This brings me to Mithras, Bacchus, Jesus Christ, Horus, all essentially the same god with a slightly different mask on. I love all of them, but Jesus I love the most – don’t get your panties stained with the Santorum running out of your foaming mouth at the very thought of this revelation. Although Telecult Powers is one of the few Christian “noise” bands our Jesus is the mystic that teaches his secrets through the magick mushroom, he is the secret keeper of Matthew 13:10 and the family man of the Gnostic Gospels, the hermaphrodite and teacher of one of the most powerful space ships/time travel techniques available. We find this much more interesting than your cheap explanation that science is the root of it all*.

Anything your idea of Jesus represents to you probably has nothing to do with our view of Jesus so please spare us your wharrgarbl. We have no control over what other people that are into him (or pretend they are) feel or how they act.

*Science creates more cancer than it ever hopes to cure.

Now listening: Dawn Widow – Steve Kenney, aspire-{2}-yuggoth – Lightning Path.

May 17-20 2012 at Secret Project Robot (Bushwick) and Outpost Artist Resources (Ridgewood)

The Ende Tymes Festival is an annual celebration of noise, experimental music, and video art. Presented over the course of 4 nights at 2 venues in Brooklyn and Queens, this second-annual event presents over 40 artists working with street-level avant-garde sound and video.

Confirmed artists:
Cheapmachines (UK)
Phill Niblock and Katherine Liberovskaya (NY)
Joseph Hammer (CA)
Thomas Dimuzio (CA)
R. Jencks (CA)
Telecult Powers (NY/LA)
Sickness (CT)
Goat (TX)
Zaimph (NY)
Mike Shiflet (OH)
Maria Chavez (NY)
Hyena Hive (QUE)
+DOG+ (CA)
Fatale (IL)
Andrew Coltrane (MI)
work/death (RI)
Skin Graft (OH)
Dog Lady FAILURE (MI)
Mesa Ritual (NM)
Husere Grav (TX)
Paranoid Time (MI)
Tar Pit (MI)
Terrors (MD)
Jeff Carey (MD)
Cory O’Brien (DC)
Nonhorse (NY)
Beer Damage (NY)
Lussuria (NY)
Chaos Majik (NY)
Narcissister (NY)
Greg Fox (NY)
Isa Christ (NY)
Diablo (NY)

…and GRASSHOPPER!!!

rough schedule:

Thurs May 17
6-8pm video screenings and performances (at Outpost)
9pm-1am noise and experimental music (at Secret Project Robot)

Friday May 18
6-8pm video screenings and performances (at Outpost)
9pm-1am noise and experimental music (at Secret Project Robot)

Saturday May 19
4-6pm panel discussion on “Street-Level Experimental Music: the
Evolution of Technology and Culture” with Joseph Hammer, Thomas
Dimuzio, Phil Julian (Cheapmachines), Raven Chacon, William Fowler
Collins, and others (at Secret Project Robot)
7pm-1am noise and experimental music (at Secret Project Robot)

Sunday May 20
6pm-12am video screenings and performances (at Outpost)

venue locations:

Secret Project Robot: 389 Melrose St, Bushwick secretprojectrobot.org

Outpost Artist Resources: 1665 Norman St, Ridgewood outpostedit.org
more info:
halfnormal.com/endetymes/

No Hexbreaker Quintet at this fest but check out the HBQ from last year:

Demdike Stare – Elemental Part 4

Highly enjoyable and strange music, have listened to it three times already and still have questions.

flingco sound system black box

Shaped like a coffin I found this weird Buddha Machine style box as a perfect accompaniment to recent Voudon Gnostic meditations. Travel the land of Ghede via astral freakouts.

Aaron Dilloway Modern Jester

At first I thought, shit, I already have the tape, why buy the LP? Then I read the fine print stating that they aren’t the same, then started just constantly hearing people yammer on about how good it is. Seriously, I can’t turn on my computer without someone talking about how it is a masterpiece, etc. Thought shit, better be down with the zeitgeist. About halfway through side A and I am finding it is pretty gnarly indeed.

Bee Mask Elegy for Beach Friday

Speaking of universally loved records I realized I hadn’t picked this up yet. Haven’t played it yet, waiting for a real late night.

I’m still crazy about the Cut Hands Afro Noise I picked up a few weeks ago. Pick your copy up here.

Paypal $7 postage paid to telecult.powers@gmail.com.

Enjoy a high production promo video we filmed last year.

Riders by Hex Breaker: Out now on NNA Tapes from Telecult Powers on Vimeo.

