be playing a DJ set in Ghent, Belgium on September 6th. The lineup looks pretty awesome and I can't wait to hear Tim Schuldt and Green Nuns Of The Revolution.

In the 3 weeks leading up the the event I'll try to write a few posts on the type of music I'll play. I'm really looking forward to unleash some mental morning goa trance for the infamous Belgian party animals. My scheduled time slot is 6-8am, right after the Green Nuns. Expect morning-themed stuff, with some recognizable blasts from the past, a handful of very unknown tracks all sprinkled with a few unreleased Filteria tracks.

Black Metal Trance part V: Darkspace

When a black metal band lists Juno Reactor among only 4 visible friends in their MySpace profile you can probably conclude that they're somewhat more prone to electronic experimentation than the average band. This is indeed the case with Swiss trio Darkspace, who rely more on synthesizers than any of the bands mention previously in this series, and possible more than any in the genre. There are still guitars though, but most of the time they're played to sound like a monolith of jagged drone buzz, so blown out that you cannot possibly decipher riffs or even chords. It's just howling wall of reverbed black metal distortion.

The rhythm section in Darkspace is handled by a drum machine, which further emphasizes the cybernetic space-terror theme their name and sparse graphics implies. A drum machine also allows them to play faster than would have been possible otherwise, which they take advantage of quite often. Some pieces are so fast in fact that the drums too turn into a diffuse swarm of menacing drone, with only the vocals as any point of progressive or rhythmic reference. But the singer sounds as though he's a few solar systems off into the distance - sometimes it's hard to tell if he's still going at it or if you're hearing some weird overtones from the guitars.

As with the previous bands I've written about, Darkspace make some long songs. Even longer than any of the others actually, if you disqualify the ambient track off of Filosofem. Dark Space II starts of with one that clocks in at 23:41 for example. With samples from Stanley Kubrick's 2001, this is truly cyber black metal, sort of like if Satan existed in the form of the coldness of the universe, or dark matter or entropy or something like that.

Pictured above are their three albums in their normal versions from Avantgarde Music, but there are limited versions too (more on Discogs.com). I totally recommend that you get all three. Listening to them all in sequence, while certainly not for the faint of heart, is a monumental experience. It's all so amazingly hypnotising and mesmerising that you have no choice but to be sucked in past its event horizon, and be lost in the black hole that is Darkspace.

Black Metal Trance part IV: The Ruins of Beverast

When listening to introvert and contemplative music I can't really escape the thought that it feels odd when it's made by a band rather than a single person. Weakling (see below) sort of get away with it since they have more of a desolate, post-war and somehow "open" sound, but Burzum clones that are multi-member bands will just never feel legit. With The Ruins Of Beverast we're on the safe side though, since it's just one guy playing guitars, bass, drums, synths, samplers and singing. I think he even mixed and mastered the whole thing himself, actually.

And speaking of mastering, again this epic/longform type of black metal seems to gravitate towards unorthodox sound ideals. The album pictured above, his second one called "Rain Upon the Impure" (link goes to the fantastic ultra-limited vinyl edition, check it out) is mixed and mastered lower in volume than any other metal record I've heard. I'm not sure how much of that is caused by studio ineptitude/fuckup and how much is intentional, but either way it works surprisingly well. Since pretty much the entire album has gone through a cavernous reverb and there is an enormous headroom in the mix, it is unusually lush for black metal. The high frequencies are gently rolled off too, so you can play this album very very loud. I could wish for a bit more hi-fi, but maybe I'm being picky.

Musically "Rain Upon the Impure" is sort of a less mathy and more mysterious Weakling. Even though Alexander (the man behind this) is a drummer, the beats are almost sloppy and often raw and simple, as well as hidden pretty deep down in the mix. But it all feels intentional and this album is a real masterpiece. Google for some reviews and you'll find plenty of people who agree - those that don't seem to complain that it isn't loud enough (well crank it up then, stupid) or they just don't appreciate this style of black metal.

