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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Dust Volume 7, Number 1

Phicus

Another year, another volume of Dust, which means we’ve been collecting these brief, pithy reviews for seven years now. This time around, we sample the usual cornucopia of genres, from ambient death metal to Iranian punk to noisy skree to shoegaze-y lookalikes to polyglot global dj grooves, with the usual stops in free jazz and improvisatory environments. Contributors include Jonathan Shaw, Bill Meyer, Ian Mathers, Jennifer Kelly, Bryon Hayes and Andrew Forell.

Aberration — S/T (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Aberration by Aberration

Not sure what “ambient dark death metal” is, but recently formed band Aberration claims to play it. The “ambient” bit may be a nod to the drone that sometimes resonates deep in the mix of the three songs on this 10” EP. Other than that, Aberration’s music sounds pretty typical of the death metal created by bands on the primitive, murky end of the genre’s sonic continuum. Some of the musicians are in other, more established projects: John Hancock plays guitar and provides vocals in the widely admired death doom outfit Void Rot, Dylan Haseltine plays bass and sings for the blackened death metal (mostly black metal, it seems to me) band the Suffering Hour. Those bands have much more specific musical identities, and their intense records express the players’ clarity of vision. Perhaps Aberration wants to live up to its name, presenting something unprecedented, an unpleasant mutation — and hence, perhaps, the decision to release the vinyl version of the EP on an unusual format. That’s sort of fun. The music is not. But that’s nothing new in death metal, and to be honest, these songs don’t warrant the announcement of a new sub-subgenre. They are just fine, if you like your death metal atavistic, cavernous and claustrophobic. But an aberration? Nope. Maybe a weeping pustule. In death metal, isn’t that enough?

Jonathan Shaw

Steve Baczkowski / Bill Nace — Success (Notice)

Success by Steve Baczkowski/Bill Nace

Dallas is synonymous with a sort of excess that begs to be perceived as success. Old TV shows, memories of oil, nation-splitting politics, you name it; it’s bigger, badder and gaudier in Dallas. A tape of a free improv show that was recorded at a Dallas bookstore might not fit your preconceptions of longhorn accomplishment, but go ahead and tell that to Steve Baczkowski and Bill Nace. If they answer at all, they might let you gently know that it’s your problem, and then pop in the tape. This 42-minute-long recording will hook you by the belt, take off into the stratosphere, drag you through an asteroid belt, and deposit your cindered remains by the bar (yes, The Wild Detectives serves liquor as well as literature) before the tape reverses. That still leaves plenty of time savor the duo’s mastery of transition, from stout-sounded duel to fading filigree framing the sounds of the cash register opening and closing. Yeah, that’s the sound of Success.

Bill Meyer

Aidan Baker — There/Not There (Consouling Sounds)

There / Not There by Aidan Baker

Unsurprisingly, 2020 doesn’t seem to have slowed Aidan Baker (Nadja, WERL, Caudal, Hypnodrone Ensemble, and many more) much at all. Of the many records released under his own name, the recent There/Not There stands out for being a surprisingly accessible entry to his personal metal/drone/ambient/shoegaze melting pot, even given the opening 20-minute title track. “There/Not There” marries some whispery shoegaze songwriting with a beautifully monomaniacal repeating drone. Over the course of the track, it does slowly transition until we get to a crescendo as intense as any Baker’s done, but even more so than normal the unwary might get lured in by the low key, blissful opening and the frog-boiling slowness with which the tension is ratcheted up. One of the other two tracks is really just a way to section off the real noise-squall coda of “There/Not There” but then “Paris (Lost)” offers a more concise, quieter storm version of the same framework. Like a lot of Baker’s work, it sneaks up on you, but when it hits it hits hard.

Ian Mathers

Ballrogg — Rolling Ball (Clean Feed)

Rolling Ball by Ballrogg

The Scandinavian combo Ballrogg changes direction once again on Rolling Ball. Founders Klaus Ellerhusen Holm (clarinets) and Roger Arntzen (bass), who are both Norwegian, started out reinvestigating the folksy jazz vibe of Jimmy Giuffre, then sought out a new home on the range by adding slide guitarist Ivar Grydeland. Now, incoming Swedish guitarist David Stackenäs and his rack of pedals have redirected the trio into a technology-enhanced future. Not the sci-fi imaginings of Sun Ra, but a future more like 2019 might look if you stepped straight into it from 1959; in some ways quite familiar, but in others, different enough to be disorienting. The Giuffre-esque and country elements are still there, but when punctuated by minimalist-influenced compositional flourishes and illuminated by the diffuse, digital flicker of Stackenäs’ effects, it suddenly becomes clear that those Viking cowboys didn’t put a key in the ignition before they drove out towards the horizon.

Bill Meyer

Bipolar — S-T (Slovenly)

BIPOLAR "Bipolar" EP by Bipolar

For a band named Bipolar, with a single called “Depression,” this EP sure is a lot of fun. Two of the band’s mainstays are apparently Iranian emigres, now seeking the more permissive environs of Brooklyn. (The only hint of that exotic origin is in “Sad Clown,” where there might be an imam exhorting the faithful, but who knows? I don’t speak Farsi.) One of them sometimes plays keyboard with the Spits, and in fact, the Spits are a pretty good reference point for these hard, fast, bratty songs. “Virus” pummels a relentless pogo beat, the one-two of the drums rocketing ever faster, the shouted all-hands chorus in tumbling sync. “Fist Fight” is even more exhilarating, with its blaring, roiling guitar blast and adrenaline-raising refrain, “It’s a fist fight. It’s a fist fight.” There’s nothing profound here, but it’s a good time.

Jennifer Kelly

Bosq — Y Su Descarga Internacional (Bacalao)

Y Su Descarga Internacional by bosq

Bosq, a globally omnivorous DJ formerly based in Boston (real name Benjamin Woods), recently moved to Colombia, perhaps to get closer to his source material. The Colombian influence is certainly strong on Y Su Descarga Internacional, which opens with a scorching “Rumbero,” featuring the Afro-Colombian star Nidia Góngora. Dorkas, another singer from Colombia, follows immediately with “Mi Arizal,” an intricately textured dance track which erupts with fiery bursts of Latin brass. Justo Valdez, whose Son Palenque did much to define the Cartagena sound in the 1960s and 1970s, drops by for two of the album’s best tracks: a rollicking “Mambue” and the hand-drummed, bass-thumping hand-clapping “Onombitamba.” And yet the album doesn’t just document the singers and artists of Bosq’s new home. Kaleta, a Benin-based Afro-beat artist who has worked with Fela Kuti and Eqypt 80, takes the lead on funk psych “Omo Iya” and the stirring, horn squalling “Wake Up.” Bosq knows how to pick collaborators, and there’s not a dud track on the disc, but wouldn’t almost anyone sound like a genius in company like this?

