Sunn O))) - White 1

OK, congratulations if you made it this far! You are now at the Final Test. If you make it past this one, you will be invited to the Drone Graduation Ceremony and be welcomed to the ranks of The Musical Fringe. But beware, this final installment will test your endurance the most...

Pitchfork says (with tongue firmly in cheek):

Please please, come inside. Welcome to Magnetic Park. We've just finished drawing the pentagram in goat's blood on the floor and we're almost ready to conjure up the seventh level. What? Just a "door-to-door encyclopedia salesman," huh? Well, there'll be no need for encyclopedias where we're going, but I'm afraid you've already seen too much for us to simply let you leave... alive! OH, I'm kidding. Relax. You'll only have to stay until the ceremony is complete, at which point you'll hopefully be a true believer like the rest of us. Now please put this cloak on, say a prayer to the severed head, and prepare your body for the fluid of the infants.

Let me just introduce everyone, then. Those two around the black ring of fire, Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, are the originators of this sacred music and ceremony you are about to experience, Sunn O)))'s White1. The individual resting on the mystical stool of the beheaded is Rex Ritter, formerly of such cults as Fontanelle and Jessamine, and to his right is Joe Preston, of Earth and The Melvins, who prepares the accompanying drum machines to our din of sin. The one awash in his own feces is Julian Cope. He'll be regaling us with one of his famous odes this evening, and hopefully making his exit shortly thereafter. Between you, me, and the skinned bunny rabbits, he sort of gives everyone here the creeps.

It has begun. Since you are new to the ceremony, I will walk you through the dark and deafening sounds your aura will soon be cleansed with. The music currently loosening your bowels is the obstinate bass feedback the group is known for in this community. It serves as the breaker upon which the guitar tremolos crash, giving the duo their distinctive and brooding sound. Julian arises now to begin his exercise in theatric word painting, "My Wall". It's really quite enjoyable to listen to, and even more fun to recite once one gets past the coquettish nature with which he refers to Anderson and O'Malley.

The key to deciphering Cope's abstract speech can be found in the line, "My wall, my wall, caught beneath the thrall of my wall," referring to both the weight of the song and his faux-epitaph-- "here be the wall of Johnny Guitar." Ready? Repeat after me, "Old mother-fucker, she was a cock-sucker." Isn't he a lyrical genius? And now begins the instrumental outpour. Be sure and pay attention to how the tonal washes of the electric strings continue to lull you into a false security while the occasional crashes harshly bring you back to the reality of your knocking knees.

Don't be frightened, that's only Runhild Gammelsaeter of Thorr's Hammer fame. She marks the beginning of "The Gates of Ballard" portion of the rite by rising from the throne of discarded headcheese. Her chant serves as the high-end compliment to the single rising tone of instrumentation. The strong bass kicks in, stalls, and eventually progresses into a rhythm outfitted by a programmed drum, courtesy of Ritter. This atmosphere is explored off and on for the remainder of the song, until it eventually gives way to "A Shaving of the Horn That Spared You".

This "Shaving of the Horn" track is meant to explore the more experimental yearnings of the dark Lord that oversees all such doom metal. It pulses at times like a Stockhausen-directed helicopter, with hissing and popping that's occasionally cut by angular guitar noises. The humming you hear is meant to provide an accented beauty to the harsh sounds and effects that O'Malley and Anderson usher forth from their instruments. The truly remarkable moment has not yet come upon us, though. Be patient, you will see.

AH! THE HUMMING HAS TRANSFORMED ITSELF INTO A GNARLED AND UGLY GROWL! ALL THINGS ONCE CONSIDERED STUNNING AND ATTRACTIVE ARE NOW PEPPER TO YOUR EYES UPON BEARING WITNESS TO THE POWER OF THE SATANIC DRONE!

HEY! Where you going? Don't leave yet! BUT YOU LEFT YOUR ALL YOUR CLOTHES AND PAPERS HERE! Yeah, I don't know what his deal was, guys. I guess some people just can't handle the brute power of music like this. What a pity...