There's good use of samples throughout this album, both spoken phrases (I really must find out where the womans voice is from!) and more far-out stuff like opera vocals. This is opressive, bleak and subterranean, yet vast, bombastic and with an ominous momentum.

Black Metal Trance part III: Weakling

While Burzum achieved a lot by simple means, his music can sometimes become too simple. Mood, sound and structure can get you very far, but add complexity to the mix and the music can become truly mindboggling, as well as hold up better to repeat listenings. Among the literally uncountable bands that have been influenced by Burzum, I find Weakling to be the best by far (do click that link, it gives an excellent summary of the bands history). Perhaps Weakling's greatness is because they weren't a clone, and to be honest they were only marginally influenced by the norwegian.

Unfortunately that's all in the past tense, because they split before their only album "Dead As Dreams" was released. But holy shitlord what an album! It's 76 minutes long, but only contains 5 tracks. And that's 5 tracks of relentless fucking metal, no filler 20 minutes of dull thuds. It has tormented, howled vocals and a kaleidoscopic sense of progression that makes other "progressive metal" bands' 7-minute tracks seem like toddler lullabies. I've describled "Dead As Dreams" as a black vortex in the past, and that's pretty much what it is. It's not chaos though, it's extremely well arranged, which makes one wonder how the hell they could rehearse this stuff considering the track lengths.

Very rarely do they get close to any sort of rock groove - instead they steer their despair-drenched black metal juggernaut through mathy rythms and majestic riffs, pounding you into a barbwire-clad trance. There's not a dull moment on here, and even though the production is a bit on the thin side this is an album I keep coming back to. One of my most captivating listening experiences in recent years was listening to this start to finish (as it should be enjoyed) lying perfectly still on a bed, eyes closed. It worked like a sensory deprivation tank, where I completely lost contact with all senses apart from my hearing. Trippy.

Black Metal Trance part II: Burzum

If you're familiar with Burzum you can skip this post as it's mainly directed to people who are new to the genre.

I wasn't really sure if I should bring up Burzum here at all - not because of his unfortunate political ideas, but rather because he must be the most discussed black metal artist ever. A quick googling gives something like 3,4 million hits...

But it's only fair to bring him up, because he pretty much invented the hypnotic black metal genre, and was also very important for making the use of synths accepted in a genre where keyboards are somehow considered homosexual, but wearing tight leather pants and chainmail isn't.

While the production quality of his albums is rather dreadful, it sort of compliments the music. Unfortunately this is not the case with 99% of all other poorly recorded/mixed/mastered black metal records, but this is the rare exception, and as we will see later in this series it's a bit of a common theme for the depressive/hypnotic/epic style of black metal that I'm trying to cover.


My favourite Burzum album is Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, which has no weak tracks and also sets the bar for album progression. The first track is the slowest and most restrained one, but this is where he establishes the mood and the hypnotic, monotonous arrangement style. Over the next two he increases the energy but keeps the ultra dense mood, and then wraps it up with the epic ambient track.


The other one I'd have to recommend is Filosofem. This one isn't as strong as a whole for me, and the progression is somewhat plagued by having the even longer ambient track as the penultimate one rather than just putting it last again. But this is still fucking fantastic, and the first four tracks certainly rival Hvis Lyset Tar Oss.

Burzum is an almost essential startingpoint for this type of music, regardless of wether you like these albums or not. The reason is that you cannot possibly explore black metal without running into references to Burzum, and these two albums in particular. Having heard them will make thousands of record reviews easier to understand, and might get you hooked on the style too.

