The Arcanum

Hi! Welcome to The Arcanum.

Subscribed and following! Great to have you back, Alex!

Since you posted your review, two people have downloaded that Davenport album - and only that Davenport album - from me on Soulseek. 

Edited by Gordy - February 21 2023 at 10:51

I'll petition the collabs to codify GP as a sub-subgenre of krautrock, covering all the borderline-lobotomised percussive freakout groups you and I love so much. I still plan to force the team to listen to 6majik9 and the rest of the Music Your Mind Will Love You dudes. ;)

I only have one DF release, Rabbit's Foot Propeller, which I fortuitously stumbled onto while on tour in 2014. I remember you and PSIKE were posting some really exciting groups at the time, which I was following as I moved through the South up to NYC and the Northeast.

Edited by Gordy - February 21 2023 at 18:25

^I'll shoot you a PM, I'm long overdue in responding to you as it is!

Edited by Gordy - February 22 2023 at 12:02

It's been a little over a year, almost on time for annual visit to this site . What better time than now for a second review?

Edited by Sheavy - April 21 2024 at 19:57

Uh hi again, ANYWAY here's some sh*t to peruse.




The Arcanum Review No.4

Maurizio Bianchi – Symphony For A Genocide










What is likely the Italian industrialist/noise-maker/ambient minimalist Maurizio Bianchi’s most well-known work is also a very weighted one. Symphony For A Genocide is a conceptual album dealing with the holocaust and the concentration camps where this took place, all of the tracks being named after a concentration camp. But there is more here conceptually. From the 2015 vinyl reissue from Rotorelief MB draws parallels between these death camps, the processes behind them, and the destruction of “the will of the individual, and to create industrialization of death”, and what he charges the modern world with, that of destroying “individual human choice with mass marketing and media, those being synonymous with mass destruction, establishing a city of death.”. The conclusion is that this album is a “pathetic symphony for both”. Often M.B. ascribes his releases with some philosophical, conceptual or theological (TBH usually reading like a word salad of philosophical pessimism) influence or ideation, and my reaction to these is to google what the hell half the words mean and go ‘Okay anyway!’. Don’t get me wrong, I love the liner notes for M.B.’s releases.

For all the philosophical musings and wordy waxing M.B. tends to, this album, and all his early 80’s output is a bit yin and yang. This is the definition of early raw unpolished industrial music, forget TG, Skinny Puppy, Chrome. Nothing harmonious or melodic to be found here, only scratchy, ugly, rhythmic mechanical pulsations and degraded layers of warbling, off kilter synth stabs and whines, often crammed through hissing cassette recorders and transistor radios (snatches of radio can be heard on Belzec) for extra ugliness. Synths dopily groaning in agony, while the production line heaves and reverberates underneath the mess of keyboards and synths. It’s a soundscape of machines, factories, and industrial complexes bashing and groaning ever onward slathered in heaps of decomposing tape muck and fuzzy radio static, much like the machine of mass consumption in parallel. This 45 minute “pathetic symphony” is, whether tenuous parallels or not, a masterpiece of early ‘true’ industrial work.

Gordy wrote: Always a pleasure to see you around, Sheavy! MB's liner notes are indeed a trip to read; "a word salad of philosophical pessimism" hits the nail on the head.

I love it especially when it accompanies one of his albums where it sounds like he's turned some sequencers/synths on then left the room for 60 minutes.

The Arcanum review No.6

Coil - Scatology





After short stints in Psychic TV and the lesser known Zos Kia, Coil co-founder John Balance absconded off with lover Peter Christopherson to focus on Coil. This early release is a jumble of rage and ideas musically and lyrically. Weird, squelchy ambient and twisted, thumping Industrial, musically; and rage at the aids epidemic, Christianity and some plain old perversity for good measure, lyrically.

