https://www.high-endrolex.com/18

Quarterly Review: Thief, Rise to the Sky, Birth, Old Horn Tooth, Solemn Lament, Terminus, Lunar Ark, Taxi Caveman, Droneroom, Aiwass

Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-fall-2016-quarterly-review

According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master

Thief The 16 Deaths of My Master

Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.

Thief on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

 

Rise to the Sky, Per Aspera Ad Astra

rise to the sky per aspera ad astra

The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.

Rise to the Sky on Facebook

GS Productions website

 

Birth, Demo

birth birth

Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?

Birth on Facebook

Bad Omen Records website

 

Old Horn Tooth, True Death

old horn tooth true death

Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.

Old Horn Tooth on Facebook

Old Horn Tooth on Bandcamp

 

Solemn Lament, Solemn Lament

Solemn Lament Solemn Lament

Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.

Solemn Lament on Facebook

Solemn Lament on Bandcamp

 

Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll

Terminus The Silent Bell Toll

A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.

Terminus on Facebook

Terminus on Bandcamp

 

Lunar Ark, Recurring Nightmare

Lunar Ark Recurring Nightmare

Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.

Lunar Ark on Facebook

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

Lunar Seas Records on Bandcamp

Realm and Ritual on Bandcamp

 

Taxi Caveman, Taxi Caveman

taxi caveman self titled

An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.

Taxi Caveman on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

 

Droneroom, Negative Libra

Droneroom Negative Libra

“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.

Droneroom on Facebook

Somewherecold Records website

 

Aiwass, Wayward Gods

Aiwass Wayward Gods

Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.

Aiwass on Facebook

Aiwass on Bandcamp

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Blake Conley of Droneroom

Posted in Questionnaire on September 15th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

Droneroom Blake Conley

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Blake Conley of Droneroom

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Well, the easiest way to describe it is instrumental guitar music. It, at this point is predominantly improvised, though before it was composed, and loop-based. This shift happened at the end of a couple of years of hard work and a feeling of having painted myself into a corner. I decided to remove the corner and just see where my brain and fingers would take me if left to their own devices, so to speak. Initially it was all electric guitar based and pedal heavy, but I’ve been attempting to shed as many things as possible to really focus on the root idea and see how deeply I can explore it with the fewest number of extras. This has unexpectedly led me to incorporate more acoustic instrumentation and occasional dips into lap steel even as a means of simplifying

Describe your first musical memory.

Probably riding with my father across the country in an eighteen-wheeler listening to Marty Robbins. Going from Tennessee to California, the twang blaring and nothing, but a road and open landscapes has really seemed to seep into my psyche.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Hmm… I always find the satisfaction of hearing back what you played and feeling like it really landed to be one of the most satisfying. Hearing how it may have changed for the better. Absorbing the full picture after only having the pieces is always one of the best things.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Um…as a libra, I feel like my beliefs try to remain flexible to different points of view. I really try to never say never on a creative level because there are so many directions music can go and saying you won’t do something is generally what makes you end up doing it.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Hopefully to becoming a more well-rounded player/performer. Any project or performance or interaction with anyone should lead to progress. You learn a new trick or idea. You experience a feeling you may not have before. Maybe it helps reaffirm something you already felt. The idea is always to improve and get further down to the core of your own voice. That doesn’t mean to shed yourself of influences necessarily, but maybe understand better how to work those influences into yourself. Even if improvements or adjustments are minimal or unnoticeable, they are there and should be embraced.

How do you define success?

That’s a funny one. Success for me is just… having something made and hopefully feel like it has been heard. Money is nice, but not necessarily the goal.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

A documentary involving a live birth.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I suppose being in an avant garde country band or a krautrock band…or some combination of that. There is so much music that one could create, and I’d feel amiss if I didn’t at least try to see how what I do fits into that. I’d also love to score a film sometime, but I feel like most instrumental musicians would say that.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

I think it serves several. It can sooth you, it can excite you. I often enjoy music that feels anxious as that can often serve to cancel out my own feelings of anxiety. Music can be the forefront of an experience or work as the background/underpinning to life and its myriad of activities. Books can rearrange your thinking as well as film. And these ideas can then seep back into your music. Art should give you a feeling and that feeling can carry over to everything else in your life