Black Metal Trance part I: Prologue

Looking at my musical preferences throughout the years, one of many recurring themes is intensely energetic music with a majestic and euphoric, yet introvert and melacholic mood. That may sound like an oxymoron, but imagine being flown out from earth through the solar system. You would likely be in extatic awe of its unfathomable size and majesty, yet at the same time taken aback when realizing your relative insignificance and the fragility of our world. This particular blend of emotions, mindfuckery and aesthetic/philosophical direction has manifested itself in my record collection mainly in the form of goa trance. My first contact with these themes was through another genre though - thrash metal. More specifically, Helloween's Walls of Jericho, which I bought at the age of 8. I think in particular "How Many Tears" managed to tune my neurons to these settings.

For the longest time I turned my back on the lust for metal after having sold off nearly all such records in 1994, when I had fallen in love with electronic music. The need slowly crept up on me and finally caught up properly in 2003, when I started to tentatively point my nose in the metal direction again. It has taken me very long to fully realize, but what I always seek in metal is the majestic hypnotism I can also find in goa trance, only painted with a different sonic palette. I'm not interested in "rocking out", nor do I have the knowledge needed to appreciate the finer details of guitar technique. This combined with an intense distaste for musical cheese quite quickly took me to black metal, which contains a surprising width and has proven to be a hotbed for experimental, far-out metal. In a series of posts I will highlight some of the black metal records that best satiate my lust for awe-inspiring sonic hypnotism.

Linguistic agility

This post is in English for reasons I'll get to soon. First, this: I've started at a new job. It's pretty awesome and although the pressure is certainly high, so is the reward. Everyone is super talented, funny, and smells lovely. At this place I get work with some people who don't speak Swedish, so I get to practice my English a lot. I enjoy this, partly because I like practicing my language skills and also because I'm a narcissist jerk who's aroused by the sound of my own voice. So to celebrate my blooming lust for l'anglais, here's an article that's absolutely ripe with awesomeness: It has freaky insects and a style of writing that I'm totally in love with and wish I could master. So I hereby present to you: The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World.

Varannan 15/12 - lyssningsinfo

Vi har lite bråttom med att hinna bli klara med allt, men info kommer finnas här:
http://www.discogs.com/groups/topic/152123

Det blir en inspelning av hela faderullan också.

Varannan

Som musik- och skivnörd är jag alltid sugen på ny musik, och ett väldigt praktiskt och underhållande sätt att möta det behovet är något som kallas varannan. För den som inte orkar läsa länken så går det kortfattat ut på att alla tar med sig ett överenskommet antal skivor, ofta 30 st. Sedan samlas man hos någon med döva/döda/förlåtande grannar och brassar loss. Alla spelar en låt var, och poängen är att försöka följa upp föregående låt på något sätt. Detta gör att man bland sina 30 skivor måste ha en väldig bredd. Oftast lottar vi om ordningen några gånger under en kväll så man får följa några olika personer. Till allt detta dricker man lite lagom (man vill inte missa något!) och äter god mat. Vi når i bland över 100 spelade låtar i en sittning, vilket med en hel del låtar på 10+ minuter och en middagspaus kan betyda att vi kalasar i 15-16 timmar.

Nu på lördag 15:e december ska vi slå till igen, och eftersom jag och Emelie är värdar kommer jag strömma hela grejen på nätet för den som vill lyssna. Vi publicerar också spellistan kontinuerligt. Om jag inte drabbas av akut minnesförlust kommer jag publicera en postning här strax innan vi börjar, med lyssnings- och spellistelänkar. Oddsen för att jag dessutom ska lyckas spela in allt får ses som rätt usla, men jag ska göra ett försök i alla fall.

Musikvideodags: Faithless

Jag manglar på med lite mer innehåll på svenska när jag ändå är igång, och plockar fram ett bokmärke ur musikvideomappen:



Jag är ingen anhängare av Faithless, och även om den här låten på papperet är lite poppig och slät för min smak så måste jag erkänna att den är väldigt fin. Men den stora behållningen är förstås videon, som dock inte verkar gå att köpa på DVD. Man tycker att DVD-singlar borde vara standard vid det här laget - formatet är ju ändå åtta år gammalt.