Crowned By The Spider Lwa

The Zoarites – ASPIRE-{2}-YUGGOTH

It is fitting that the first records I ordered from the new Bent Crayon location (now in the second floor of the 78th Street Studios) are the new Afro Noise Vol. 1 Parts 1 and 2 from William Bennett’s Cut Hands. William Bennett’s work has long been a topic of conversation between the proprietor and me so it only makes sense.  Sorry I missed it when it was released on cd, I just felt I had to wait until the vinyl knowing fully well they would be elegantly packaged and high quality like all the recent Whitehouse reissues. No regrets here. Interesting thing about the packaging, the covers are vévé style illustrations that I can’t seem to find the origin of. Would be interested in finding out if they are new designs by the illustrator (Mimsy Dubois) or if they have a traditional base. They don’t look like any vévé I’m familiar with but that just exposes a gap in my knowledge. The cover of Vol. 2 features three skulls and what look to be modified tombstones, so maybe Baron Samedi and some of his baron friends?*

The records are outstanding, the title Afro Noise sums up perfectly what they contain. But check it, his isn’t a Graham Greene noise record, a Brit in the jungle storming around like a mad dog looking for a spot of gin sneering at the savages. Cut Hands comes across as exploring it more from the Maya Deren school, completely immersing himself in the drum music of Western Africa and Haiti and the religions and art that surround it. Maybe he hasn’t, but the quality of music has no outsider boundaries to it. A fascinating thing about it is it doesn’t sound that different from many of the traditional voodoo records in my collection. There are a few clues, a lot of time stretching on a particular track, but other than that it stays closer to the source than I expected.

Thinking about it, Noise and Voodoo have a lot of similar traits. Both are essentially about leaving your head (or as Lon Milo Duquette would argue going really deep into it). Trance inducement is the name of the game. Plenty of noise types try to get away with the junkiest most fucked up equipment they can force a sound out of,  and voodoo thrives in some of the poorest regions of the world. Voodoo drummers don’t have the luxury of going to the nearest Guitar Center and picking up a drum, as the best noise musicians are never the guys that go there with Mom’s credit card and make a pedal chain. Both noise and Voodoo have plenty of frauds and fakers involved. Oh yeah, and most people don’t want a noise venue next door as most people would probably wince if they lived next door to a voodoo peristyle. The ceremonies in Brooklyn generally started around 1 or or 2 am and would go until 6 or so.

William Bennett provided Radio Web Macba an African percussion mix which is outstanding, listened to it yesterday while I was writing copy about ferns for my day job.

Disclaimer: When I was doing my own noise/Haitian/Brazilian drum experiments (Mysteres du Serpent) I thought at the time I was referencing more SPK, Voudon Gnosticism of Michael Bertiaux, Kenneth Grant Typhonian weirdness, and the various Voodoo cults down here in New Orleans. Maybe on an unconscious level I tried to separate myself from what I had heard from the Whitehouse camp previously, most particularly 2007′s Racket. I am extremely proud of the Mondo Neptune cassette and it touches on similar themes as Cut Hands, but where Cut Hands is more polished and methodical Mysteres du Serpent is a bit chaotic. Perhaps Cut Hands is more cinematic where Serpents draws from New Orleans’ rich Discordian tradition? Two different beasts drinking from the same well.

* I brought the records by famed New Orleans mambo Sallie Anne Glassman’s Island of Salvation Botanica this afternoon. She said she didn’t recognize the source of the vévé illustration but she was also in a hurry to get her precious akita Ayizan to the vet. She said something about the arrow language which I can’t find any information on anyway. If anyone has more info on the cover designs please give me a shout, either in the comments, by email: witchbeam@gmail.com or you can tweet at me twitter.com/templeofpei. I’ve been off the twitter since I started working full time but I still check it occasionally.

Suggested reading: KANAVAL by Leah Gordon/Voudon Gnosis by David Beth

Received an email from Brian Butler last night about his upcoming ritual performance at Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair January 21 at Barker Hanger. Always interested in his work (I wrote about his and Kenneth Anger’s Technicolor Skull LP at WFMU recently), this sounds like a pretty sweet time. Not much more I can say abou it, so I’ll just regurgitate the press release:

January 13, 2012 – Los Angeles-based artist Brian Butler will debut Union of Opposites, his most ambitious work to date, at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 5pm in conjunction with Annie Wharton Los Angeles, in the Ruskin Theatre (across from The Barker Hanger) at the Santa Monica Airport, 3000 Airport Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90405.

Regarding the timing of the performance Butler notes, “I am pleased to be debuting Union of Opposites at LA’s top art fair and especially pleased that is coincides with the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival.” Spiritual and aesthetic experimentation have played an integral role in shaping the history of Los Angeles. From the occult rituals of Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley to the examination of such traditions by Mike Kelley and Wallace Berman, the interconnectedness of LA’s spiritual past and its artistic dissection have been alive for generations – in the works of Kenneth Anger and in the founding of many local religious cults. Butler’s interests and practices with the occult tap into the strange and dangerous stories that dig into the roots of LA and its art making.

Union of Opposites is an experiment in ritual magick, combining the use of sound and light with the intent of creating a collective out-of-body experience. A film screening will transform into a live performance in which the artist and his team execute an occult rite inspired by Aleister Crowley’s mysterious Ritual of the Mark of the Beast. In this incantation, Butler explores ideas of reversal and the use of geometric figures as channels of occult power. The work will feature a spontaneously improvised soundtrack that experiments with the effects of sound frequencies and rhythmic chanting on our chakras and mental state.

