[Hieros Gamos by SUBHYMNAL](https://subhymnal.bandcamp.com/album/hieros-gamos)
In November, 2022, the staff received a wonderful submission from Subhymnal. Due to the incompetence of our chief administrator of submissions, the album was misplaced and not found until almost two years later during an unrelated raid on a section of our company that we can not disclose.
That withstanding, we managed to legally obtain the original copy that was sent to us and can now post it here for everyone to enjoy, along with the letter quoted below (it was written on parchment paper with charcoal):
Hello there! My name is Corinna and I’m ½ of the band Subhymnal. Our first album Hieros Gamos is a sonic ritual inspired by Roman Mystery Cults and Knights Templar Baphomet worship. We’ve also released a single called Born From a Rock that’s an exploration of the God Mithras’ mythology. We believe in supplementing these concepts with equally powerful and subtle frequencies to create an experience of Initiation into higher planes of being within the comfort of one’s own home. I hope you enjoy our offerings and please feel free to reach out to me by email with any further questions or inquiries. This music is my life and I believe in it passionately. I make the music that I want to hear and cannot find- but blogs like yours make me not feel so alone 🖤
The entire staff of dystopiker’s Experimental Sound Laboratory, LP. have been laid off as there was a saboteur amongst us. We could not identify who, even though we employed thorough and sometimes destructive investigations into the matter and thus a complete cleanse was the last resort.
Nonetheless, the company itself shall withstand, but our most talented writers are no longer with us. Therefor, the wonderful and elaborate descriptions and analysis of music posted by the company may be lacking in the future. We're here for the music anyway.
Signed,
Interim CEO of dystopiker's Experimental Sound Laboratory, LP.
The administrative staff received an anonymous tip regarding a label called important drone records from Spain. This tip was lost during an attempt at a hostile takeover of dystopiker’s Experimental Sound Laboratory, LP. by a venture capitalist firm. Through skillful work of hired law firm, the whole ordeal was ousted and the unnamed venture capitalist firm walked away with a big loss.
Furthermore, the staff of dystopiker’s box of esoterica can’t confirm that this did or did not happen. But it must be said that this blog, nor its vast network of subsidiaries will never dwindle to capitalist forces.
In any case, and far away from above mentioned debacle, this tip re-emerged after an inventory of the archives. With a label named important drone records, it raised the eye brows of one senior members of the staff.
It did not take much investigation before the track παλίντροπος I was being played on the loudspeakers in the office, creating a confusion at first among the staff.
Confusion that quickly led to interest and soon the staff gathered around the set of loudspeakers to listen, and to discuss how it could be possible that no one had heard this particular piece before despite decades of researching the subject of drone music. All the while the aforementioned senior staff member had a wide grin across his face.
“It actually is true drone.” someone exclaimed quite befuddled.
It is no secret that dystopiker’s box of esoterica started off as a drone-specific blog and over time widened its view to feature other experimental music that fits the definition of esoterica. This change of direction with the blog have been the subject of frustration among the investigative department that was sure there were more than enough drone music to be found to run the blog for decades to come. However, they also agreed that the amount of leads received that left them empty-handed was a concern and thus agreed to widen their efforts to non-drone music.
With this tip, cheers could be heard from the investigative department and after having listened through the entire Palintropos Harmonie, they could be seen exiting the building together for a celebratory drink at the tavern across the street.
Not much needs to be said about Palintropis Harmonie. It simply is pretenseless drone music. There’s depth, space and movement, all breathing inside the same droning atmosphere. You’ll find no unsolicited melody creeping in the background, no sudden appearance of sound that jumps at you like a distressing Jack-in-the-Box.
This is not a criticism of other works of drone music. Vague melodies and unusual introductions of sounds can have their place. But the surprising aspects of a drone composition should be the quality of its entirety. The work should speak for itself, in its long-form self.
The staff of dystopiker’s box of esoterica would like to kindly thank the anonymous tip received that made this feature possible. Please, do not hesitate to submit your own music or a tip of other people’s music to the blog. Regardless if it is drone or other forms of experimental music that might fit the blog’s theme, it will be considered by the board of review.