Jennifer Kelly

Deuce Avenue — Death of Natural Light (Crash Symbols)

Death of Natural Light by Deuce Avenue

If you are a lurker of the cassette underground, you may remember a West Virginian outfit called Social Junk appearing in the mid-aughts. This duo offered up crackling melodic scree, blown out murky fuzz and semi-coherent mouth sounds like an industrialized version of The Dead C or a new wave outfit newly recovered post-coma. Noah Anthony, the male half of Social Junk, has since moved on to releasing solo material under both the Profligate and Deuce Avenue monikers. The latter is the more recent project and is quite minimal compared to his other work. With Death of Natural Light, there are no cold wave rhythms and vocals à la Profligate. What’s left is a dank, steamy vapor. Contrails of filter-swept hiss slowly develop into a more enigmatic and darkened tonal palette. The ominousness continues to thread its way into the second half of the cassette, fittingly entitled “Blood Turns Black”. Loops of nocturnal jump scare fodder coalesce into rhythms that provide skeletal forms to foil the menace of the more oblique textures. Those who enjoy their horror in slow motion will latch onto these sounds like a facehugger to… …well, a person’s face.

Bryon Hayes

Fleeting Joys — Despondent Transponder (Only Forever)

Despondent Transponder by Fleeting Joys

Let’s start with the obvious. Despondent Transponder sounds a lot like MBV’s Loveless, with wild sirening guitar tones, waves of noise-y feedback, thunderous drumming and sweet, fragile lyrics engulfed in the swirl. “Go and Come Back” has the same fluttering guitar melody as the great “To Here Knows When,” while “Satellite” blusters with the dopplering, dissonance-addled grandeur as “I Only Said.” Fleeting Joys — that was Rorika Loring singing and playing bass and John Loring on guitar and vox — never made any secret of their love of MBV. Despondent Transponder was an homage right from the start. The album was the debut for this Sacramento-based twosome, released originally in 2006, then as now on Loring’s own Only Forever label. And yet, while no one will ever top Loveless, from an ear-bleeding psych-noise daydream perspective, this one has its own particular beauties. “Magnificent Oblivion” surrounds a lullaby-pure melody with a reeling, caterwauling mesh of inchoate sound; guitar notes stream off in bending contrails as Rorika murmurs sweetly into the mic. “Patron Saint” lurches to motion on a Frankenstein bass riff, but softens the brutality with calming washes of vocal hypnotism. It’s all super beautiful and, anyway, even after the reunion, there aren’t nearly enough MBV albums. Plenty of room for a band that sounds so similar.

Jennifer Kelly

Get Smart! — Oh Yeah No (Capitol Punishment)

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Push play: driving staccato guitars, rubbery bass lines, lockstep drums, declamatory vocals and it’s the mid-1980s all over again. Lawrence, Kansas trio Get Smart! — Marcus Koch (guitar, vocals) Lisa Wertman Crowe (bass, vocals) and Frank Loose (drums, vocals) — have that timeless mixture of English post-punk and American indie down. Then see that 33 years after it was recorded Oh Yeah No finally sees the light of day on the back of the band’s reformation. Time and the cycle of musical fashions are fickle beasts and in this case the wheels turn in Get Smart!’s favor. They sound both of their time and thoroughly in tune with the steady flow of recent guitar bands mining this lode of choppy, melodic indie. The Embarrassment, Big Dipper, Pylon and other regional heroes are being rediscovered and reassessed and, here’s the thing, Get Smart! are really good at what they do and this six-track EP is both a testament and, hopefully, a taste of what the future may hold.

Andrew Forell

Rich Halley / Matthew Shipp / Michael Bisio / Newman Taylor Baker — The Shape Of Things (Pine Eagle Records)

The Shape of Things by Rich Halley

If the bolt strikes twice, it’s probably not lightning. The Shape Of Things is the second successful meeting between Rich Halley, a tenor saxophonist based in the Pacific Northwest, and the current members of the Matthew Shipp Trio. The album is, like its predecessor Terra Incognita, a congress of strengths. Shipp’s trio follows the pianist easily into one of his classic roles, that of supplying sonic foundation and harmonic framing for an extroverted saxophonist. Halley fights right into the spaces that they create, rippling easily over the trio’s turbulent surfaces. He works within the broader jazz tradition, sounding equally at home patiently sketching a lyrical line and blowing raw, acidic cries. This ensemble plays achieves a state of centered abandon which feels wilder than Halley’s recordings with West Coast musicians, but fits right into the spectrum that contains Shipp’s work with the David S. Ware Quartet and Ivo Perelman.

Bill Meyer

A Hutchie — Potion Shop (Cosmic Resonance)

Potion Shop by A Hutchie

Hamilton, Ontario-based producer Aaron Hutchinson has his fingers in many pies. He nimbly dispenses free jazz, hip hop, outré pop and even more enigmatic forms of song. Potion Shop is his debut LP, although he is a long-time fixture in the Steeltown music scene. This immersion in a small, tight-knit domain has led to many fruitful collaborations. Hutchinson features many of his compatriots in these recordings, in which his music snakes alongside their vocal stylings. Mutant 21st century soul singlehandedly played by Hutchinson is a foil for the slam poetry of Benita Whyte and Ian Keteku, the latter of which the producer warps with a vocoder. Sarah Good’s vocals morph into those of a ghostly chanteuse among smeared strings, while the soulful Blankie swims beneath narcotic R&B beats. When imbibing these intoxicating concoctions, you will be immersed in a warmth of familiarity tempered with the unsettling yet exciting sense of the uncanny. Like absinthe, the disquiet is illusory while the intimacy is authentic.

Bryon Hayes

Imha Tarikat — Sternenberster (Prophecy Productions)

STERNENBERSTER by IMHA TARIKAT

Imha Tarikat’s principal member Ruhsuz Cellât (stage name of Kerem Yilmaz) breaks with black metal orthodoxy by musically engaging his family’s Muslim heritage. That’s a provocative move in an artform dominated by glib nihilism, rampant anti-religious sentiment and (somehow sometimes all at the same time) ardent claims of Satanist faith. And that distinction at the symbolic level likely doesn’t come near the intensities of being of Turkish descent, living and recording in Germany, in a scene that flirts (and at its extreme margins actively identifies) with fascism. Beyond those ideological and social dimensions is the music. Imha Tarikat demonstrates facility with tremolo riffs and song forms that twist and snake even as they hammer and pummel. But Cellât’s unusual vocal style cuts against convention’s grain, and it’s immediately apparent as album opener “Ekstase ohne Ende” commences. There’s a lot of grunting and hollering, but rather than contorting his voice, shrieking and croaking in mode of most black metal vocalists, Cellât goes for more straightforward intensity. He often shouts, and the lyrics frequently come in bunches, explosive and punctuated bursts of verbiage, but he makes no attempt to distort the lyrics or his voice. I wish my grasp of German were even halfway close to fluent, in order to report on the lyrics’ thematic content with some coherence — because Cellât clearly wants the words to be heard.

