Breyer P-Orridge: the quality of quantity!

Who ever said that quantity is not a quality? The past months' veritable floodgate of Breyer P-Orridge-related material deserves a closer look. Or are you perhaps already aware of all of these things?

The publishing of First Third's monumental memory lane volume Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, containing hundreds of images of Genesis in formal transition over the decades, is an impressive feat. Not only is the project as such highly interesting and revealing (transition and morphing being one of Genesis' main tools of the artistic trade). It's also such a beauty of a book, with standards of production worthy of a Steidl, Rizzoli or Taschen. The underground in an overground package, so to speak. Mind boggling stuff!

Dais Records in New York recently released an LP with COUM Transmissions. This isn't all music per se but recorded sounds from the COUM era. It's a nice release, and a must have for completists of course (read: Industrial Culture philatelists). Here's what Dais writes:

"The most recent installment of the rare & unheard archival recordings from the transgressive 70′s performance art group COUM Transmissions. Founded in late 1969 by Genesis P-Orridge, COUM Transmissions’s provocative performances mixed with visual art solidified the group as one of the most forward thinking breakthroughs within the 70′s conceptual art scene. Only in the past couple years has COUM’s recorded works seen the light of day. This release collects various selections spanning the years 1971 through 1975, including a rare live performance opening for Hawkwind, lost radio interview, obtuse poetry readings by early member Fizzey Peat, piano & violin compositions by Genesis P-Orridge and insightful field recordings. Limited to 1,000 vinyl copies."

Space Rock outfit PTV3 have also been diligent and at it recently, playing live and recording. Angry Love has released some inspired neo-Hawkwindean sounds that takes you to the bright side of the moons and back. Who'd ever thought that the P-Orridgean beatnik existentialism of yesteryear could house the seeds of Krautish riffing? No matter what, far out it is. And sounds.

Cold Spring have recently re-issued several Psychic TV concerts from the 1980s and 90s on CD. I've lost count of these, sorry. See for yourself at Cold Spring's website. Available there is also the highly recommended Psychic TV Themes box set of CDs. For a review of that, please see my blog post from July 2nd, 2012.

My own little digi-label endeavor with Thomas Tibert, Highbrow Lowlife, has also contributed to the avalanche. We have been active for four months now, and there are several GBPO-related releases in our budding catalog of aural adventures: The EP I Travel, some tracks on Cotton Ferox' debut album First Time Hurts and, most importantly, the full on collaboration between Genesis and Cotton Ferox in the album Wordship. Available now at Highbrow Lowlife's own web store. And available in many other places too, including streaming on Spotify and similar services.

A documentary film about Genesis in the An Art Apart-series is in the works. It's produced by yours truly together with the magnificent production team AMP, and so far we have shot material with Genesis in Stockholm, Gothenburg and New York. We aim to have this film ready by the end of 2014.

Another memory lane trip is the slim but interesting volume G.P.O. vs G.P-O., being a collection of reproduced documents from the infamous court case in 1976. This is a nice 2013 facsimile edition from Primary Information of the original 1976 Ecart volume. The case was the sensational one when Genesis was charged with sending "indecent" postcards/collages through the UK mail system (GPO=General Post Office). With a little help and support from William Burroughs and other friends, Genesis got away with a fine. And material for this compendium. Interesting to read as a document from an era of UK governmental oppression very hard to fathom today. 

For more "porridge with everything", please have a look at www.genesisbreyerporridge.com

All material on this blog is copyright © Carl Abrahamsson, unless otherwise stated.

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Psychick gig bliss up a head!

Genesis P-Orridge, Gothenburg 1989. © Carl Abrahamsson

It's never too late or too soon to look back and enjoy the past. Especially when it deals with future, as it does now. On June 29th, White Stains will resurface after a 20 year hiatus/hibernation. This in order to celebrate two specific projects: White Stains' 1990 album At Stockholm and Cotton Ferox' album Wordship (2004). Is there a common denominator? Of course. We made these albums together with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge – a living legend if there ever was one.

As we enter the stage at Nefertiti in Gothenburg on the 29th, Genesis will be with us. Not to make specific renditions or versions from our two albums, but rather to encourage and celebrate the atmosphere they contain. Very likely, we will surf on this wave of recurrence/resurgence to make a third album too. It would be stupid not to.