Primarily described as an alternative and/or experimental rock band, Osees released The 12″ Synth in December 2019. It’s a two part 40 minute long improvisational album. The first part consists of a persistent and nagging beat, as if a synthesizer is digging it’s way down a tunnel, discovering different entities and outer worldly caves on its way. Finally, twenty minutes into this journey, there’s lava, bedrock and chaos as the digging intensifies before is comes to a sudden stop.
Does the second part continue on the first or are we now in another space and time? There’s optimism, albeit with uncertainty looming in the background, swinging back and forth, in and out. The optimism slowly fades into a landscape of obscurity and darkness. In the middle of a field, an effigy of A Hawk and a Hacksaw are playing Pastelka on the Train. Somehow not deliberately, more as if they are tuning their instruments before a concert.
It becomes quite clear that the world we are witnessing is a caricature of the one we know. Or at least a poor facsimile. The listener’s gaze will evoke a feeling of uncanny valley. Living beings and inanimate object looks off. They can be defined as something known, yet they look so foreign as a whole. There are no particular details to point towards that would expose their falsehood, it is only once observed in its entirety it becomes clear that things are not what they seem.
Uncertainty is all this world knows. It all seems so natural in the end. It would be possible to live here a full lifetime without losing one’s mind, but not without becoming one with the obscurity.
It seems that this year has no end, just as little as this pandemic seem to want to disappear. Everything that has happened during these last twelve months seem like a lifetime worth of events. Too many to recall, to re-tell. But the pandemic is the dark cloud ever present over our heads.
But the year is ending now, in just a few days, and what will 2021 bring? We’re eager to think that good things are bound to happen. We’ll shoot off fireworks that explodes in colorful displays just as the pandemic cloud is clearing.
The pandemic might come to an end, but as the dust settles from our wild celebrations, a familiar landscape reveals itself. All the problems we forgot about while isolating ourselves in quarantine are still laid out at our doorsteps. And the biggest question yet to be solved knocks on our door: climate change.
During the year there’s been news articles about how the younger generation does not want to have kids. Some studies attributes this attitude to the pandemic or economic reasonings. But just as likely is probably the uncertain future. It’s not far-fetched to say the future looks bleak, to say it might not be sustainable for our survival.
One thing is for certain though: the year will come to an end. Let’s hope our innate optimism will bring us out of this mess alive and well. Let’s hope that 2021 not only gives us some breathing space, but also hope for the future. We need it.
Somewhere in outer space, there’s a tone that shoots through the darkness. A lone satellite. It warbles gently as it heats up when passing suns in solar systems far from ours. It is sometimes mistaken as a shooting star, one that lights up the night and then continues on over the horizon and out into the darkness again - never touching ground, never penetrating the atmosphere of the planets it rushes past.
It leaves a trail of echoes behind as it navigates through an asteroid field, vanishing into a nebula or a dark hole.
Quasar 2C361 from 1977 is the introductory course to space music. It was Neuronium’s first release. This post is focused on the album’s first track with the same name. It’s 26 minute long and takes up the full A side of the album.
The band has since Quasar 2C361 released over 40 albums over the years. The title track starts off with a thereminesque synthesizer tone that vibrates drastically through lower and higher tones, accompanied by tasteful R2D2 poetry.
But soon this electronic activity is interrupted by a flamenco guitar and flute and we find ourselves in not only space music, but space western music. If there ever was a soundtrack for when your space shuttle has left earth’s atmosphere and you’re finally in orbit, looking down on what we call home, this album is certainly it.
Acoustic additions aside, there’s notably a deliciously warm pad to the right in the stereo field that’s held for much of the first half of the track. It fades out as a round and bouncy arpeggiated synthesizer line is increasingly taking up its spot in the right ear.
This arpeggiation escapade intensifies and is soon the main star of the show. All the way up to the last few minutes when we’re more or less back to where we started in this space western.
And although the track seem to end on the flamenco guitar’s simple melody and a held chord from a synthesizer, there’s more to come in the last minute: an unruly noise that twists and turns, distorts and rumbles. All without becoming too intrusive, rather it’s kept at a controlled level and a fine note to end on.