Jonathan Shaw

Jon Irabagon / Mike Pride / Mick Barr / Ava Mendoza — Don’t Hear Nothin’ But The Blues Vol 3 Anatomical Snuffbox (Irrabagast Records)

I Don't Hear Nothin' but the Blues Volume 3: Anatomical Snuffbox by Jon Irabagon

Never mind the blues; if you don’t exercise caution, when you’re done playing this loud-at-any-volume recording, you won’t hear nothin’. The latest installment in tenor saxophonist John Irabagon’s series of one-track, meta-blues recordings starts out with a spray of sound as bracing as Saharan sandstorm, but quickly solidifies into a veritable wall of sound. At the outset, Irabagon and drummer Mike Pride engage in a high-speed dance of charge and countercharge which, if heard without accompaniment, would sit comfortably on the same shelf as your Mars Williams and Mats Gustafsson records. But when you put guitarists Mick Barr and Ava Mendoza on the same stage and tell them both to start shredding, the effect is somewhat akin to putting the pyrotechnic specialists in charge of the circus. Subtlety, dynamics and even the oxygen you breath all disappear as everything catches fire. If any of the participants here have effectively bent your ear, you ought to listen all the way through once. By the time it’s done, you’ll know in your heart whether you ever need to hear it again.

Bill Meyer

John Kolodij — First Fire / At Dawn (Astral Editions)

First Fire • At Dawn by John Kolodij

Where there’s fire, there’s often smoke, and while this tape claims alignment with Hephaestus’ element, it’s more likely to evoke thick clouds. As the capstans turn, the murk of “At Fire” accumulates gradually, filling the room with an increasingly dense atmosphere. By the time you notice flashes of flame, it’s too late. “At Dawn” brings to mind a lesser conflagration — maybe the embers of the previous night’s campfire. John Kolodij (who has, until recently, recorded mainly under the name High Aura’d) pushes his heavily processed guitar sound into the background, where it lurks with a bit of birdsong, and leads with an unamplified banjo and acoustic guitar. Fiddler Anna RG (of Anna & Elizabeth) further bolsters the melody while some sparse percussion played by Sarah Hennies heightens the sense of moment. Once more, a mass of disembodied sound rises up as the piece progresses, but this time the effect is the opposite; instead of getting lost in sound, the listener finds a moment of peace and light.

Bill Meyer

Lytton / Nies / Scott / Wissel — Do They Do Those In Red? (Sound Anatomy)

Do they do those in Red? by Paul Lytton, Joker Nies, Richard Scott, Georg Wissel

“Do they do those in red?” The title may speak to the particular peculiarities of this combo, which is formed from several pre-existing duos, Joker Nies is credited with “electrosapiens,” which seem to be self-constructed electronic instruments, and George Wissel applies various items to his saxophone to modify its sound. Georg Wissel’s synthesizers come with some assembly required, and it would appear that Paul Lytton, best known for playing drum kits and massive percussion assemblages, confines himself in this setting to the stuff he can fit on a tabletop. What, you think your saxophone is prettier because it doesn’t have anything red jammed into a valve?

Moving on to the music, while the sound sources are heavily electronic, the interactive style is rooted in good old-fashioned free improvisation. Lytton’s barrage sounds remarkably similar to what he achieves playing with a full drum kit, and Wissel’s lines may be more fractured, but his alto sound has some of the tonal heft and agility that John Butcher exercises on the tenor. The electronicians’ bristling activity brings to mind a debate between opposite sides of the electrical components aisle at the hardware store, but it’s a lucid one, thoughtfully expressed on both sides.

Bill Meyer

Ikue Mori Satoko Fujii + Natsuki Tamura — Prickly Pear Cactus (Libra)

Prickly Pear Cactus by Ikue Mori, Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura

Pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura spent February 2020 touring Europe with their combo Kaze, which they’d augmented with the electronic musician, Ikue Mori. As lockdown wore on, they kept the connection going via Zoom chats between their abodes in Kobe and New York. After Fujii shared her experiences of trying to mic and stream her piano online, Mori suggested that she send some recordings. Mori edited what showed up and added her sounds; Tamura contributed additional elements to nearly half the tracks. Some of them are balanced to sound like live recordings, with Mori’s neon squelches and high-res, bell-like tones gathering and dispelling like real-time reactions. Others feel more overtly constructed, with the piano situated within a maelstrom of sounds like a view of a TV set turned on in a room with a party going on.

Bill Meyer

Phicus — Solid (Astral Spirits)

Solid by Phicus

Phicus is the Barcelona-based assemblage of Ferran Fages (electric guitar), Àlex Reviriego (double bass) and Vasco Trilla (drums). The line-up looks like a power trio, and if you heard them two seconds at a time, you might think that they were. Reviriego and Trilla each play in ways that convey a sense of motion, and Fages’ bent notes and serrated harmonics are just the sort of sounds to cap off a display of guitar heroics. But if you note that each track is named for an element or chemical compound, and that the album is called Solid, you might get a clearer idea of their concerns. This music is all about essential relationships, and its makers are more interested in making things coexist in productive ways than they are in re-enacting rituals borrowed from jazz, fusion or free improvisation. That means that even the sharpest sounds don’t hook you, nor do the fleetest charges carry you away. Phicus isn’t interested in settling for the familiar. But if you’re ready to observe that thing that looks like a duck making sounds that ducks never make, you’ll find plenty to ponder on Solid.

Bill Meyer

Quietus — Volume Five (Ever/Never)

Volume Five by Quietus

Quietus songs unfurl like cream in coffee, spiraling curlicues of light into dark liquid drones amid clanking blocks of percussion. The songs expand in organic ways, picking up purpose in the steady pound of rhythm, strutting even, in a loose-limbed rock-soul-psych way you might recognize from Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “Anemone” or Grinderman’s “I Don’t Need You to Set Me Free,” but quieter, much quieter, and seething with submerged ideas. The words are mumbled, croaked, submerged in surface hum, but when pushed up towards the surface, arresting. “This life can be sunlit hills turned all to their angry sides,” murmurs Quietus proprietor Geoffrey Bankowski in the relatively concise “Reflex of Purpose,” which sprawls anyway, notwithstanding its 2:36 minute duration. The music’s better, though, when it’s allowed to find its slow way forward, unconforming to any pre-existing ideas of how long a pop song should be. I like the closer “Posthemmorrhagic,” the best, as guitars both tortured and prayerful intertwine, and Bankowski breathes slow, moaning poetry into a close mic, and the song revolves in three-time like the last dancer on the floor, not just tonight but forever.

Jennifer Kelly

Ritual Extra — In Luthero (Dinzu Artefacts)

In Luthero by Ritual Extra

In Luthero was performed inside an empty water cistern, and the ensuing reverberations act as microscopic versions of the grander ebb and flow within which French-Finnish trio Ritual Extra operate. Percussionist Julien Chamla’s cymbal scrapes and tom hits form a backdrop of bomb blasts and shrieking, missives from some war-torn locale long since vacated by the populace. Steel structures seem to groan and collapse as they are rattled by percussive ordnance. This bleak setting is given a sense of color by Lauri Hyvärinen’s acoustic guitar. A stew of string scrapes diverges into discrete plucks, which morph into strums. The metronomic chords are enriched as they bounce around the walls of the cistern, folding in on themselves through echo, becoming a mechanical mantra. Tuukka Haapakorpi’s voice rises from the ashes, soaring polysyllabically yet wordlessly. As In Luthero begins to take shape, these vocalizations are almost inhuman: whispers and gurgles that come on in waves. Later, more anthropoid utterances take shape, yet fall just shy of coalescing into a discernable language. Across 24 minutes, Ritual Extra musically narrate the pre-history of humankind, the primordial essence from which everything good — and bad — about us originated.