Blek blå prick

När jag nu satt och trilskades med Blogger-inställningar för att flytta den här styvmoderligt behandlade bloggen till min nya webserver hittade jag ett inlägg som jag tydligen missat att publicera förut. Det är en länk till en ganska enkel sida med ett par bilder och några stycken text, men som jag tycker säger ganska mycket ändå. Håll tillgodo: http://www.bigskyastroclub.org/pale_blue_dot.html

Musikvideodags: Urtrans

Detta är en av dunkadunkahistoriens mest inflytelserika låtar, och en bärande grundpelare till hela trance-vågen, speciellt då goa-transen som till stor del baserades på samma frygiska skala och filtersvepstrixande som What Time Is Love. Den här gjordes 1988, vilket gör den 19 år gammal nu. Givetvis är detta originalet som kom 2 år innan MTV-såsen med rap och grejer.

( )

This was written thursday the 11th, but couldn't be published until now since my server was grumpy.

Despite my reasonably strong affection for logic, reason and cold objectivity, I absolutely love being swept far, far away by music. A purely emotional trip, detached from all notions of the real world, with the neurotransmitters going off like an arsonist in a fireworks factory. These trips don't necessarily have to go into heavenly bliss, because the actual trip (or escape?) is more important than the journeys final destination. When I manage to create these moments for myself, I often think that I should write about them, or more specifically, write about the music that makes it happen. So today I thought I'd start with a bang, because this one is hard to top:

Sigur Rós - ()

If I had to pick 3 records out of the way over three thousand I own, this one is in. And it's even more than a one-in-a-thousand record, it's just so totally and utterly amazing, everything so unbelievably perfect. This damn well HAS to be one of the best albums ever recorded. In fact, listening to it now, the mood so mindbogglingly fitting, I can't think of anything better. Track 7 nearly brings tears to my eyes, and then when track 8 hits... I literally cannot breathe.

I was listening to this while writing, and cranking the volume up to insane levels for the unfathomably majestic track 8. I was going to get the fix of all fixes, that rush I craved so badly, the one that the entire album had been building towards. And then, sitting there with the proverbial needle in the arm, right when it was about to blast me into a supernova, my headphones furiously blasting the final notes building ut to the climax into my ears, a colleague snaps me right out of it by waving her arm in front of my face. She's trying to signal that I need to lower the goddamn volume in my headphones.

The emotional brutality of being ripped out of the music at that exact second is undescribable. Intellectually I know she was right, because the volume was most likely well into levels that can kill small mammals. But still, that moment totally destroyed my day. I'm downright aggressive now, towards pretty much everything. My replies to people have turned bitter and cynical, and I can't concentrate on my work. And to extend the junkie allegory even further, my dependency on this fix isn't the problem - it's the people that prevent me from getting it. Any fucker who gets between me and my music during the remainder of today is in deep, deep trouble.

At the dawn of a new enlightenment

In recent years, starting with a significant boost in 2002, I have been becoming increasingly outspoken about my disdain for faith and religion. I come from a secular family and Sweden is one of the least religious countries in the world, so faith was never really on the agenda for me, but with the advent of the web and the information about other countries that it brings has made me think about religion more and more.

My standpoint is that of the hardline atheists; I believe that religion is detrimental to both the individual and to our entire society, regardless of whether the person of faith is a fundamentalist or not. I have long planned to write a posting here, elaborating about my thoughts on this, but I feel that it's no longer necessary - It's been done so many times by people far more eloquent than myself. Instead, I will hereby predict the imminent dawn of a new enlightenment. An almost ridicilously bold statement perhaps, but mark my words, there is something monumental happening all around us right now.

I will not delve into theories about how the increased exposure of fundamentalist religion in recent years has aggrevated atheists, because I'm not very convinced that it's true, and I also find that such theories takes attention away from the matters at hand - namely that faith is dying, and it's dying fast.