It’s time to wake up from the winter hibernation. All is left behind but hazy memories of dusty esoteric memorabilia. As light seeking its way into the dark cavern, so does faint echoes from the spring twisting and turning outside. The whole world, twisting and turning. Birches shiver as a deep breath runs through the forest and into the cavern. The once settled dust comes to life and swarms around the esoteric memorabilia like disturbed flies.
Adonia. The name of fourth son of King David. But also the name of Ose’s only album, released in 1978. Whether the theme of the album has anything to do with King David’s fourth son or not shall be a question left unanswered. It’s one of those albums best to listen to with an open mind, and perhaps with a nose only gently dipped into the puddle of curiosity.
One can certainly connect the red string with one end to parts of this album and the other end to more recent music. For example, the bass line on the second track Orgasmachine (starting at 16:00 in the linked video) could just as well be from today’s retrospective electronic music scene. The accompanying electric guitars that sing with a hopeful tone will - however - not fool anyone.
It is only in the first track Approche sur a that perhaps the electric guitar’s gentle hymn could be likened with some of today’s post-rock music.
Regardless, comparing this album to the mischiefs of the 21st century is seldom relevant. Esoterica, whenever it may be from, is a subject of isolation. A tiny satellite off on its own in the deep, dark space.
It’s difficult to say if the album name Fight the future is a call to action or a call of desperation. Perhaps it is ambiguous. Regardless, it’s a fine example of punk music without distorted electronic guitars or pumping drums.
It’s sustained punk music.
It carries the same message and with just as much desperation and contradictory feelings of hopelessness and let’s fight back mentality. Whatever we’re meant to fight back or give up on is up to the enjoyer of the music.
In these times the thoughts wander off to the environmental disaster that is eminent - or rather: that is happening all around us. Or the various states of political unrest that’s quivering in nations all over the world.
Sometimes techno is a four-on-the-floor bass drum being thrown at you like punches from a big PA at a club you wonder how you ended up in. But sometimes techno is a mesmerizing cloud of magical dust that helps you with the “I’m taking it day-by-day” reality.
In the case of The Torrid Eye released in the beginning of 2019, it might not even be fair to call it techno - or perhaps that is exactly what it is, but we have watered down the genre so much that we’re afraid to call genuine techno techno.
Who is this album for? Perhaps you’ve cried your eyes out, to the point that they are truly torrid and you need something to level the field of emotions running rampant. Or perhaps you’ve been staring blankly into the nothingness of your room or your office, losing the feeling of time and you just need a beat to go with your state of affairs before you lose your damn mind.
In any case, it is an album not to be enjoyed, but to be experienced whether that be with positive emotions or in the darkness of your inner self.
If you are interested in algorithms and mathematical theory, the quite extensive write-up by Michael Winter himself about a lot of tiles (trivial scan) is a must-read. If not, you’ll soon find yourself quite overwhelmed, possibly bored and most likely thinking less of the piece featured today.
Yes, it is easy to over-explain art and the process behind. a lot of tiles (trivial scan) is an excellent piece of esoterica. There’s a sense of algorithm, there is a sense of non-linear, but constant, structure - a sense of a system. There is no need to dwell into theory and mathematics; the composition speaks for itself.
By no means does this mean that Michael Winter’s write-up is to be criticized. However, it should be read at another time. That is to say, post-listening to the actual composition itself. Post-quite-a-time-afterwards-listening. Or perhaps even more importantly: it should be read as a subject, separate from the object itself.
a lot of tiles (trivial scan) was released in 2018 and composed by Michael Winter.
The fundamental of all sound and vibration: the sine wave. It is a pillar (or rather a smooth arch) of trust to lean back on when lost at the distorted sea. Our tendencies are to mask the sine wave, bend and fold it to create timbres with seemingly more life and movement.
But perhaps we are mistaken. Does not the fundamental contain the most life? It is ground zero, the start of a hike with endless paths to wander down. And wherever you set up camp, it is on the sine wave you sit down to rest your weary feet.
During a Lifetime by Chiyoko Szlavnics is a composition from 2015 for sine waves and a saxophone quartett (performed by Konus Quartett). The sine waves are gently moving in and out of the picture and although the saxophone quartett is present, it is only there to carry the sine waves deliberately.