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

For me personally, a relocation. Otherwise just whatever new book, film, or conversation I may stumble into. Every day you can learn something new or feel some way you haven’t before and that is what makes living livable.

https://www.facebook.com/Droneroom
https://www.instagram.com/droneroomnotdrones/
https://droneroom.bandcamp.com/
https://droneroomswc.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/SomewherecoldRecords/
https://www.instagram.com/somewherecold16/
https://somewherecoldrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://somewherecold.net/

Droneroom, Negative Libra (2021)

Tags: , , , , ,

Six Dumb Questions with Vision Eternel

Posted in Features on September 16th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

vision eternel

Montreal-based solo-ambient exploratory outfit Vision Eternel — think if post-black metal had a “post” of its own; post-post-black metal — has this week issued the four-song concept EP, For Farewell of Nostalgia through project spearhead Alexander Julien‘s own Abridged Pause Recordings as well as Somewherecold Records (CD) and Geertruida (tape). The EP arrives after a three-year stretch that, if you told me Julien spent the entire time putting the offering together from front to back even though it’s only about 30 minutes long, I’d have to believe it. Executed not only with an evocative spirit emblematic of the ambient instrumental style upon which its sound is based, but with a deep conceptualism that includes a composed short story and artwork based around the central theme of loss and the ensuing progression through the various stages of acceptance thereof, For Farewell of Nostalgia offers rare depth of expression and heart for the microgenre in which it resides. This isn’t just a guitarist screwing around with pedals. These are cinematic, narrative pieces tying together to tell a story, and Julien has worked to make sure the listener understands this.

That would seem to include this interview. I’ve done more Six Dumb Questions features than I care to count for fear of self-embarrassment, but in all of them, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone so ready and so willing to open up about their process, their history and their intention, and that purposefulness is mirrored in For Farewell of Nostalgia itself, as the melodic wistfulness of Julien‘s guitar becomes the ground from which the ambience seems to take flight. It is all the more telling that the release arrives after an initial take that was scrapped for not feeling right, as there is so much about “Moments of Rain,” “Moments of Absence,” “Moments of Intimacy” and “Moments of Nostalgia,” that feels directed and working in precisely the manner it wants to. On a basic audio level, the songs are lush and evocative, and it’s certainly possible they might take the listener someplace other than the companion story seems to want them to go, but such is the nature of art, and it seems unlikely that, even with the core of will put into what Vision Eternel does on this latest addition to an expansive discography of mostly short releases, Julien didn’t account for such a possibility. The point, maybe, is then to let it take you where it takes you, then go deeper.

Whatever path you follow, it’s hard to divorce the tracks from the narrative once you have a fuller understanding of it, and in the interest of preserving spoilers, I won’t give too much away. What I’ll do instead is turn you over to Julien, and perhaps just take this opportunity to thank him for being as open as he is here about what he does. As someone who tends toward wordiness myself, it is all the more easy to appreciate.

For Farewell of Nostalgia is out now.

Please enjoy the following Six Dumb Questions:

vision eternel for farewell of nostalgia

Six Dumb Questions with Alexander Julien of Vision Eternel

The theme of “moments” speaks to an ephemeral glimpse at something – a moment passes. What does framing the songs on For Farewell of Nostalgia as moments allow you to bring to the experience of the listener and the narrative you’re telling?

The titling of a Vision Eternel release (and its songs) is subject to a long period of reflection. It is by no means an after-thought nor a rushed process. Since Vision Eternel releases concept albums, I would not be able to explain the titling of the songs without detailing the titling of the release.

During the composing and recording sessions, I write down words that I feel are representative of my mood and the themes that I am expressing emotionally through the music. Once I find a couple of words that I think work well together for a release title, I brainstorm several combinations and I sit on them for a while. Vision Eternel’s release titles need to have a certain rhythm, like a statement-of-fact, a short sentence. I also make sure that the title is completely original, that nothing comes up when searching for it on Google. That is very important to me. If one has been used, or is too similar to another work, I discard it.