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mtq1day3ann

Coil - Time Machines

Here is the second installment in the industrial drones trial. Like the NWW album, this release is also subtly insidious in its psychological effects...

"We attempted to dissolve time." That's how the late John Balance, half of the now disbanded British experimental musical duo Coil, described the aim of their 1998 release Time Machines (Eskaton). Balance said this with such matter-of-factness that you hardly notice the ludicrousness of his claim. No mere sensation-hungry dabblers when it came to tearing down the doors of perception, Coil certainly had reason to stand behind their assertion. Having logged countless hours drifting in the lapping tides of Time Machine's slowly unraveling synthesizer drones, I can tell you that Balance and musical partner Peter Christopherson definitely succeeded in their attempt. Coil's m.o. with Time Machines can be best summed up by the title of Spacemen 3's 1990 demos compilation Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To (Bomp). Starting from the premise that hallucinogens can remove oneself from one's temporal reality, Balance and former Throbbing Gristle member Christopherson (with assistance from William Breeze and Drew MacDowell), set out to synthesize music that would catalyze and tease out the temporally-disruptive effects of specific chemical compounds. If that sounds a bit dry, there is indeed an aura of scientific self-seriousness to the release. Each composition is titled with the chemical name of the substance it has been designed for - track one, "Telepathine" (an earlier term for the compound found in Ayahuasca or yage, popularized by Burroughs and Ginsberg); track two, "DOET/hecate"; track three, "5-Me0-DMT"; and track four, "Psilocybin." But for Coil, science was another form of magic, something driven home by the album's cover design: a black, glossy oval that alludes to the obsidian "scrying mirror" of Renaissance magician and astronomer John Dee, who supposedly used the stone to conjure spirits. (A limited number of albums also came with a set of stickers that when placed on top of each other depicted Dee's sigil, the Hieroglyphic Monad). I should confess, with much embarrassment, that for the many times and many different contexts in which I have listened to Time Machines, I have yet to experience any of the tracks while on the substances for which they were specifically engineered. That said, the album's transportive effects are noticeable even while listening sober (and are certainly heightened by strong doses of THC). My experience has largely been subtractive: it is hard to do anything or to think about anything with much success, or even "actively listen," while Time Machines is playing. It is the aural equivalent of an isolation tank, in that you don't even notice the vessel falling away, you're so immersed. Turn it on, tune in, and dissolve. - Matt Sussman

Highly Recommended!
Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?qzmmddnd3zm

Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy For Lillith (Six Songs For Lilitu)

For the next several posts, you will be tested!
I am taking you on a journey through the haunting and surreal world of industrial drones!

Our first visit will be to a soundscape created by Stephen Stapleton (a.k.a Nurse With Wound)
The album was recorded by Steven Stapleton and his wife Diana Rogerson in May 1988. The only sound source was a number of effects units which he had set up to operate in a feedback loop - there was no original input signal being processed, simply the feedback hum generated by plugging the original chain of pedals back into itself. However, when Stapleton went near the pedals he found the sound changed in accordance with his proximity to the various pedals and units. Stapleton created the album by gently moving his fingers above the various units to create the slow, subtle changes in the sound. This fortuitous accident is utilized to stunning effect on the six sidelong pieces that comprise the album. As this shouldn't happen, Stapleton has put the album down to an electrical fault of some sort in the studio. This was acknowledged on a later reissue with the credit "our thanks to Electricity for making this recording possible".
Soliloquy for Lilith is an album of complex, powerfully realized moods, both somber and fragile; one of the most rewarding "ambient" albums ever made. Giant sheaves of majestic, glacial sound are wielded in repetition, with the inevitable effects of sound decay and distortion creeping in at the high end and bottom tones. It's a gleaming sound full of depth and dimension, like a work of modern metal sculpture in which you can see your distorted reflection. When given your full attention, the coldly warm tones have the effect of rendering thoughts, and therefore time itself, neutral. The same sound palette is used throughout, but each track manages to be very different from the last, birthing its own unique phantasms.

Highly Recommended!
Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ymyz3z5wjtm