But before I present my arguments, I will make some excuses and reservations. I know that at some point in this article, I will need a paragraph to serve as a disclaimer of sort, and I might just as well do it now, so here goes: Religion as a phenomenon will never die. There will always, as long as there are humans, be superstition and faith. There has always been, and there is good scientific evidence that we are genetically prone to such beliefs. I will also make no claims that the impending decline of faith and religion will automagically resolve the worls conflicts, because although those are often spawned under the flag of religious dogma, the problem is rooted even deeper within our instincts. In fact, what I suggest is happening to the global intellect right now might not make the world a better place at all in the short term - but that does not mean that it's not happening.

To reiterate, my prediction is that faith and religion will become marginalised in the coming years. How many years would be depending on your definition of "marginalised" and "religion", as well as what population you're talking about, and although I'll willingly admit that I'm not informed enough to make a solid prediction, I'd say that the majority of the worlds leaders (presidents/prime ministers/dictators) will be outspoken atheists in 20 years. That's a shot-from-the-hip guesstimate, but I stand by it none the less. I don't even think I'm being all that optimistic.

So what makes me believe this? First and foremost there is the fact that the existence of god cannot be proven, and that there is no scientific evidence, what so ever, that indicates that any supernatural being or force has made even the slightest alteration to our universe in the history of its existence. And if anyone by any chance would feel inclined to object to this assertion, please do us both a favour and make sure you understand the concept of the scientific method first. That said, if you indeed can prove the existence of god, I'd be absolutely thrilled to hear about it. For I strive to know truth, not to reassure myself that I'm right.

Now that bit about scientific proof just convinces me that there is no god, so what about the rest of the world? Why am I so confident people will start to loosen their attachment to the concept of faith? For one thing, I believe truth will prevail, and the non-existence of god is, by all definitions of the word, truth. And secondly, and here comes my main thesis in this little article, is that throughout the history of civilisation mankind has become increasingly skeptical concerning religion (albeit at an agonizingly slow pace). With the modern means of communication (not just the web; I'm also thinking of things like satellite television) ideas spread faster than ever. With this follows that erroneous theories and scams get debunked faster than ever, too. This is the category religion falls into. If you were in an isolated village under a certain religion with little means of communicating with the outside world, you may never get your beliefs tested or questioned. Now compare that with our online lives of today; draw it out as a graph and you see where the future inevitably puts us.

The increase in information availability is what feeds this intellectual evolution, and if we again imagine it as a graph, I think it's fairly logical to assume that it's exponential rather than a straight line. I feel as though we're now, at the end of 2006, hitting the magic 45 degree point of this curve, because suddenly atheism is everywhere. Not a single day goes by without anti-faith and anti-religion links are posted on sites like Digg and Reddit, as well as many, many others. And unlike just a few years ago, the overwhelming majority of comments on these sites are in favour of the ideas put forth in the articles. Richard Dawkins is becoming a mainstream idol in the US, which would have been a prepostrous claim just a single year ago, when even the cant-we-all-get-along agnostics could get called out as hell-condemned heathens. Now they're no longer called heathens, because the pendulum has swung to the other side - now they're being called out as blind apologetics, oblivious to the damage religion inflicts on the collective intellect.

Ironically, what I've written here is not solid, indisputable evidence - to play the devils advocate I could perhaps claim to have faith in this idea. But I'll rather see it as an observation of a trend and a conclusion based on the facts at hand.

If I'm right, and rest assuerd that I would absolutely love for that to be the case, we are about to see people change their stance all around us. People will, slowly but certainly, make the transition from perhaps-there-is-a-greater-force-but-I'm-not-really-religious agnosticism to there-is-no-god atheism and eventually, I would hope, to a point where they can and do intellectually and proactively argue against faith of any kind, and with argument and facts make a good case for why mankind is better off trusting scientific proof and logic, without superstition and imaginary friends in the sky.

