Whenever I hear Mark Ellis’ voice through my earphones, I feel as if I am in a dark room with candles , filled with poets , musicians, deviants and artists. Not of this world, not of this sterile everyday life....
For those of you not aware of Elijah’s Mantle, they are a spoken word instrumental band, of London-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Mark Ellis. Featuring spoken word adaptations of poems by Baudelaire, Rimbaud along with contributions by Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard of none other than the sublime Dead Can Dance, accompanied by exquisitely twisted and hellish instrumentals, all their albums are true gems and should not be over-looked.
“Preface Au Lecteur”, a spoken word adaptation of Charles Baudelaire’s “To the Reader” to his collection of poems Flowers of Evil, is a poem which presents a pessimistic account of the poet’s view of the human condition along with his explanation of its causes and origins.
My favorite by far and an ode to us humans and how wretched we truly are defined by religion, guilt and riddled by supressed crippling sexual desires and how we can never truly be ourselves.
“...among the jackals , the birds, the monkeys, the scorpions and the serpentine...there is one more stained with evil than the rest.....it cannot rest content until the world lies in desolate ruins and sore distress...you know him reader and all his stupid schemes....for we my brother hypocrite..are of the same sad kind..”