The sense of the word farewell in the title is intended to be interpreted in its olde English sense, as in fare thee well. But I did not want to use that kind of phrasing because it did not fit Vision Eternel’s style and concept. I am old-fashioned but not that old fashioned. I took a little bit of poetic liberty so that in its used phrasing, For Farewell Of Nostalgia means for the well-being of nostalgia.

I felt that I was taking a chance giving this release a title… perhaps as grandiose or elegant… as nostalgia; there was a fear that it might not live up to its name. I take nostalgia very seriously. It has been such an important part of my teenage and adult life, constantly living with the nostalgia of yesterdays. I desperately wanted to represent nostalgia with the utmost respect.

The title, and the entire concept of the extended play, does also symbolize the heartaches of past loves. But it too is an ode, mixed with a Dear John letter, to Montreal. A dispatch saying “Thanks for the memories, the wonderful and the miserable; now good-bye”. This is my farewell to the city where I was born and where I came back to as an adult. Where romance and melancholia truly bloomed. I no longer live in Montreal but I think that Vision Eternel will always have a symbolic link to that city; even more so than to Edison, New Jersey, where the band started.

The titling of the songs is another concept within the concept: adding the first letter of each song title spells out the name of the girl to whom the extended play is dedicated. This has been consistent across all of Vision Eternel’s extended plays, with the exception of Echoes From Forgotten Hearts because it was originally composed as a soundtrack.

The process of determining the song titles is a little bit different from the release title, but it is just as exhaustive. I know ahead of time how many songs are going to be on an extended play (the amount of letters in the girl’s name). From there, I try to choose single words that are descriptive of the emotions in the songs, but that also represent the progression of events in the story-line. The song titles should define where along in the time-line the tragedy is.

Some time during the recording session I also try to pick out the common prefix for the song titles. In the case of For Farewell Of Nostalgia, the prefix Moments Of had been one that I had considered using for an earlier extended play, The Last Great Torch Song. But I was unable to due to the complexity of matching the girl’s name with two songs that were re-recorded from previous releases. Since Vision Eternel songs are technically only given a single-word title (Absence, Intimacy, Rain, Nostalgia, Narcosis, etc), the song can be accommodated to fit on any release if it is re-recorded. For example, Absence had originally been recorded for Un Automne En Solitude and was given the title Season In Absence; it was re-recorded for For Farewell Of Nostalgia and its title was updated to Moments Of Absence.

I went a step further with song titles on For Farewell Of Nostalgia. Since the songs were much longer and they all had different sections and movements, different segues and repetitive codas, I was able to provide extended track titles. This was something that I had been interested in utilizing for roughly fifteen years; it was something that impressed me from Harmonium’s concept album L’heptade. I used it to some degree on Soufferance releases, like Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The Mind (completed in 2009), but it was with For Farewell Of Nostalgia that I incorporated the method to my satisfaction. At first glance, the extended play appears to feature only the four principal songs, but once one delves into the tracks, or consults the booklet, there are titles for each movement of the songs. The extended track listing also parallels the short story that accompanies the physical editions of the extended play.

The album is defined by this profound sense of loss in the progression of each moment within the tracks themselves. After working on For Farewell of Nostalgia over such a period of time, how has your perspective changed on what inspired the work in the first place? How did the development of the story coincide with the development of the songs themselves? Which came first, the narrative frame or the music?

The music was recorded first; I penned the short story during the post-production. But the short story, and the extended play, are based on events that occurred prior to the composing and recording of the music. This goes back several years, partly due to difficulty composing and finding my direction; partly because For Farewell Of Nostalgia was recorded twice.

I had made several attempts to compose new material between October 2015 and February 2017 but my heart was not into it. The material lacked direction and substance. I began composing and recording better-developed demos in the spring of 2017 but I was forced to put that aside in order to finish compiling the boxed set An anthology Of Past Misfortunes. Once that was released in April 2018, I could go forward, without hindrance, composing and recording new music. From April to October 2018 I recorded For Farewell Of Nostalgia. But I was not happy with it. There were a number of things that I felt were wrong with the release. Some things were unacceptable, like crackling, distortion and humming in the recordings. I attempted to re-record a lot of it, only to find out that some of it was caused by my studio equipment. Just as I began fixing that problem, an uncontrollable fret buzz plagued the main guitar with which I was recording.