Late 1989, I organised a small spoken word tour for Genesis in Scandinavia. We had also already planned to record some of Gen's readings in a studio setting. As White Stains had just integrated sonic wizard Thomas Tibert, who had his own studio, everything moved on pleasant automatic. Gen read his poems perfectly – most of them were recorded on first takes – and when we later made the music for the poems it was like hand in glove on all levels. With textual material like that and a reading that smooth and professional, it's very hard not to make history.

Other adventures then intervened, as they usually do. But in 2002, it felt like it was high time again. As Genesis was coming over to do a lecture on his work at experimental music centre Fylkingen in Stockholm, Tibert and I prepared new music (then as Cotton Ferox) and it was bliss all over again. The result was released in 2004 in the form of Wordship. Some of these vocal recordings had also been used on Cotton Ferox' debut album First Time Hurts in 2002.

Someone as versatile as Genesis must surely have a hard time with projections from others. Is Genesis an (oc)cultural engineer, an industrial music pioneer, a collage artist, a philosopher, a magician etc? Well, of course, all of these and then some. But there is one all-permeating quintessence that is unmistakeable. Genesis is a poet. This is what fascinated me in the beginning of our friendship, and it still does. That's why it'll be an honour to share the stage with Gen and celebrate his/her poetry and the bizarre music that Tibert and I have concocted over the years. They go well together.

The performance will be neither "industrial" nor "electronica" nor "spoken word" but rather all of it in a colourful and quaquaversal mix created to make emotional jump cuts and possible existential mutations. It will be a grand old time spanning from ancient history to the distant future. I hope you'll be there together with us at Nefertiti in Gothenburg on June 29th, 2013, on this exciting adventure.

MORE INFO AND TICKET SALES HERE. BE SMART AND GET YOUR TICKET NOW.

PS. You can buy all of the above albums at the iTunes Music Store. By buying the albums instead of illegally downloading them, you help us in the process of making and releasing new music. Thank you.

I should also mention that the concert is the public final event of a four day conference/symposium at the University of Gothenburg dealing with esotericism, occultism, alternative health movements and many other interesting things. Please consider taking part in this too!

THE ESSWE CONFERENCE

"In the beginning there were White Stains." (Genesis 23:1)

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The Best Album Ever?

The recent re-release on vinyl of Psychic TV’s 1983 album Dreams Less Sweet has made me ponder one of those very important questions in life… Could it be that this is actually the best album ever made? The more I listen to it, the more convinced I get.

In general, I’m conservative in terms of taste and it’s been very hard for me to realise that The Stooges’ Funhouse or Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street perhaps no longer fill the emotional voids of yesteryear. I can still enjoy them, and occasionally do, but not in the same compensatory way like when I was 15. But that is merely a personal perspective of course. Life changes. Musical tastes change with it.

Which albums are still flawless on every level 30 years after their release? Well, those two rock’n’roll classics certainly are, I’d say (and then we’re talking more than 40 years!). Probably a few others. But if we zoom back to 1983, what was going on that still remains fresh and interesting today? Not much, right?

Throbbing Gristle had already re-created or corrupted the concept of an album and made the experience as much an intellectual merry-go-round as a sensual one. Although existentially dark and steeped in harsh, late 70s UK life, TG brought revelation upon revelation to the generation that wasn’t satisfied with merely the three chord simplicity of punk. Not only was an element of intellectual adventure brought in. The very idea or concept of what an album could actually be was dropped like a smart bomb in the cesspool of clever and self-indulgent nihilism of the era.

This openmindedness in structure and magical planting was developed further on Psychic TV’s debut album Force the Hand of Chance (1982), but only to a degree. The focus here seemed to be to corrupt expectations post-TG more than anything else. Soft-sung pop ballads and quite conventional music surely made some die-hard TG fans twitch, but in general it was a pleasant new direction.

If Force the Hand of Chance was the smooth antithesis to TG in general, then the synthesis that followed turned out in every way perfect. Dreams Less Sweet is so well balanced in its content and form, so imbued with overt messages and esoteric secrets, so intricate in its concoctions and so simple in its totality that I fail to find a similarly perfect album.