Bryon Hayes

Subjective Pitch Matching Band — Twenty-One Subjectivities in Six Parts (Remote Works)

Twenty-One Subjectivities in Six Parts by Subjective Pitch Matching Band

Chris Brian Taylor has trod a serpentine path on the journey that culminated in the creation of his first large ensemble electroacoustic composition. His roots are in punk and rave — he still DJs house and techno — but he recently shifted his gaze toward improvised electronics. Rather than stifling his ambition, COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown encouraged him to think big: he would cast a wide net and compose a piece of music for as many people as he could get to participate. He reached out to friends, relatives, and internet acquaintances to assemble his orchestra, and borrowed the melody and chords from Pet Shop Boys’ “Being Boring” to act as the foundation of the work. Twenty people responded from a variety of musical disciplines, and all agreed to participate remotely. The composer gave each player audio cues to work with and encouraged the performers to respond subjectively. They could either stay true to the pitches provided, harmonize against them, or play ornamentally. Taylor collected the resulting tracks and structured the resulting thirty-minute piece of music based on what the respondents provided. Dense yet graceful, the composition unfolds like a slow-motion blaze. Flames of sonority form a sinuous body from which sparks of discrete sound leap heavenward. There is nary a moment of silence, as Taylor weaves a plethora of long tones together to form an undulating core over which stabs of piano, guitar and percussion materialize momentarily. Naivete didn’t keep Chris Brian Taylor from aiming as high as he could with this piece, and we are the benefactors of this ambition, rewarded with a rich and complex sonic brew to enjoy.

Bryon Hayes

TV Priest — Uppers (Sub Pop)

Uppers by TV Priest

TV Priest works the same corrosive, hyper-verbal furrow as Idles or, in a looser sense, the Sleaford Mods, spatter chanting harsh, literate strings of gutter poetry over a clanking post-punk cadence. The vocalist Charlie Drinkwater snarls and sputters charismatically over the clatter, a brutalist commentator on life and pop culture. The band is sharp and minimalist, drums (Ed Kelland) to the front, guitar (Alex Sprogis) stabbing hard at stripped raw riffs , bass (Nic Bueth) rumbling like mute rage in the back of the bar. And yet, though anger is a primary flavor, these songs surge with triumph as in the wall-shaking cadences of “Press Gang,” the blistering sarcasm of “The Big Curve.” This is a relatively new band, their first and only tour cut short at one gig by the lockdown, but the songs are tight as hell on record and likely to pin you to the back wall live. “Bad news, like buses, comes in twos,” intones Drinkwater on theclearly autobiographical “Journal of a Plague Year” against an irregular post-everything clangor, loose and disdainful and hardly arsed to entertain us; it’s as fitting an anthem as any for our lost 2020. But when band gets moving, as on the chugging, corroscating “Decoration,” it’s unstoppable, a monstrous thing bursting “through to the next round.” Sure, I’ll have another.

Jennifer Kelly

Voice Imitator — Plaza (12XU)

Plaza by Voice Imitator

Voice Imitator, from Melbourne, Australia, rips a hard punk vortex through its songs, ratcheting up the drums to battering ram violence, blistering the guitar sound and scrawling wild metallic vocals over it all, with nods to noisy post-hardcore bands like the Jesus Lizard and McClusky. “A Small Cauliflower” takes things down to a seething, menacing whisper, Mark Groves, the singer, presiding over an uneasy mesh of tamped down dissonance and hustle. “Adult Performer” is faster and more limber, all clicking urgency and sudden bursts of detuned, surging squall. All four members—that’s Per Bystrom, Justin Fuller, Groves and Leon O’Regan—have been in a ton of other bands, and the sounds they make here have the rupturing precision of well-honed violence. If you like Protomartyr but wish it was lots louder and more corrosive, here you go.

Jennifer Kelly

Sam Weinberg / Henry Fraser / Weasel Walter — Grist (Ugexplode)

Grist by Sam Weinberg / Henry Fraser / Weasel Walter

Ornette Coleman once called a record In All Languages; these guys ought call one Any And All Possibilities. Saxophonist Sam Weinberg, bassist Henry Fraser and drummer (this time, anyway) Weasel Walter are scrupulous student of improvisation in all its guises, and they’re ready and able to use what they know. You could call it free jazz, for they certainly know how that stuff works, but they’re under no obligation to swing; that’d be a limit, you see. This music bursts, darts, expands and contracts in a sequence of second by second negotiations of shape and velocity.

Bill Meyer

Chris Weisman — Closer Tuning (Self-Released)

Closer Tuning by Chris Weisman

Chris Weisman is a Brattleboro, VT songwriter, in the general orbit (not a member but seems to know a bunch of them) of the late, great Feathers and one-time member of Kyle Thomas’ other outfit, the fuzz pop band Happy Birthday. A shunner of all sorts of limelight, he is nonetheless very productive. Closer Tuning is one of five albums he home recorded and released in 2020. You might expect a certain lo-fi folksiness and there is, indeed, a dream-y, soft focus rusticity to the tangled acoustic guitar jangle, the blunt down home-i-ness lyrics. And yet, there’s a good deal more than that in Closer Tuning. The chords progress softly, gently but in unexpected ways, a reminder of Weisman’s jazz guitar training, and the sound is warm and enveloping and every so slightly off-kilter, as if filtered through someone else’s memory. Cuts like “Petit Revolution,” with its close shroud of harmonies, its eerie, antic guitar cadence, feel like Beach Boys psychedelia left out in the garden to sprout, or more to the point, like Wendy Eisenberg’s brainy, left-of-center pop puzzles. “My Talent” is hedged in with blooming bent notes and scrambling string scratches, but its center is radiant, weird, astral folk along the lines of Alexander Tucker. “Hey,” says Weisman, in its slow dreaming chorus, “I gave my talent away.” Lucky us.

A.A. Williams — Forever Blue (Bella Union)

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There’s a dim and shadowy corner where heavy music, orchestral music and post-rock all meet, and A.A. Williams’ music resides there as naturally as anyone else’s. That’s what you might expect when you get a professional cellist who fell hard for metal as a teenager and then started writing songs after finding a guitar on the street. After an EP her first LP is the kind of assured, consistently strong debut that balances calmly measured beauty with the kind of crushing peaks that give that sometimes hoary quiet/loud dynamic a good name. At its best, like the opening “All I Asked For (Was to End it All)” and “Dirt” (featuring vocals from Wild Beasts’ Tom Fleming), Forever Blue is as gothically ravishing as you could hope for, and by the time it ends with spectral lament “I’m Fine” it might tempt even those not traditionally inclined that way to don the ceremonial black eyeliner.