Some of the other problems that I had with the first version of For Farewell Of Nostalgia had to do with personal preferences. For example, I did not feel that the songs flowed well together; they each sounded too different. I also had difficulty mixing because I was using too many layered tracks and effects. These original recordings, which I later started referring to as pre-production versions, were a lot darker, harsher and abrasive, not only in sound but in nature; I had a different perspective and approach when I was recording them. It was a very difficult decision to make, because I had garnered record label interest, but I put the release aside, for what ended up being a whole year, while I regrouped.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2019, I upgraded my gear and studio equipment. In early October 2019 I started re-recording For Farewell Of Nostalgia; by mid-November I was done tracking. Minor mixing and editing lasted until late December while I wrote the short story. In early January, Carl Saff mastered the extended play. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with him and it really made a big difference. I was impressed by his work with Castevet (CSTVT, the Chicago emo band) and he was the first person that I approached once I finished the recording in November 2019.

It was a well-contained recording session because this time around, I wanted the songs to sound like they belonged together and I knew where I was going. All of the songs were re-recorded in a consistent mind-frame and mood. It helped tremendously that the sequencing was already planned by this point. That allowed me to properly end and start each song in a way that it was complementary to each next piece. I was mindful of how editing one song may alter the others, which is not possible (or would require additional editing at a later time) if the sequencing is done during the mastering stage. The sequencing of the songs is really important when I approach a concept release.

I was very proud of the new version. The songs greatly improved the second time around, especially once I added textual guitar leads; the pre-production versions did not have leads. Nearly everything that appears on the released version of For Farewell Of Nostalgia was recorded during the 2019 session, with the exception of a couple of backing tracks on one song, which I kept from the 2018 session because I felt that the emotions were stronger on the original recording.

Something so personal is still somehow also vague – there aren’t lyrics or verses or choruses, etc. – but the story is expressed in emotional and evocative terms. How do you feel about putting something like this out and opening it up to the interpretations of others?

There are no vocals on this release but I consider the short story that accompanies For Farewell Of Nostalgia to be of equal value to lyrics. The extended song titles are, in-sort, the chapters to the short story. This is only available with the physical editions of the extended play however, because I felt that it should be read, like lyrics, in an old-fashioned setting: putting on a record, admiring the sleeve art and reading through every part of the concept while listening. It is an event; a presentation; an experience.

One of my ambitions with For Farewell Of Nostalgia was to present something different to the ambient community; to face them with a release that embarks an alternate pathway: a profound approach of focus. I do not want Vision Eternel to be diminished to background music while listeners perform other tasks. From the visual presentation of the cover art and deluxe packaging, to the conceptual delivery within the sequencing and production, the extended song titles and the short story, For Farewell Of Nostalgia was my way of documenting and sharing my most personal sentiments.

The short story, appropriately titled For Farewell Of Nostalgia, recounts events that inspired the extended play. It is a narrative of how I was emotionally devastated after falling in love too fast, and the aftermath of this heartbreak. Falling in love-at-first-sight, the intimacy of it all, and the stifling wound when the realization hits that it is not reciprocal. It is about learning to befriend absence and loneliness and living with constant sentiments of nostalgia and melancholia.

I do not want to appear closed-mouthed about the short story; it is simply that I do not want to give too much of it away. I very much want people to read it and interpret it for themselves. That is part of the experience.

Tell me about the artwork and the direction that ended up taking.

I absolutely adore the illustration that graces For Farewell Of Nostalgia’s cover. I feel that it is the first real artwork that I have had for Vision Eternel. On the first three releases (Seul Dans L’obsession, Un Automne En Solitude and An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes [the compilation, not the boxed set]), the artwork was simply my own photography. The photographs were not particularly good and I do not consider myself a photographer by any means. I liked the colours within but the subject matters were rather bland. You might say that this style is typical of ambient album artworks today, but at the time, they were simply used because I had no alternative… I wanted to handle every aspect of Vision Eternel myself, including the artwork, and that resulted with ordinary covert arts.