If we stick to the non-postmodern approach first, ie rub off all the programmatic raisons d’être and just leave it to the ears (preferably snugly stuck in good headphones), we are sucked in by a church organ and into a serene… The Orchids… What a masterpiece! Genesis P-Orridge’s frail voice and exquisite lyrics are matched by a simple orchestral arrangement, with oboe and marimbas. How unlikely was that arrangement at the time?

On to Botanica, with violent drumming and musique concrète elements, sliding into Iron Glove, an almost Morriconesque backing track to a recorded telephone poem (read by TG- and PTV-collaborator Monte Cazazza)… Always is Always Forever, a choral ”arrangement” for solo voice, followed by a 60s-inspired pop ballad, White Nights, again centered around P-Orridge’s voice in a mi(d)st of Beach Boys vibes. Followed by another high contrast twist, Finale, with machine guns, fire, snarling dogs and martial trumpets.

Eleusis is another vocal piece, with added percussive glass-like elements, perhaps to accentuate frailty in power or vice versa. Medmenham brings in forceful Tibetan Thighbone trumpets, seductively swirling in stereo. Ancient Lights: a collage of vocals, telephones, traffic sounds, karate instructions and more. Proof on Survival…”Do not be deterred by little results… Persevere…” (with sounds of someone being buried, in this case the microphonic head called ”Ringo”)

Eden 1: A frenzied telephone collage turns into experimental minimalist ”rock”… And tattooing sounds… Eden 2: More chorals… Eden 3: TG-sounding aggression, soon to be pleasantly contrasted by Clouds without Water… The soundtrack to a 1920s stroll on the English counryside…? Black Moon sounds like Lou Reedish basic pop…”The little boy, a living ghost…”

Silver and Gold: Ethereal Tibetan singing bowls… Followed by the ”smash hit” (in the literal sense) In the Nursery… Inner spiritual visions recounted to violent music…”Without is without in the nursery…”

Circle ends the album… A single flute in emotional farewells, actually bordering on the sentimental… Not so much "El Condor Pasa" but perhaps "El Condom Plaza"…? Because when the music’s over and the album’s over your mind has truly and genuinely been boinked, severely and pleasantly so.

If we jump back on the postmodern bandwagon and take a look at what’s there on the programmatic level, we find a multitude of references that further thickens and makes potent the already beautiful structure. Always is Always Forever is the classic Manson Family song, here revamped into high seriousness. Clouds without Water is the title of an Aleister Crowley book from 1909. The emotional tone of Crowley’s poems surely resonates well with Dreams Less Sweet:

”All hope of life even from the rare sad seeds

It blows from sunnier vales and happier hills,

Though at best they be but worthless weeds.

I stand – I scan the infinite horizon

Of hopeless hope – yet I must travel on.”

(Clouds without Water, ”The Hermit”)

Medmenham was the place where Sir Francis Dashwood gathered his acolytes in the caves of his infamous Hell Fire Club. Incidentally the same caves where the Tibetan singing bowls of Silver and Gold were recorded.

The sounds of ”Mr Sebastian” (a pioneer of genital and other kinds of piercing in the UK) tattooing a young Geoff Rushton/Jhon Balance. Eleusis, the initiatory environment/temple in ancient Greece that allowed its chosen few to see beyond the veil of ordinary life, very likely through hallucinogenics. The ”Nursery” was the term for the ritual space/temple of the PTV related order/group Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth. Burroughs-references are here too (and Burroughs’ ”second mind” Brion Gysin is thanked in the sleeve notes). And everything was recorded with ”holophonic” sound, an Ersatz kind of stereo that does indeed create quite an eerie presence (as mentioned before, listen in headphones). Et cetera.

In all, the form and the content add up to a shockingly wealthy impression of sub- and occultural magnificence. It’s not an ”experimental” album. It’s not a haphazard attempt at being clever either. It’s truly a sui generis piece of art that just happened to manifest in sounds and words. A journal of inner experimentation, an invaluable example of artistic courage.

Yes, now I can see (and hear) it clearly: Dreams Less Sweet is indeed my favourite album. Whether it's the best one ever, I leave to you to decide.

Dreams Less Sweet in now available on vinyl in a special 2013 edition from ANGRY LOVE!

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