Ian Mathers

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showdepremiosclub · 4 years

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Sahasrar Chakra and Brahmarandhra-Centers of Divine Powers

The human body (Microcosm) is said to be a small sample of the cosmos (Macrocosm). The entire body of a big tree is hidden in a tiny seed. In a small sperm lies the cast of the entire human body. The manner in which the mutual attraction and activities of the planets of the solar system are executed, can be seen albeit at a microlevel within the atomic family represented by electrons, neutrons etc. In the same way the entire cosmos can be seen in a microform within this small human body. Whatever is visible / invisible in this gigantic cosmos is present within this tiny human body. All the special characteristics of earth too are found in the human body. All the energies, special qualities and glories of earth are found in the point of balance i.e. the North and South Poles. From here all movements /activities of earth are controlled. As a result this earth is an active ball and a playground for all creatures. If the North / South Poles lose their balance or they undergo some change, the entire earth will look like something totally different. It is said that even if a minor fist blow is executed on the point of center of balance in the 2 Poles, the earth will change its orbit by leaps and bounds. As a result this very nature of days, nights, seasons etc. will change and take up a new extreme form. Further this minor fist blow can induce earth to dash into other stars, galaxies etc. and thus get powdered to pulp. The cause is very clear. In that the 2 Poles control all the movements of earth. It is their energy centers that induce our earth to dance to its tunes like a puppet. All earthly activities are given the necessary capacity and inspiration to function aptly. The 2 Poles are the central points of earth’s activities and energy centers. Just as the planet earth attains energy and activities from the 2 Poles, so too the human body has 2 Poles. The North Pole is Sahasrar Kamal in the Brahmarandhra (center of the brain). The South Pole is the Mooladahr Chakra of Kundalini or Divine Serpent Power center at the base of Sushumna (near the genitals). According to Indian Mythology, Lord Vishnu sleeps on Lord Shesha (1000 hooded serpent) in the Ksheersagar (ocean of nectar). This Ksheersagar is nothing but the intense white ocean of love in our brain. Sahasrar Kamal is that atom which instead of being round like other sheaths is like serrated teeth of a cog-wheel. These teeth are compared to the petals of a lotus. The central point of energy lies in this atomic Pole. This Vishnu Pole or Sahasrar Kamal (1000 petalled lotus in the brain) is the very basis of attainment of sensory and extrasensory knowledge pertaining to the innumerable conscious and unconscious units of the brain. This region is the central point of all spiritual practices like meditation / trance / self-reflection / Yoga of devotion alongwith will power, soul power and Sidhis attained due to a strong power of resolve (Sankalps). The North Pole lies in the central point of the head called Sahasrar Chakra. In the center of the head is a subtle 1000 petalled lotus and is called the Sahasrar Chakra. Within it dwells divine energy or Shiva. It is over here that Kundalini or Divine Serpent Power rises from the South Pole to merge into Shiva in the North Pole. From this area all bodily movements are controlled just as a puppeteer seated behind a curtain, controls his puppets via mere finger movements. It is also called the region of the soul etc. All energies and its sub-categories that create movements in this gigantic cosmos are found situated around the Sahasrar. Sacred scriptures say that Kundalini is the very life force of all energies and Sidhis. A person who activates the otherwise latent (sleeping) Divine Serpent Power becomes the Lord of infinite grandeur of this world. In India this has been discovered right since ancient times. There is no end or limit to the potency of Kundalini Shakti or Divine Serpent Power. But activating the Kundalini is not the ultimate goal of a living being. The ultimate goal of all creatures is to attain salvation (Moksha) i.e. merging the individual ego into the cosmic soul (God). The aim of any human life is to merge into Brahman / God/ cosmic soul. Yoga and other spiritual practices are meant exactly for this purpose. The same holds true for Kundalini too. This has been commented upon in Hathayoga Pradeepika as follows – “Just as a person tries to open the lock of a bolt, so too a Yogi finds the path of Sushumna via Kundalini based practices. He then enters Brahmaloka so as to attain salvation (Moksha).” Only when a spiritual aspirant enters this Sahasrar Chakra, can he experience the joy of immortality, vision of the cosmos, control of cosmic powers and Samadhi or trance. The Brahmaloka mentioned in the above lines is nothing but the Sahasrar Chakra. It is very difficult to reach this Chakra. Majority of spiritual seekers get stuck in the lower Chakras and merge into the lower type of bliss that they get in that region. Hence Sidhis (extraordinary powers) attained during preliminary Kundalini awakening are said to be obstacles. Just as a man thinks the material world to be the ultimate goal of life because of having immense wealth, grandeur and a beautiful wife, so too a person who activates his Divine Serpent Power thinks that Sidhis like hearing far off words, seeing far off objects, knowing other people’s thoughts, predicting the future accurately etc. attained while activating the lower Chakras, is the be all and end all of life. Thus he totally loses sight of the supreme goal of rising upto the last Chakra i.e. Sahasrar and merging into it. Even if a person reaches the Sahasrar Chakra, he cannot dwell in this region for a great length of time. How long can a spiritual seeker dwell in the Sahasrar Chakra? This depends on the nature of spiritual practice which he follows and how much inner spiritual energy he possesses. Many spiritual seekers dwell in the Sahasrar Chakra for a certain length of time and then get demoted into lower Chakras and their levels of lower bliss. But he, who steadfastly “ripens” his Sahasrar Chakra, attains the omnipotent Lord and thus experiences infinite bliss eternally. The Sahasrar Chakra lies 2 inches within the ears and 3 inches within the eyebrows. Its form is that of a ball of light in the hollow portion of the upper region of an opening called “Mahavivar” of the brain area. Via the process of Divine Serpent Power awakening, this Mahavivar opening has to be widened so as to enter the state of divinity. Hence it is called the “10th door” or Brahmarandhra too. In the Dhyanbindupanishad it is said that – “A Yogi is one who knows the light akin to a jewel in the brain. That jewel akin to 7 golds that is lit up by an electrical like stream, is found in the lower region of Meru and 4 fingers above the fire region. It seeks shelter in the Svadhishthan Chakra and is subtle sound manifest” The scriptures while describing the powers attained in reaching this region say – “Such a person knows the ultimate knowledge, he becomes omniscient (i.e. knower of past, present and future) and can do anything he wishes. He may perform any action, yet no sin accrues. None can gain victory over such a person.” In one way Brahmarandhra is the head office of a creature. It is a laboratory which helps us attain whatever we see in this visible world and all those things which are beyond our knowledge. According to Indian philosophy over here there are such rare auras of light made up of 17 principles which cannot be seen in the visible world with our gross eyes. All nervous elements and air tubicles come out from this area and spread out into the entire body. The Creator seated in this white lotus, sends and receives orders and messages from any part of the body via any nerve. He can create movements in any area. He can clean and create a rain of vital force in any area without any technological paraphernalia which we limited creatures can never even dream of doing. All this takes place because of emission, contraction and relaxation of auras of light. It is this ball of light that induces the nose to smell, the ears to hear, the eyes to see, the tongue to taste and speak. This ball of light is under the direct jurisdiction of Almighty God dwelling in the Sahasrar Chakra. In the initial stages of meditation, this light is seen either as glow-worms, twinkling stars, shining petals or half/ full moon. Slowly and steadily its divine nature is experienced. As a result the gross sense organs become lax and the working arena of the soul shines brilliantly in the entire world. An ordinary individual can worry only about his immediate family members. But a Yogi enfolds the entire world in the embrace of his soul and extends upto other Lokas (worlds) too. He also has to