For Abondance De Périls and The Last Great Torch Song, my friend and former room-mate Marina Polak provided a photograph for the artwork. I had attempted to take photographs for Abondance De Périls myself but they were sub-par, even by the standards of my own photographic competence. Marina, who was a terrific photographer and studied art and photography at the university, offered to contribute one of her own. The moment that I saw the picture, I fell in love with it; it represented Vision Eternel perfectly. The photograph is credited to her name but she did not actually take the picture. She had found the negative in a garbage bin in the streets of Poland during one of her visits in the mid-2000s. From what I understand, the person who owns a photograph’s negative is the legal owner.

The artwork for Echoes From Forgotten Hearts was done on the rush by my friend Jeremy Roux. This one was more in line with the band’s early artworks: it was extremely bland and without direction. It was nondescript. It faded into the background next to other ambient albums on a web-page. But that is what I was going for at the time; it was what I asked Jeremy to come up with. He is actually a terrific graphic designer and he was responsible for all of the early visual material used by Abridged Pause Recordings and also designed Vision Eternel’s first logo in 2008.

The artwork from An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes (the boxed set) was on the opposite end of the spectrum: it was vivid and eye-catching. It was constructed partly from original abstract paintings by Rain Frances and partly from a cardinal bird craft art done by my late grand-mother Pierrette Bourdon. She was a craft artist and the bird artwork was actually her last piece of art before she passed away in 2012.

The approach to For Farewell Of Nostalgia’s artwork was completely different. It was very well planned out. When I re-recorded the extended play in 2019, I wanted to contain my mood and atmosphere so that the entire release would sound whole. That was very important for me and for a concept album; you do not want the songs to sound like they were recorded or mixed at different times. I brought out one of my favourite albums: Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours. I put the vinyl sleeve next to my computer so that I would always have it there to inspire me. I also limited myself to solely watching Frank Sinatra’s films during those two months. He is an incredible actor and most people do not seem to remember (or know about) that aspect of his career. I am not a fan of his musicals (nor of the musical film genre as a whole), but his dramatic films are amongst my favourite films. When it came time to decide on the artwork, it seemed like an obvious choice; pay homage to Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours. Tom Waits had done it with his second album The Heart Of Saturday Night, so I figured that I could too.

I then went to the extent of combining several photo shoots from over the years (some done with Jeremy Roux, others with Rain Frances) into an original collage mockup that represented Montreal and paid tribute to Frank Sinatra. It also took several new photo shoots until I was happy with my pose; I wanted the angle of my body and my facial expression to be just right. This was not a parody like a “Weird Al” Yankovic album cover (and I mean that respectfully); it was a legitimate homage to something that I felt had become part of me, that helped me get through so many of those lonely, depressed nights that led me to write and record this music.

It was also important for me to incorporate things into the artwork that represented me, that made it a little different from Frank Sinatra’s original, and that tied into the concept of the release. I smoke a pipe (and not cigarettes like Frank Sinatra did) so that was put into the image. Other details that perhaps only a hat fanatic may notice are the subtle differences in shape and style of my fedora. Frank Sinatra had a skinnier face so he wore narrow-brimmed hats; I have a round face so wide-brimmed hats suit me better. My hat also has a ribbon edge binding, while Frank Sinatra’s was a raw edge cut. I wore an overcoat and scarf for the photo shoot, while Frank Sinatra wore a suit and tie. Several Montreal landmarks were also put into the background: the Montreal Harbour Bridge, Windsor Station, the Saint Lawrence River, the Sailors’ Memorial Clock Tower on Victoria Pier. There were many more iconic Montreal structures that I originally wanted to include in the background but it became too busy, too removed from Frank Sinatra’s minimalist artwork. The background on my release is very descriptive; it clearly represents Montreal, whereas Frank Sinatra’s cover made him the sole focus with a nondescript street scene behind him.

It took a long time to find the right person to paint it. I finally landed on American illustrator Michael Koelsch because he had illustrated two cover artworks for The Criterion Collection. In 2000 he illustrated the DVD cover (later re-used for the Blu-ray edition) for The Blob; and in 2001 he illustrated the DVD cover for My Man Godfrey (this one was unfortunately not re-used for the Blu-ray edition). Pulp art design has made a considerable comeback in film posters and in paperbacks but it was really difficult finding someone who was able to work it into an album cover art. Luckily, Michael happened to be a big fan of Frank Sinatra and knew In The Wee Small Hours well, so he was able to incorporate the sadness of both albums (Frank Sinatra’s and Vision Eternel’s) into the new painting. He had also worked on several notable music album artworks during his career so he understood what I wanted and where I was coming from.