Dissecting Black Metal part I: Religion

This posting has been due for 9 months now. I've avoided posting anything else as a way to force myself to finish this one, but that just resulted in no posts at all. So from here on I will probably post on a wider mix of topics rather that sticking to one at a time. Anyway, on to the main event:

Black Metal is religious music - often it's just a facade or image, but looking past the more commercial bands you will find people that are wholeheartedly dedicated to the worship of Satan, something they attempt to express through music. The flavours of satanism within this genre are many, as there is no established path like protestantism and catholicism within christianity. Sure there are organisations like the Church Of Satan, but that's like the kindergarden of religion, it's feeble nonsense. Instead, most "serious" black metal satanists appear to cook up their own beliefs, perhaps shared with band members and the record label, but not necessarily so. Among the more fanatic bands, publications from Ixaxaar and similar seem to be popular, but while I haven't read these things, I can't help thinking that it looks very much like a gloomier take on new-age. I mean, sorcery? Witches? Magic?

But the real problem here isn't that grown men think they can learn to cast spells from a book they bought on the internet - that bit is just sort of harmlessly cute. The problem is that any acknowledgement of Satan also acknowledges christianity, and thus also God and Jesus Christ as being the son of God. This isn't too impressive for a genre who largely proclaims itself to be anti-christian, now is it? Some bands have realised the paradox in this standpoint and have instead embraced christianity as the religion of opression and fear that it can rightfully be said to be. The Swedish band Funeral Mist even sport christian crosses in their band photos and frequently quote the bible in their lyrics. So if you're all for the oppression of mankind, this totally makes sense. But they don't quite follow through with it; their band logo contains both an inverted cross and a pentagram. And lyrics like "Shine through me Satan" (Track 3, ""Holy Poison", on their album Salvation) gives the impression that they can't quite make up their mind. So even the more ideologically advanced bands adhere to a flawed logic; In fact, I have yet to come a cross a band whose standpoint appears waterproof.

A classic escape route used by satanists when these types of arguments against Satan come up, is to redefine was Satan really is. It could be that Satan is just a word that represents the "true nature of man" (which then allows them to cunningly shift the debate over to the definition of what that is), or that Satan represents the antithesis of religion, that he (?) is some sort of anarchist, that he's the chaos that will prevail over the structure that religion tries to impose upon us. But if that is the case, then why call it Satan? Why the inverted crosses and pentagrams? The answer is obviously the same as for the cause of all forms of teenage rebellion; It's the result of a strife for identity in combination with a feeling of being an outsider. Combine this with a fascination with religion and it all comes together.

Ironically, a lot of the religious aesthetics of Black Metal are derived from the catholic church, the very same which also serves as the arch nemesis for many black metallers. Catholicisms strict dogmas and authoritarian hierarchy is frowned upon (to say the least), while at the same time, Black Metal often deals with lyrical and ideological concepts that revolve around Satan using them (the artists) as his tools, hence essentially adopting the very same structures and logic as catholicism. How can anyone keep a straight face while bashing christianity for abstructing free thought, while at the same time preaching total submission to Satan? All you get is a "my god is stronger than yours", sand-box level argument that lacks any trace of intelligence and reasoning. If the Black Metal crowd was really so intellectually superior as they try to claim, you'd think that surely they could squash christianity with logic. But since their whole faith is founded on the existence of christianity, they can't shoot it down. But then again, where would they go if they had done away with their enemy? Christianity is a necessity for Black Metal to exist. It's a symbiosis.

The few bands who try to solve these problems intellectually are either badmouthed for not being "true" to the ideals of black metal or compose such ridicilously complex lyrics that noone can really decipher any real meaning from them. Complexity for the sake of complexity (or obscurity) won't solve anything, kids.

Then there are the black metal bands who distance themselves from devil worship alltogether, and instead focus on the core ideas and values that often manifest themselves in satanism; a hatred for humanity. But I'll deal with these fellows in another post.