ascertain whether there is any imbalance in the movements of planets, galaxies etc. In a gross manner denizens of our planet earth too are influenced by these activities. Hence even unknowingly such a spiritual seeker, who enters the state of Godhood, can work only for the well-being of all creatures of the cosmos. Whatever rights and omnipotency is attained by such a great soul is taken up as a gigantic responsibility by him. He may seem to be having a human body yet he has no body consciousness at all. He knows everything. He sees and hears everything and can predict future events very accurately. The substratums of the Intellectual Sheath and Mental Sheath viz. the intellect and mind dwell in this region. They unearth news of objects lying far away or those beyond the ken of the sense organs of knowledge. When one’s soul resolve progresses into the intellectual arena after leaving the mental arena, one attains divine wisdom. It comes out from the Ajna Chakra so as to unite with the different types of rays of the cosmos and thus attains its knowledge. Just as with the help pf electrical waves, space shuttles can be directed to the right or left of planet earth (called traversing), just as with the help of a television you can see scenes of far off places so too man can see scenes in my part of the world or obstruct one’s cosmic movement with the help of the rays of his resolve (Sankalpa). In the Mundak Upanishad (Chapter 2) and Chandogya Upanishad (Chapter 9) details of this self-realization have been given as follows – “A self realized saint subtly experiences that God without Kalas (divisions) in the form of a light that is whiter than white and is present in the Golden Sheath.” Many forms of Sahasrar based spiritual practices like Pratyahar (disallowing sense organs to contact their respective objects), Dharana (focusing of mind), Dhyan (meditation) and Samadhi (trance) have been put forth as studies. A description has been given about the good results attained due to their successful execution. The deep import of the success of that region has been given in the form of material and spiritual progress. Today even modern scientists accept that there are extraordinary energy centers in the brain. According to research studies conducted by the brain specialist Smithy, a pure intellect is controlled by different centres of the human brain. It is a production of a cooperative endeavour of all of them. This is the gist (region) which creates a human character and nourishes it. A mental level is created by memory, analysis, synthesis, selectivity etc. Where does its admixture and production take place? This has not been aptly deduced yet it is clear that this area should be in the cerebellum part of the brain. This is that very sensitive spot which if undergoes ripening, can induce advancement of one’s inner personality. Spiritual seers of yore had discovered this center and had named it Sahasrar. While deeply analyzing the brain so many layers are discovered which not only help us think but also creates our very character. This region of special capabilities is the “Frontal lobe”. In it one discovers man’s personality, imagination power, ambitions, social behaviour, experiences, sensations and other important functions. It is not possible to influence this area by medicines or surgery. Only those spiritual practices like Dhyan (meditation), Dharana (Concentration) etc. can be made use of which is a part of Kundalini i.e Divine Serpent Power awakening. In the above paragraphs we have merely made a minor reference of only one center of the brain. Yet it is well-known that the brain abounds with infinite mysterious powers. The conclusions drawn by today’s modern scientists specializing in brain research, is very much in tandem with the discoveries of ancient Indian seers. From a grosser type of classification, the brain can be categorized into 5 parts 1) Cerebrum 2) Cerebellum 3) Mid-brain 4) Pons 5) Medulla Oblongata. The last three parts that is mid-brain, pons and medulla oblongata together form a single unit called the “brain stem.” According to Spiritual Sciences, 0.33 billion demigods dwell in heaven represented by the brain. But 5 of them are chief representatives. All of these control various divine centers. The 5 regions of the brain listed above can be said to be the region of the 5 demi-gods. With their help the 5 energies of the 5 sheaths are produced and controlled. The 5-fold spiritual practices of Gayatri help evolve these 5 in unison. As a result a creature dwelling in Brahmaloka or heaven, experiences a heavenly atmosphere. So far our discussion revolved around a certain type of classification. Many scholars right since ancient times have been describing this very fact albeit in various ways. Even today this type of discussion continues. This one single precept pertaining to the classification of the brain and Sahasrar Chakra are described in various ways. The Sahasrar Chakra is also called the “pot of nectar”. It is said that Som juice emanates from it. The demi-gods drink this nectar and become immortal. According to modern brain anatomy, the brain is filled with a special “Cerebro-spinal fluid.” This fluid nourishes and protects the various centers of the brain. It drips from the brain’s membrane and is absorbed by various centers of the brain and the Sushumna (subtle spinal nerve). The “pot of nectar” has 16 coverings. In the same way at certain places the Sahasrar is said to have 16 petals. These are nothing but 16 important centers of the brain. The Shiva Samhita too says that the Sahasrar Kamal has petals. “One should meditate on the Sahasrar Chakra made of 16 Kalas situated in the centre of the brain and which shines like the moon.” -YOGA MANJUSHA These 16 Kalas of the Sahasrar are the 16 points of the brain related to the cerebrospinal fluid. If the previously 5 grossly classified parts of the brain are classified more minutely, they will add upto 16 in number as follows – 1) Cerebrum 2) Cerebellum 3) Medula Oblongata 4) Pons 5) Mid brain 6) Corpus Colosum 7) Corpus Stratum 8) Pituitary Gland 9) Pineal gland 10) Thalamus 11) Hypothalamus 12) Subthalamus 13) Metathalamus 14) Epithalamus 15) Corad plexuses 16) Ventrilces. All these above parts have centers full of ESP (Extra Sensory Potential) that control the body. By activating the pot of nectar of Sahasrar, we can make the brain more active and thus attain extraordinary benefits. The scriptures have clearly said – “Due to activation of the Sahasrar Kamal, a Yogi’s psyche becomes equipoised and thus merges into his soul. He overcomes bondage of the material world. He is full of all-round potential. He moves freely everywhere and his speech becomes nectarine.” - SHATCHAKRA NIRUPANA “One must meditate on the Ksheersagar ocean in the core of the forehead and on the moon-like light in the Sahasrar Kamal (1000 petalled lotus).” - SHIV SAMHITA “That Yogi who continuously drinks the nectar emitted by the Sahasrar Kamal can bring in a law to ‘kill death’. Meaning death is no longer death for him because he lives a life that has gone beyond death. It is in the Sahasrar region that Kundalini merges itself. At that time the 4 types of creation merge into God and everything becomes Godlike.” - SHIV SAMHITA “That Soma juice of Sahasrar Kamal which purifies Richas, Samveda, Yajurved, Brahmanas, may it purify me too.” - YAJURVED What exactly is the Sahasrar? This answer according to anatomists is that the electrical onrush from the center of the brain which controls bodily movement does not get emitted from a substratum but that a special center is responsible for it. This is not man’s own creation but is a divine blessing. The liver, heart and other organs function as a result of this energy attained from a divine center. The blood nourishes various bodily organs and it is a fact. It is also true that the lungs are responsible for respiration and the stomach for digestion. Yet the question arises that when these organs carry out various tasks, where do they get the necessary energy to do so? It is not correct to say that respiration, digestion etc. give us the energy to survive because if this were to be true, man could only die because of hunger or choking of breath. This electrical onrush continuously gets emitted in spurts in the central region of the brain. It can be said to be an extraordinary electrical spring. From there a fire-worklike light is emitted in spurts. The heart experiences such rests in between heart-beats. There is a rise and fall even in wave-flows of heat, sound etc. The same holds true for the activities of the fount of energy in the central point of the brain. Scientists opine that the energy spurts are the main basis of the activities of various centers of the brain. This very principle has been elucidated by Indian Yogic scriptures in their own way. “In the center of the brain is a jewel-like light. From that, electrical streams are emitted akin to heated gold. He is a true Yogi who understands