Chiyoko Szlavnics is no stranger to sine waves. She has used them in music for several years (most intensively around 2006). She often translates her music from her line drawings that she makes as a part of the composing process.
In fact, her website has a very interesting gallery featuring her different drawings. Studying them while playing her music in the background, one can certainly see that the language, although expressed in different mediums, is the same.
The hunt for esoteric phenomena can be a hunt filled with mirages and falsery. Quetzalcoatl from 1977 by the Mexican artist Tito is in itself a labyrinth with pathways leading to nowhere, or simply to a mirror where you not only see yourself, but a multitude of imaginary pathways of which you may not enter.
It leads you in with a haze that excites your curios tendencies. As you walk through the smoke you dream of what is to come, what wonder you may hear and see and feel in the 27 minutes you’ve sat aside. The crudely constructed dinosaur on the album cover and the mystic name (of which you have, of course, not searched for on the Internet to find out its definition and thus ruining the mysticism) was enough to entice you.
But not two minutes into the dreaming you stumble over a cord and fall to the ground. As you get up, brush off your clothes, it becomes apparent to you that you’ve walked right into a movie set where they’re filming a colonial documentary about some tribe in some jungle.
It can’t be. Everything felt so right this time, but yet again the hunt for esoterica has made you a laughing stock. Esoterica is not real you think to yourself.
But you don’t get the chance to repeat that sentence, sending you into an anxiety trip you know all too well, because the movie set has disappeared - it was the mirage!
The truth of Quetzacoatl is that it in itself is a labyrinth. And a labyrinth is made to be a challenge, it is there to separate the impatient from the patient. Quetzacoatl means not to fool you, just to test you and if you can stand it teasing you, poking fun at you, you’ll be rewarded by something quite alien.
Yes, something truly alien. The sound of the better parts of Quetzacoatl is that of an alien machine that is trying to imitate the music of planet Earth to play back to its designer.
It is beautiful and melancholy. But nonetheless it is sincerely eerie in its unhuman character: Who goes there?
F.G. Experimental Laboratory - Journey Into a Dream
There’s no reason to spare the words here: Journey Into a Dream by F.G. Experimental Laboratory is one of the finest examples of esoterica to date featured on this blog.
Released in 1975 it bares a lot of resemblance to other contemporaries of its time - yet, it sounds so unique and isolated. And it’s this isolation that is such an important quality of esoterica. The introvert nature allowing the music to express intense feelings of claustrophobia, timelessness, nostalgia and so on through its uniqueness.
Frédy Guye, a musician from Switzerland, is the mastermind behind Journey Into a Dream. And even his presence on the Internet is of esoteric nature, the man has a Myspace page - a relic in and of itself.
If you are versed in French, there’s more to be found on the man than available in English. For example, there’s a the French TV channel Canal Alpha has done a short feature on him. The feature is worth watching even if you do not understand a word of French: you get to see Frédy in his studio playing various melodies on his synthesizers that immediately reminds you of Journey Into a Dream!
All the photos available of Frédy Guye further serves as proof that his music is born from isolationism. Alone, he sits in his studio laboratory with synthesizers and other bulky electronic gear surrounding him.
Regarding the actual music on Journey Into a Dream, it’s better to just sit back and listen to it with headphones on. Although the YouTube rip in this post suffers from some rather annoying crackles and pops from the vinyl, it still is a fantastic journey into Frédy Guye’s inner genius.
With the first track Budbringeren bearing remarkable similarity to the old Swedish folk song Byssan lull by the great Evert Taube, it’s clear that this is a work of fusion - but just how much fusion, the listener might be surprised to find out as the album progresses. In fact, one need not even abandon Budbringeren until it briefly breaks out into an almost Pink Floyd-esque composition with a gentle choir (like a very mild version of The Great Gig in the Sky).
Most of the album is rather fast-paced and perhaps oversaturated with avant garde free form jazz and funk. Nonetheless it’s an interesting journey of references to different genres of music (and sometimes it feels terribly dated).
But there’s definitely plenty of times to listen more closely.
One such example is right after the almost frustratingly intense track Gaderne, the more affable track Havnen plays us out of the A-side of the album (at 17:28 in the video). Its sound would fit in a noir film’s soundtrack, as the camera slowly sweeps over a sleepy town, showing its quite nightlife and perhaps the odd character here and there as the music progresses.