I then approached Rain Frances to paint two abstract paintings to use in the physical editions of the extended play. One of them, which happened to have already been painted in 2019, was used for the short story booklet. The other painting, which was painted especially for the release, was used on the bonus compact cassette Lost Misfortunes: A Selection Of Demos And Rarities (Part Two). Rain had painted the artwork for the first tape in that series (included in the An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes boxed set) so it made sense that I approach her for this sequel.

I was aiming for an eye-catching presentation with the artwork of For Farewell Of Nostalgia and I could not be happier with the results. I wanted it to represent who I am and how I see the world. I did not want people to look at my release and think “Hey, this looks like a nice peaceful album”, in the manner in which so many album covers remain descriptive of their genres. This is Vision Eternel’s first extended play to be released and distributed by established record labels (meaning not my own imprints), so it will be seen and heard by mostly newcomers to my music. I want these new listeners to be intrigued by it, and to approach it from a different perspective than they are used to.

Where do you go from here?

Over the years, I have slowed down my rate of releasing music considerably. I have always been a firm believer of quality over quantity; my approach to composing music for Vision Eternel has evolved in such a way that I could no longer rush out a new extended play each year.

On Vision Eternel’s first two extended plays, 2007’s Seul Dans L’obsession and 2008’s Un Automne En Solitude, the compositions and arrangements were minimalistic; short songs that sounded sad but remained hopeful. The production was also minimal and straightforward: very bright and focused on treble.

In 2009, I changed my setup while composing Abondance De Périls. The new setup helped provide a warmer, more accessible sound, which was emphasised, and greatly improved, during the mastering by Adam Kennedy. This was the first time that a Vision Eternel release was mastered. The same setup was used to compose and record the songs that ended up on The Last Great Torch Song.

Up until this point, the songs were still minimalistic but The Last Great Torch Song marked the beginning of a change. It welcomed several guest appearances by my close friends: Garry Brents on keyboard, Alexander Fawcett on guitar and bass and Howard Change and Eiman Iraninejad on vocals. I was unsure of Vision Eternel’s future at that point so I was treating The Last Great Torch Song as a potential swansong. I had hoped to incorporate many more guests on the release but many were not able to provide their contributions in time for the mastering deadline.

The Last Great Torch Song’s closer Sometimes In Absolute Togetherness was the real turning point. The song had originally been composed and recorded as a Soufferance song, but it always felt to me like it had far too much of Vision Eternel’s style to be a true Soufferance song. I was torn but I ultimately used it on a Vision Eternel release; that was my first of many steps letting go of the strict guidelines that I had set for Vision Eternel. Soufferance was much darker, more self-destructive; it had longer songs and experimented with more instruments and vocals. Vision Eternel by contrast was straight-forward guitar-based music; optimistic and hopeful (I always hoped that the girl would come back).

Things changed further with Echoes From Forgotten Hearts in 2014/2015 and that is because that release was not recorded, nor approached, as Vision Eternel. I had been contacted to compose the soundtrack to a short film. I therefore approached the songwriting as myself, without the restrictions that I normally placed to conform the music within what is expected of a certain band. It was a completely natural songwriting approach. When the short film fell through, I was unwilling to let this music be unheard because I was really proud of it. So I partly re-recorded, re-edited, re-mixed and re-conceptualized the soundtrack into an extended play. I released it under the Vision Eternel banner because that was the project closest to my heart and I felt that the music sounded most like Vision Eternel did at that point.

Having broken so many barriers along the way, and considering that Vision Eternel had become my principal band, I was now free to compose music that was entirely natural to me. I no longer felt the pressure to sort songs into what each band was supposed to sound like. Vision Eternel’s new material was simply going to incorporate the best of what I once brought to each of my ambient bands (Vision Eternel, Soufferance, Citadel Swamp and Éphémère).