this mystery.” - DHYANBINDU UPANISHAD. “The light of Brahman (God) dwells in the Brahmarandhra as fire. It purifies our spiritual practice. This it self is fire of Yoga.” - MATSYA PURANA This brain dwelling energy fount can be called Sahasrar Chakra according to anatomical sciences. “Sahastra” means 1000 but here it means infinite. The Lord is said to have 1000 heads, 1000 legs etc. The sparks of energy emitted from the brain fount are not 1000 in number but are infinite in number. The number of drops of that shower is not 1000 only but connotes infinite number of drops. On the basis of this description this “1000” is the fount of energy called Sahasrar. Today’s modern science accepts that infinite streams of electricity flow from the brain. As per requirements those streams flow in infinite special nerves in infinite directions. Based on each one’s function, scientists have classified these nerves into various categories. For example, Ascending Reticular Activating System, Descending Reticular Activating System, Specific Thalamic Projection, Defused Thalamic Projection and Brain Stem Reticular Formation. From the standpoint of Yoga, the combined influence of the above systems can be seen in the form of thousands of streams of electrical onrushes in the brain. This is the very basis of the Sahasrar Kamal (1000 petalled lotus) and Lord Shesha (1000 hooded serpent). The form of Lord Vishnu sleeping on Lord Shesha abounding with Kundalini Shakti in the midst of the Ksheersagar or Brahmaloka, is meant for understanding the state of Sahasrar. Ksheersagar means marrow of the brain. The coiled 1000 hooded serpent means the teeth of the axle of Sahasrar Chakra. A wheel of a cart too has an axle. The Lord’s Sudershan Chakra (disc weapon) too has teeth. Thus Sahasrar can be correlated to the abovementioned details. The Sahasrar has been compared to the sun (1000 rays) too. It is the energy that lights up the solar system and induces various activities in them. Every unit of human existence is influenced by the brain energy. Hence if the sun is said to be the presiding deity of the ball called Bhuloka (earth), it definitely is apt. The divine existence of Sahasrar has been compared to the sun – “O Deveshi! Within the stalk of the great lotus Sahasrar dwells the soul akin to Mercury. Although it radiates likes crores of suns, yet during emotions it is comparable to crores of moons. This supreme material is extremely grand and oozes with the Divine Serpent Power.” - SKAND PURANA “This sun is nothing but the divine principle and its material symbol is the material sun.” - YAJURVEDA (23/48) “Your indwelling nectar is one who is the indweller in the sun whom the sun does not know, whose body is the sun and who controls the sun by dwelling within the sun.” - BRIHADARANYAK UPANISHAD Just as our solar system gets energy from the sun, in the same way the brain gets the necessary capacity for various functions from the energy source of Sahasrar Kamal. Many machines are used in mills, factories etc. These machines are attached to motors, transmitting electricity. When the motor functions, it transmits energy to the machine. But the electricity does not belong to the motor. It comes from another source. The brain is our motor and the bodily organs are small / big machines. The energy required for smooth functioning of mills, factories etc. comes from somewhere else. It is akin to the flow of grace attained by earth from its polar regions. This is a gift of interplanetary energy. A man is free and the author of his own destiny. Yet the energy that creates man’s inner personality is said to be divine grace. The moment this stream of energy is obstructed, man dies instantly. Even if the heartbeats have stopped completely yet via artificial means it can be re-activated. But the moment the electrical onrush of Sahasrar stops, know for sure that this is ultimate death. Despite the fittings of a bulb being appropriate, if the electrical connection is cut off, we face darkness. Despite the bodily organs being healthy, if the brain energy flow stops, we cannot remain alive. Grossly we may describe birth and death of creatures in a certain manner, yet according to subtle sciences like Yoga, birth and death are totally dependent on the activities of Sahasrar Chakra. This is not the end of the discussion because a lot more follows hereafter. Sahasrar is not merely the source of life but it is from here that the nature of one’s character and level is charted out and determined. Even a little extra tilt, will change the course of flow of rain. When a particular form of slant that induces rain water to enter a particular river is changed, this rain water will enter another totally different river. At the beginning of the slant there was a difference of only a few inches yet when the rain water enters a totally new river, the difference in number of miles of area covered amounts to thousands. Many trains standing in queue at a railway junction travel in different directions because of change of levers. The changed levers are separated by the few inches only yet the trains that travel in different directions are separated by thousands of miles. The same holds true for the Sahasrar Chakra. In that, even an infinitesimal change in the Sahasrar, can induce amazing transformations; both within and without. For a modern scientist even to think of reduction / addition in the grants given by interplanetary space to earth, means facing fearful worries and turmoil. Even a mere thought of taking one step in this direction, induces jitters in their minds. Even a slight bit of topsy-turvying can induce massive destruction. As against this if some conducive solutions are found it will greatly benefit all denizens of earth. Thus we can become lords of unimaginable comforts. Today scientists refuse to take big steps in this direction because of lack of knowledge. They have merely taken minor steps in conducting research on the earth’s polar region. They have yet not found the earth’s axis and nor have they made serious efforts in this direction. But no such danger is encountered when we talk of the Sahasrar which is the axis of the brain situated in the polar region of the human body. Material / worldly energy is like a demon. Even minor misuse of electricity, fire etc. can kill many people. As against this no major calamity comes in the way in the relationship of a body and its doting mother. This is the material difference between soul consciousness and material consciousness. Sahasrar is a center of union of the individual soul and cosmic soul i.e. God. This is a consciousness based give and take. Within it overflow high leveled sentiments. The nature of spiritual practices has been conjoined to the wealth of good-will. This divine grace of greatness overflows from it. The Sahasrar Chakra is related to the Brahmarandhra. Brahmarandhra is the 10th door. The 9 doors are the 2 nostrils, 2 ears, 2 eyes, 1 mouth and 2 openings of faeces and urine. The 10th door is Brahmarandhra. Great Yogis give up their life by passing through this 10th door. The very reason behind which the “Kapal Kriya’ (rite) is carries out after death, is that even if a bit of vital force has remained behind, it should pass out from this 10th door and thus induced go to a higher state. A newborn baby has a bit of a hollow space in the center of the scalp. In it there is a tissue instead of bone. It is situated between the parietal and acivital bones. As the body grows the bones too augment in size and cover the above mentioned hollow region. The Yogic scriptures say that divinity or cosmic consciousness enters the human body through this hollow region. From the standpoint of bodily design, this region is not merely made up of bones because below its frontal area there are other principles. There is also the cerebral cortex beneath the bones of our forehead that covers the brain region. Within it are carvings akin to those seen when a farmer ploughs his field. Thus it categorizes the brain into various parts. These parts are called sulks. The cortex is partitioned lengthwise by the longitudinal fissure and breadthwise it is called central cortex. The crossing or point of union of both these corresponds to the Brahmarandhra of Indian Yogic scriptures. In front of this Brahmarandhra, lies the most mysterious gland in the upper region of the brain called the Pineal Gland. This Brahmarandhra is a very special doorway for the individual’s bodily soul to establish a bond with the cosmic soul (God). Great Yogis give up their life force through this very doorway at the time of death. Thus they merge into the cosmic soul or God. It is very clear that while their bodies are alive the Brahmarandhra of great Yogis execute tasks of give and take of divine experiences and divine powers via the medium of Sahasrar Chakra of the brain. The Sahasrar Chakra and Brahmarandhra work in tandem like a unit. Thus in Yogic practices they are influenced and utilized in unison.