On the B-side, the first highlight is the second track Toget (at 24:56 in the video). It somewhat continues on where Havnen left of in its noir-esque sound. The melody played on an unidentified instrument (most probably a clarinet?) leans on some middle-eastern tonality at times which could certainly be explained in musical theory by someone with authority in the subject.
But if there is one track to take away from this album, it is the second to last track: Generalerne (at 32:02 in the video). It starts off with an organ drone (drawing back to the roots of this blog) and a mean bassoon moaning sporadically until finally being tamed by the organ, a distorted bass guitar and some slow drumming.
From there on, the track takes off.
It is easily the most musical and most listenable piece of the album. In a way it also finishes off where it all started: with a Pink Floyd-esque sound. There’s attitude; the listener is being carried forward by every single beat, by every single growl of the bassoon - if only it lasted longer!
Not to be confused with the seemingly still active American band with the same name, Spacecraft was a duo consisting of Ivan Coaquette and John Livengood that only released one album: Paradoxe from 1978.
If the name of the band and album was not enough of a hint, it immediately becomes abundantly clear within seconds into the album that what’s on the menu is experimental psychedelic space music.
Although the first three and a half minutes consist of ambient soundscapes twisting and turning in and out of itself, the album stays true to its experimental nature and drastically changes character many times.
Quite often there’s two synthesizers playing repetitive melodies tirelessly together while a guitar is trying its best to keep up and find the right notes to accompany them.
At nineteen minutes in the song playing is lost in a distorted noise and slowly fades out, leaving just the tape hiss behind. Soon a rather somber track starts which at first could just as well be a new release under one of Legowelt’s many aliases.
One of the constants in the album seems to be the melodies interplay between the left and the right stereo channel. Sometimes you have a guitar or synth melody coming in the left channel and then being repeated in the right channel. In fact, at times it feels almost as if the entire track is being played one beat delayed in the right channel - creating a very lively and interesting stereo field.
The experimentation with the stereo field when recording is a re-occurring theme in early esoteric music and perhaps a forgotten tool in modern times. Stereo recording is standard today and methods of how to record and mix in stereo have been standardized as well, consequently leading to less experimentation (for good and bad).
Diving into the deep end of electronic music today it would be easy to think a revolution is ongoing. New technological advancements every month and at the same pace, new music seemingly bending the laws of music theory as much as bending the air to create sound waves never heard before.
And it should be said that electronic music is very much alive. It is a genre that thrives on experimentation and technology, so it being alive also means things are moving forward. But in the chaotic world of shimmering ambient, retrowave, dream pop, lo-fi hiphop etc. it's all too easy to fall into the notion that the sounds of today were just made possible with our current technology.
But like everything in life, there’s causation, there’s evolution. Everything we call reality gets crunched through a timeline with infinite filters in different sizes and with different mesh patterns, leaving everything that is looking just a little bit like what was.
Skies in the Mirror produced by the duo Cabaret du Ciel in 1992 did not see much success when it was released. Listening through it now, there’s parts that sounds very much dated (such as Falasarna Exposure that sounds eerily similar to some 80s movie theme). But then there’s parts that fits just right in the current reality of electronic music (such as the, what we would call retrowave-ish, T.V. Sky, or the shimmering ambient introduction track Hora Aurea).
The re-introduction of this album to the market has apparently spawned new inspiration for Cabaret du Ciel and rumors has it there’s plans for new releases in the future.
A basic painting of a girl in a red sweater dancing (?) on a green field is all that accompanies the 2001 album release named Seleya by the just as elusive artist Novisad.
Perhaps the gray part of the painting is not the sky, but the river Seleya in Perm Krai, Russia?
Anyway, it is in the nature of esoterica to be a bit hesitant in finding out too much about the subject. Imagine walking through an old mansion, into one of those rooms where all the furniture is covered with white sheets and blankets. If you were to uncover all the furniture, the mystique would be gone or at least drastically decreased.
Rather move along and let the imagination run rampant as you continue down the corridor. Or in our case today: as we close our eyes and let Seleya takes us on a journey through her soundscape.
