The Rock Blogger

Scott Walker “Cossacks Are” The Drift.

The black snow runs down from the rooftops;
A red finger dips into your brow;
Blue snow flakes sink into the empty room,
They are a lovers’ dying mirrors.
Heavy and torn to pieces the mind muses,
Follows the shadow in the mirror of blue snow flakes,
The cold smile of a deceased harlot.
The evening’s wind weeps in the scent of carnations.
-Georg Trakl - Delirium

Drawing by Marc Ngui

“In rupture, not only has the matter of the past volatised; the form of what happened, of an imperceptible something that has happened in a volatile matter, no longer even exists. One has become imperceptible and clandestine in a motionless voyage. Nothing can happen, or can have happened, any longer. Nobody can do anything for or against me any longer. My territories are out of grasp, not because they are imaginary, but the opposite, because I am in the process of drawing them. Wars, big and little, are behind me. Voyages, always in tow to something else, are behind me. I no longer have any secrets, having lost my face, form and matter. I am now no more than a line. I have become capable of loving, not with an abstract, universal love, but a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me, blindly, my double, just as selfless as I. One has been saved by and for love, by abandoning love and self. Now one is no more than an abstract line, like an arrow crossing the void. Absolute deterritoralisation.”

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari - A Thousand Plateaus

Having just seen Lars von Trier’s "Anti-Christ", I was compelled to research one of its supposed influences. "Haxan " (1922) was an elaborate silent film from Sweden that depicts scenes of demons, witchcraft and occult rituals. This video takes some visually stunning scenes from Haxan and sets them to songs from Coil’s Horse Rotorvator , easily one of the most disturbing industrial albums I’ve heard.

This piece captures the song perfectly, using extensive takes that invite you not to watch, but to explore.

The music of the Red House Painters set to scenes from Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams. Whether Mark Kozelek’s music is under Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon or his own name, it always has a dramatic effect on me. This song can be found on Down Colorful Hill.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion . 1944.

Below is a fascinating documentary about one of the most influential figurative/surrealist painters of the 20th Century. His work contains overwhelming dread, transmogrification, and decay. He once described his paintings as the residue of life, like the slime behind a snail.

Ben Chasny’s Six Organs of Admittance is one my favorite projects at the moment. Given my hectic schedule as of late, deep, meditative music like this is vital. These videos bring out the texture in this music and have a Stan Brakhage quality to them. The newest SOA album Luminous Night marks a departure from drone/noise influenced psychedelia to more straightforward folk. I suggest you check it out.

Despite suffocating in clouds of tobacco and pot smoke, the Tool concert last evening was a hypnotic experience. Amid the throngs of white-trash and spotty teenagers, I could still revel in the cosmic death-dance that was Tool’s set list, which primarily focused on songs from 10,000 Days and Lateralus.

Maynard and his band were in top form as they hammered through densely textured performances, extending their already lengthy songs with spiraling solos and haunting drones. Revisions of “Stinkfist” and “Lateralus” in particular were stunning, as unexpected twists and turns in songwriting gave the night an almost tribal sense of spontaneity.

It was also strange and fascinating to watch thousands of lighters creep above the crowd as the high pitched guitar drone of “Lost Keys” split over the Molson Amphitheater like a haze of incense, showcasing Tool’s otherworldly mystique. As the intro led into the colossal “Rosetta Stoned”, a song about receiving messianic truth from aliens (only to forget it), I had to admire the band’s ability to weave dark humor with insatiable spiritual longing.

The ying/yang of destruction and creation was revealed with greater clarity with “AEnima” and “Lateralus”. The former, an apocalyptic diatribe against vapid excess (owing much to Bill Hick’s “L.A. Falls” on Arizona Bay), showed Tool at their most caustic, as screaming guitars echoed Maynard’s calls to “wash it all away”. The latter song took up the cause of rebirth and resurrection, as the slow-burning climax called for wholeness, catharsis and the opening of new possibilities. It is refreshing to see a metal band engage with both ends of an antagonistic spectrum, sending out deconstructive energies in the most creative and explosive light.

The most striking appeal of this show, and for Tool’s music in general, is the tension between harrowing despair and purifying release, a movement that can help characterize the band’s artistic development from the subterranean laments of Opiate and Undertow to the expansive and searching spirit of their most recent work. It is progressive metal that is progressive in nearly every sense of the term, drawing out deep personal (and perhaps universal) forces and letting them “spiral out” above and beyond the fallen everyday.

A classic cover of a classic Pink Floyd song.
Montreal’s Voivod was one of the most influential and original metal bands to emerge in the late 80’s. Their sound blends progressive, thrash and alternative elements into complex and sci-fi-inspired songwriting. You can find this song on the acclaimed Nothingface .