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mavaddat · 7 years

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And why is it that for nearly two hundred years the Security forces have hung onto the color of the heavens? That was what they wore in Lermontov’s lifetime — “and you, blue uniforms!” Then came blue service caps, blue shoulder boards, blue tabs, and then they were ordered to make themselves less conspicuous, and the blue brims were hidden from the gratitude of the people and everything blue on heads and shoulders was made narrower — until what was left was piping, narrow rims … but still blue. Is this only a masquerade? Or is it that even blackness must, every so often, however rarely, partake of the heavens? It would be beautiful to think so. But when one learns, for example, the nature of Yagoda’s striving toward the sacred … An eyewitness from the group around Gorky , who was close to Yagoda at the time, reports that in the vestibule of the bathhouse on Yagoda’s estate near Moscow, ikons were placed so that Yagoda and his comrades, after undressing, could use them as targets for revolver practice before going in to take their baths. Just how are we to understand that? As the act of an evildoer? What sort of behavior is it? Do such people really exist? We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren’t any. It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past — Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens — inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black. And they reason: “I cannot live unless I do evil. So I’ll set my father against my brother! I’ll drink the vie- tim’s sufferings until I’m drunk with them!” lago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and bom of hate. But no; that’s not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. Macbeth’s self -justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even lago was a little lamb too. The imagina- tion and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long- sought justifica- tion and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago. There was a rumor going the rounds between 1918 and 1920 that the Petrograd Cheka, headed by Uritsky, and the Odessa Cheka, headed by Deich, did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to the animals in the city zoos. I do not know whether this is truth or calumny, or, if there were any such cases, how many there were. But I wouldn’t set out to look for proof, either. Following the practice of the bluecaps, I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible. How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years? Take it away from the working class? Those enemies were going to die anyway, so why couldn’t their deaths support the zoo economy of the Republic and thereby assist our march into the future? Wasn’t it expedient? That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear. Physics is aware of phenomena which occur only at threshold magnitudes, which do not exist at all until a certain threshold encoded by and known to nature has been crossed. No matter how intense a yellow light you shine on a lithium sample, it will not emit electrons. But as soon as a weak bluish light begins to glow, it does emit them. (The threshold of the photoelectric effect has been crossed.) You can cool oxygen to 100 degrees below zero Centigrade and exert as much pressure as you want; it does not yield, but remains a gas. But as soon as minus 183 degrees is reached, it liquefies and begins to flow. Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return. From the most ancient times justice has been a two-part concept: virtue triumphs, and vice is punished. We have been fortunate enough to live to a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn’t raise its voice. However, no one dares say a word about vice. Yes, they did mock virtue, but there was no vice in that. Yes, so-and-so many millions did get mowed down — but no one was to blame for it. And if someone pipes up: “What about those who …” the answer comes from all sides, reproachfully and amicably at first: “What are you talking about, comrade! Why open old wounds?” [Even in connection with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the retired bluecaps living on pensions objected because the book might reopen the wounds of those who had been imprisoned in camp. Allegedly, they were the ones to be protected.] Then they go after you with an oaken club: “Shut up! Haven’t you had enough yet? You think you’ve been rehabilitated!” In that same period, by 1966, eighty-six thousand Nazi criminals had been convicted in West Germany. 22 [Meanwhile, in East Germany, nothing of the sort is to be heard. Which means that there they have been shod with new shoes; they are valued in the service of the state.] And still we choke with anger here. We do not hesitate to devote to the subject page after newspaper page and hour after hour of radio time. We even stay after work to attend protest meetings and vote: “Too few! Eighty-six thousand are too few. And twenty years is too little! It must go on and on.” And during the same period, in our own country (according to the reports of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court) about ten men have been convicted. What takes place beyond the Oder and the Rhine gets us all worked up. What goes on in the environs of Moscow and behind the green fences near Sochi, or the fact that the murderers of our husbands and fathers ride through our streets and we make way for them as they pass, doesn’t get us worked up at all, doesn’t touch us. That would be “digging up the past.” Meanwhile, if we translate 86,000 West Germans into our own terms, on the basis of comparative population figures, it would become one-quarter of a million. But in a quarter-century we have not tracked down anyone. We have not brought anyone to trial. It is their wounds we are afraid to reopen. And as a symbol of them all, the smug and stupid Molotov lives on at Granovsky No. 3, a man who has learned nothing at all, even now, though he is saturated with our blood and nobly crosses the sidewalk to seat himself in his long, wide automobile. Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body? What, then, can Russia teach the world? In the German trials an astonishing phenomenon takes place from time to time. The defendant clasps his head in his hands, refuses to make any defense, and from then on asks no concessions from the court. He says that the presentation of his crimes, revived and once again confronting him, has filled him with revulsion and he no longer wants to live. That is the ultimate height a trial can attain: when evil is so utterly condemned that even the criminal is revolted by it. A country which has condemned evil 86,000 times from the rostrum of a court and irrevocably condemned it in literature and among its young people, year by year, step by step, is purged of it. What are we to do? Someday our descendants will describe our several generations as generations of driveling do-nothings. First we submissively allowed them to massacre us by the mil lions, and then with devoted concern we tended the murderers in their prosperous old age. What are we to do if the great Russian tradition of penitence is incomprehensible and absurd to them? What are we to do if the animal terror of hearing even one-hundredth part of all they subjected others to outweighs in their hearts any inclination to justice? If they cling greedily to the harvest of benefits they have watered with the blood of those who perished? It is clear enough that those men who turned the handle of the meat grinder even as late as 1937 are no longer young. They are fifty to eighty years old. They have lived the best years of their lives prosperously, well nourished and comfortable, so that it is too late for any kind of equal retribution as far as they are concemed.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

#evil #political necessity #ordinary evil

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