These three inaugural releases from a label that “focuses on quality and works out subtle differences in each work” offer a range of sounds, textures, and objects to explore.
Category: Music
Tool de Force
Combining instrumental virtuosity, compositional complexity, and lyrical depth, Tool’s Fear Inoculum deserves not just a listen, but repeated listenings.
Birth of the Uncool
Will I ever enjoy listening to Kind of Blue again knowing that Miles Davis abused and beat his wife when he was outside the recording studio?
“Blood and Rockets: Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons – Movement II, Too the Moon” by The Claypool Lennon Delirium
The Claypool Lennon Delirium masterfully tells the story of rocket scientist/ occultist Jack Parsons.
Salmon Run
Music and lyrics by Paul Maylone. Listen free….
Come Out of Babylon: Heavy Metal Music and the Book of Revelation
The more deeply I’ve looked into heavy metal music and its use of imagery from the Book of Revelation, the more I discovered a very remarkable thing—that heavy metal music is doing the Book of Revelation. In its style, in its values, in its ethos, heavy metal is doing the Book of Revelation in musical form.
Streets of Paris
Music and lyrics by Paul Maylone. “You will turn me into fire, / You will turn me into war, / I will give my life as openly as so many before….”
The Loneliest Road (Intensification)
A 20-minute “unguided meditation,” this audio journey combines music, conversational fragments, and field phenomena to produce a contemplative response to current events, specifically the United States presidential election of 2016. As an immersive mindscape, the sound collage invites you to engage the world as meditation, and meditation as art.
Antagonistic Cooperation as Mind Jazz: Ralph Ellison vs. Amiri Baraka (as Reimagined by Greg Thomas and Greg Tate)
“In their re-imagination of the Ellison/Baraka opposition, direct challenges alternate with playful taunts. These exchanges have the energy of a competition but the warmth and generosity of a collaboration.”
Gonjasufi’s “Vinaigrette” & The Dark Night of the Soul
I saw the freedom of the open streets in the early morning and the romance of the street lamps curled with the eerie silence of the city’s expanse. What you call “an isolated figure” makes a left turn into a horizon of pillowy clouds and endures some kind of ecstasy while being alone in a motel room. The film feels alive, present.
Oh, I’ll Be Free: Bluebird and the Soul in David Bowie’s Lazarus
This is a long title for such a little footnote I’ve made in my re-read of the mid-century book, Ever-Present Origin, a cultural philosophical tome by Jean Gebser. Gebser was a poet, and studied poetry. It was through his careful reading of R …
Subterranean Chambers
The sounds Chrystalis produces are the kind that you wish to keep to yourself; ones you don’t share with anyone.