But in a realistic sense, since Vision Eternel was always my pet project, the new material will not be alien in comparison to the older works; it is simply a natural progression, placing less restrictions on myself over the years. I still approach Vision Eternel compositions with the same emotions, the same themes; always about heartbreak. Hitchcock once said “self-plagiarism is style”, and I think that applies to Vision Eternel. But I am now incorporating additional elements, which are already familiar to folks accustomed with my other bands. From Soufferance, I brought in longer songs, the segues and movements, the lengthy emotional build ups and the hypnotic, repetitive codas (think of Swans in the mid-1990s). From Vision Lunar and Éphémère, I brought in guitar leads; that was something that I was not utilizing often in my ambient projects. And from Citadel Swamp, I brought in the way that I layer and mix several instruments together; finding ways of making leads flow over rhythm tracks.

The music took a long time to be polished and I spent nearly three years working and re-working the songs that ended up on For Farewell Of Nostalgia. With that in perspective, I plan to heavily promote this release for the next couple of years. I am also actively looking for a record label to release For Farewell Of Nostalgia on vinyl format with an exclusive bonus track.

I am also in discussion with Somewherecold Records about the possibility of re-releasing Vision Eternel’s 2015 soundtrack/extended play Echoes From Forgotten Hearts as a double-disc edition. It would feature a remastering of the extended play version as well as the never-released soundtrack version. There are several notable differences between the two versions.

Vision Eternel, For Farewell of Nostalgia (2020)

Vision Eternel website

Vision Eternel on Thee Facebooks

Vision Eternel on Instagram

Vision Eternel on Soundcloud

Vision Eternel on Spotify

Vision Eternel on Bandcamp

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Vision Eternel Set Sept. 14 Release for For Farewell of Nostalgia

Posted in Whathaveyou on July 15th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

It’s been a while in the making, but Vision Eternel‘s new EP, For Farewell of Nostalgia, has been slated for Sept. 14 release on CD, tape and DL. Somewherecold Records has the CD, Geertruida has the tape, and those two and Abridged Pause Recordings will all have a hand in the download. That’s covering a fair amount of ground, but of course, Vision Eternel do the same in terms of sound as well, the cinematic drone of the Montreal one-man outfit evocative of place and time as well as emotion/mood and atmosphere. I haven’t heard the new outing yet, so can’t comment on what it might hold sonically, but ambience is the stock and trade here, so expect some depths to dive into, nostalgic or not.

Details from the PR wire:

vision eternel for farewell of nostalgia

Vision Eternel’s For Farewell Of Nostalgia EP Scheduled For Release

For Farewell Of Nostalgia, Vision Eternel’s newest extended play, will be released on September 14th 2020. The release will come out on compact disc, compact cassette and digitally.

– The Compact Disc Edition will be released by Somewherecold Records and packaged in a four-panel eco-wallet, factory-numbered and limited to 100 copies. The CD will feature an exclusive bonus song, unavailable elsewhere, and a booklet with a short story written by Alexander Julien.

– The Compact Cassette Edition will be released by Geertruida and the coloured tapes will be packaged in a double-tape case with an over-sized booklet, factory-numbered and limited to 50 copies. The tape will feature an exclusive bonus song, unavailable elsewhere, and a booklet with a short story written by Alexander Julien. The Compact Cassette Edition will also bundle a second tape, titled Lost Misfortunes: A Selection Of Demos And Rarities (Part Two), containing twelve exclusive b-sides, demos and alternate takes, all unavailable elsewhere.

– The standard Digital Edition will be jointly released by Somewherecold Records, Geertruida and Abridged Pause Recordings. Anyone purchasing a physical edition from one of the three record labels will automatically receive a free digital edition.

For Farewell Of Nostalgia was mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering. The cover art was painted by Michael Koelsch at Koelsch Studios, and the booklet art was painted by Rain Frances.

Vision Eternel is still looking for a record label to release For Farewell Of Nostalgia on vinyl, so get in touch!

https://www.visioneternel.com
https://facebook.com/visioneternel
https://instagram.com/visioneternel
https://soundcloud.com/visioneternel
https://play.spotify.com/artist/52WyoEAtuPS2QJ2qYOmb6u
https://visioneternel.bandcamp.com

Vision Éternel, Sixth EP Teaser

Tags: , , , , , , , ,