#my cabal

[burnpartyvibes]

[lies]

My Cabal, School of Seven Bells

My cabal, he sleeps outside Pulling the shadows over the moonlight My cabal, won’t you come inside Forget the darkness if just for one night

Possibilities Baited with personal inconvenience Every time he feels That baited resistance tugging at his sleeve He struggles to find who He struggles to see why He’s weary with a weight So often confused with authority, But whose?

He sleeps outside Pulling the shadows over the moonlight

I want to know why Paper is so different And what happens once these Promises incubated hit the air I want to know why the Air becomes so thick and impenetrable And why another set of rules apply, why?

My cabal, he sleeps outside Pulling the shadows over the moonlight My cabal, won’t you come inside Forget the darkness if just for one night

Written by Alejandra Deheza, Benjamin Curtis, Claudia Deheza • Copyright © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., BMG Rights Management US, LLC

[the-loon]

Love this every bit as much now as when it was first released.

[vermillionlove]

remembering a post I saw a long time ago about SVIIB

them: I really love half asleep by school of seven bells, it makes me feel dreamy and relaxed and it’s just an amazing song

me: :) *clicks like*

them later on in the post: but I really hate the song my cabal, it sounds like some 60s hippie bullshit

me: :| *clicks unlike*

[seserakh]

[unclewerewolf]

School of Seven Bells -- My Cabal (Alpinisms, 2008)

[lightandloveforbenjamin]

Day 33: My Cabal

OK, I own way too many versions of this song, and I can't even decide which is my favourite. I made it single of the year in 2007, back in another life as a music journalist, on the strength of the canary yellow vinyl 7" version released on Sonic Cathedral records, with an etherealicious remix by Robin Guthrie on the B-side. (If I wanted to get really Sad-Fan about it, I'd boast about owning the White Label of it, nyeah nyeah nyeah, oops I just did.) But actually, no, to be honest, my favourite version is still the original 2006 demo, all those backwards guitars, sitar riffs and a plonking one-note piano drone like something off a Dukes of Stratosphear record. (The only way it could possibly be any better would be if playing the run-out backwards revealed the girls chanting "I buried Brandon" over that very Machines-sounding Rhodes riff, but perhaps, after the Across The Universe soundtrack, it was a conscious decision to step away from all that.) And no, I don't mean the "Early Mix 2007" version that is on the extended bonus reissue of the album - I'm tempted to upload the version I have, if the band would allow it?

Don't get me wrong, I love the wall-of-sound shoegazetastic version that ended the album; the beauty of those open fifths on the chorus would cut through any arrangement. But there's just something so immediate, so fresh, like the joyous but jittering rush of coming up on acid, that surge of electricity on meeting a mysterious but beautiful stranger who you know will turn your life upside down and rearrange your mind, but curiosity and desire override prudence and fear*. Despite the 60s affectations, it's a much more danceable version, with burbling electronic bleeps and bloops, and a floppy early 90s baggy beat that reminds me affectionately of the 12" remix of Spiritualized's glorious first single, Anyway That You Want Me.

The final version is missing a verse, too, or maybe the words are so low down in the mix I can barely hear it, which bothers me when the words are so lovely I wish they were turned up blisteringly loud: We've confined ourselves, to a singular form, hatched a long long time ago. The arrangement is pure cathedrals-of-sound, that massive friendly rush of guitars of smooth guitars aligned with cooing "ooh" vocals like something off Loveless. It's the cosy friendliness of a relationship that has had time to settle in, to become comfortable and familiar, that has bloomed into something beautiful and soothingly womblike*. The gamble paid off, having your life turned upside down resulted in something overwhelmingly better.

*(Or are both these reactions projections of my own relationship to the band, from "well, it's not TSM but I like it" in 2006 to "OMG this is better than TSM, they are my now my favourite band!!!" in 2008? Again, with the "music is my boyfriend" metaphors. Maybe "girlfriend" in SVIIB's case? Genderfriend? But still! Fandom is a kind of relationship, I can't pretend it's not.)

And it's funny, but it's the final version that seems to me so perfectly attuned to a specific time and place. Music is my "In Search of Lost Time" trigger for memory, and this song brings back the Thursday night "service" at Sonic Cathedral on Old Street. Around the time the single was released, I used to have to work really late, in the financial services industry before the crash, and it was a joy to jet across the City to lose my frustrations in drinking and dancing to the music of my youth, like a stripey-shirted, bowl-cutted School Disco. Sonic Cathedral was a weird mix of first generation shoegazers who remembered the first time round (my closest friend there used to let My Bloody Valentine crash on her floor when they were a struggling indie band touring the UK) and kids who had barely been born when those records were released. My Cabal was one of those records that pleased both crowds.

Do you ever really know that your own personal "happiest days of your life" are going to be just that, while you're living them? Or is it something that only time and memory reveal traces of, washing away the bad bits and the boring bits that irk you while you're in them, until the hassle is gone and only the halcyon remains? Memory can become a kind of a curse, believing that the past was universally better (or universally worse) with the rosy glow of memory, it happens all the time when I'm writing this blog, and fall into a music-induced nostalgic trance where the past seems more real than the present. What is happiness? There's this trap where you can start to think that happiness is purely being free of hassle, and if you eliminate the hassle, and isolate yourself in a perfectly calm bubble, then you will achieve happiness. But all the things that truly promote actual joy and happiness - dancing, friends to drink with, creative endeavours, hopes, dreams, schemes, funny little plans that never work out right - are fraught with hassles and personal inconvenience.

School of Seven Bells seemed like such fun in those early days, when they were still making it all up and figuring out the possibilities, what form it would take, what it was going to be. The MySpaces, the mysterious photos, the fake names (there was a theory at one point that they were going to be a family of seven siblings, all named Bell*. The song titles, My Cabal and My Camarilla, were based on pet names, if I recall correctly - which I probably don't, my memory is so poor. These were the kinds of theories that internet messageboards excelled in.) It was such a leap into the unknown, this band. A leap that paid off in every way possible, I think.

*EDIT: Goldmine-Owl has reminded me that it was actually from Night of the Gifts, a short story by Borges**:  "I remember reading that on the MySpace/Night of the Gifts about the bells -- Camarilla, Cabal, Joviann, Babelonia, Dahlmann, Gavilana and Cirrostratus. I think B&A were Cabal & Camarilla for a while? And Claudia was Cirrostratus (b/c of A Cloud Mireya, maybe?)"

(which I half-remembered, and thought, "nah, can't be, because 'from a short story by Borges' is exactly the sort of half-imagined thing my memory would come up with in lieu of the truth," and dismissed it as too obvious to be true) - which prompted me to have a dream last night, that I went to my local library in order to look for this book by Borges, to confirm it, only to discover that Streatham Library was in the middle of a refurbishment (which it is, in truth, about to undergo) and all the stacks and books were hidden behind construction works and cafes, and the basement had been sold off and turned into someone's flat (nightmare involving metaphors for the privatisation of services in the UK right there) and in the end I couldn't even find my way out, let alone find the short story by Borges. It's good to know my subconscious has a working sense of irony.

**Except it wasn't. When the first Easter Bank Holiday was finally over, and it stopped snowing enough for me to get to the library and find The Book Of Sands, it turns out that Night of the Gifts has nothing to do with My Cabal, and is actually about Platonic Forms, the stories we tell ourselves to make up our personal histories, and the unreliable qualities of memory. So the joke is on me, yet again.

[ruffsnap]

School Of Seven Bells - My Cabal

an awesomeeee song!!