Ubu Noir is a short opening to the album, a handful of samples toyed around with, some woodwinds cut and mixed amongst some voices and what sounds like paper being ripped. After this little warm up, Panic starts as stuttering and stumbling quasi danceable (if you were having a seizure) industrial track, anchored by electronic drums and bass, allowing all manner of samples, guitar feedback, and Balance’s shouted vocals to wreak havoc, it puts me in mind of a handful of Current 93’s attempts at more ‘commercial’ oriented Industrial. Balances’ notes on the song go on about psychic surgery and reverse death and the beginning of the world, but the lyrics can also be seen as allusions to how gay culture was and still can be perceived, ‘Anything will be alright, If you come out in the night’. At The Heart Of It All is a much more somber, apocalyptic affair, synth lines slowly twinkle in the background, accompanied with mournful, plodding piano and soon to be full time member Stephen Thrower’s howling grief stricken Clarinet playing. Tenderness Of Wolves starts with dark, clanging synth lines, coalescing more odd features; what sounds like a distorted, sampled sound of a baby crying, acoustic guitar and pan pipes. Gavin Friday provides some demented, crooning guest vocals here. Hard to tell if the lyrics are about lovers or vampires, or both. Spoiler returns to somewhat similar industrial stomping grounds of Panic; a dash of tribal, staccato drums and samples of horns form backbone for flauting pan pipes, snatches of guitar noise, and almost comical carnivalesque keyboard intrusions. Vocals are a mixture of sung and croaked, mostly being the word ‘Spoiler’. Clap is a short uncomfortable Industrial intrusion, a squeal of guitar and glass shattering leads into a panicked and nervous synth line, swelling synths culminate in a burn out, before reforming shortly and burning out again. Liner notes contain treatment methods for the clap (slang for gonorrhea). An appropriately agitated song for a pertinent and sad time for many people involved with this group, and the anger and agitation only increases during side B.

The CD reissues of Scatology feature some extra songs stuffed after the original A side ending, Restless Day and Aqua Regis as well as Tainted Love, tacked on the end. Restless Day has a strong and driving rhythmic structure of drums, bass, and synth; quaint almost naïve vocals sing song about what I interpret as depression, while various multi-tracked guitar noises slowly crumble in. There’s a percussive sound effect throughout the whole song sounding like a ticking clock, maybe hand in hand with lyrics seemingly about the drudgery of everyday life. Aqua Regis starts with some creepy toy piano, before switching gears into a soundscape of a darkened, hellish factory. Far away rumblings and thumpings, clanging and reverberating. Saws and gears grinding and whirring.

This song works very well at leading us back into the original track listing with Solar Lodge. Industrial rhythms and hopeless, wailing clarinet compete for dominance with near unhinged vocals from John Balance. Underneath all this is floating, droning, and warbled bass guitar, much like the subterranean river mentioned in the liner notes, from a quote attributed to Charles Manson about finding a bottomless hole out in the Californian desert, leading to an underground, North flowing river. Bottomless because “where could a river be going North underground?”, conjecturing “How many people could you hide down this hole?”. The title Solar Lodge is a reference to the Californian based, mid 60s cult/magical order of same name, perhaps most infamous for the case of child abuse stemming from a raid of their ranch, finding a six-year-old boy chained inside a box left in out in the desert. Black sun rising indeed as we spiral further down this path of daylight nightmare into The Sewage Worker’s Birthday Party, the liner notes referencing a story in a Swedish S&M magazine and also fulfilling the title of this album. The song itself is one of the more minimal, bass guitar woozily droning and scratching along, uncomfortable rhythmic background squelching, and a singular, persistent, unerring machine thumping loathsomely in the depths of this awful place. It also contains snatches of private and intimate recordings made by Peter Christopherson for added unsavoriness.

Godhead≈Deathead opens with unidentified sounds, but plasticky and latex-y and icky. Quickly we move into a martial industrial beat, various refreshingly whimsical percussive accoutrements accompany militaristic yelled vocals, a mid-song pace change for a slower gothic feel, proto Dungeon Synth. It’s cheesy sounding, but I kinda love it. Lyrically we have not moved into the whimsical, here being a takedown of Christianity, liner notes referencing St. Anthony’s Fire or Ergot, a fungus that grows on grain and causes convulsions, hallucinations, and rot; being responsible for multiple epidemics during the middle ages. I take the title of the song, Godhead≈Deathead, as dig at the act of communion, bread being a symbol for Jesus’ body, yet causing mass poisoning if infected bread is consumed. The next song Cathedral In Flames continues the Christianity battering; the Marquis De Sade, the York Minster fire of July 9, 1984, and the Hadith being lyrically mixed into a seeming ritual induction. It’s also the weakest of the album, very similar to the previous song, and far cheesier. Off putting sampled trumpets, stumbling drums, odd cohesion and lots space between sounds, and Balance’s nasally vocals don’t work for me. Ending the CD rerelease on a better note is a cover of Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, Coil opting for much slower, minimal, and somber approach. Balance delivers some beautiful, wistful half sung vocals; synths ringing and floating along, pealing like electronic church bells, echoing Coil’s unhappiness of then and still current affairs.