Butler’s interest in expanded cinema will fold the performance space into the work. He views the film, performance and musical accompaniment as a singular entity, where the performers will “expand from two dimensional screen to three dimensional existence” as themes of astral projection and projective geometry interplay with the auditory and visual stimuli.

Butler—who has communed and consulted with occultists and magicians from Europe to South America—explains that “magick is an art unto itself. In a sense, is the art of living in a creative and free way.” Influenced by the work of British arch-occultist Aleister Crowley, Butler believes that magick is conducive to and “complements” all manner of creativity, helping practitioners access different parts of the mind as well as spiritual realms. Butler explains: “The occult is defined as the hidden levels of the mind or the hidden information about how things work…A really intense performance is like hypnosis. You go to a certain state of mind and your presence brings those around you to the same place.”

Brian Butler is an artist, filmmaker and musician living in Los Angeles. He has been included in: “Projections” curated By Aaron Rose at Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles; “Bright Morning Star” curated by Natxo Checa at Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, Portugal; and the 2nd Athens Biennale. His films have screened at the Tate Modern and the Cannes Film Festival. He recently had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at LA><ART, a solo gallery show at Annie Wharton Los Angeles and a performance in collaboration with Kenneth Anger at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

As a musician, he has recorded and/or performed music with artists such as VON LMO, Rozz Williams (Christian Death), and Moving Units. He is currently a collaborator with Kenneth Anger in both Technicolor Skull as well as numerous film and exhibition projects. Butler’s recent writing has centered extensively on the occult, publishing in Disinformation’s Book of Lies as well as working on numerous documentaries and experimental films exploring the subject.         

Dig her Q & A with intrepid noise journalist Raymond Cummings for the Village Voice.

… and I feel this is the greatest movie she has sent over:

Pompa Gira: The Queen in Red

His latest features Pompa Gira, one of the orixas worked with by practitioners of Umbanda and Quimbanda in Brazil. Female beauty, sexuality, and desires are her domain, all of which is represented in Hagen von Tulien’s piece.

For more information on how to purchase please contact him direct at his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/hagen.von.tulien

* I’m sure there is lots of other work he does within the system that goes beyond illustration, just not being a member or privy to their secrets I would prefer not to venture a guess what those works would be.

——————————————————————————————————————-

Side note on the Voudon Gnosis tip: Looks like Telecult may be performing in the Columbus, Ohio area December 27th with Lightning Path, also  members of the La Societe Voudon Gnostic. I recently purchased their latest Bandcamp release and would highly recommend it to others: http://lightningpath1.bandcamp.com

I would like to stress the may be performing part, still ironing out details. Will post a confirmation as soon as we figure it out.

Dearest friends!

We are instilled with power. A power from deep within the Earth and at the edge of the cosmos.

You are cordially invited to experience this power and take it into your life where you can use it for good or evil.

Power shall be transferred via aural psychic energy displacement and transmogrification in Brooklyn on the following dates: 11/5 and 11/15.

Here are the details:

11/5
OCCUPY 80 VERNON
A free exhibition of music, art and dance from the creators of 30 Rock, So You Think You Can Dance, The Legend of Zelda and The Rocky Point Diner (open 24 hours in scenic Rocky Point, NY)

The Controversy
(Three dudes with circuit-bent chainsaws making ice sculptures out of fire)

La Part Maudite
(An exploration of sound and sight lead by a shaman from the Andes after eating 500 Andes mints)

Kill Me Lover
(Visual artist Saddam Insane’s musical exploration of After Dark’s “Flying Toasters” screensaver)
Hex Breaker Quartet

(Y’all know the deal… Chemical explorations of the known skull lead by heroic trumpets and churning synthesizers)

Dora Bleu
(The only Christian ophicleide noise virtuoso. Winner of Mark Zuckerberg’s prestigious Booky for “Best Facebook Page: Experimental Musician or Viennese School Artist”)

Andrew Hurst
(There’s so much to say about Andrew’s dulcet tones that I won’t even say another thing. He recently announced his intention to drink so much Kool Aid that he pukes on stage. NOT TO BE MISSED!)

And Others
(And Others has never before entered America. This troupe of Slovakian improv artists in world-renowned for their confrontational stage antics, which frequently involve drinking so much Kool Aid that they puke on Andrew Hurst)

DJ TBA
(DJ TBA is best known for his charity work for “Tuberculosis Sucks Ass”. However, he’s a fairly competent Dubstep DJ known for his Korn remixes utilizing Garageband’s “British Amp” plug-in)

80 Vernon Ave Between Marcy and Thompkins
G to Myrtle-Willoughby. 1 block from the train.
8 PM – FREE FREE FREE

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=215011215233998&notif_t=event_invite

11/15
LOTS OF GOOD BANDS AT DEATH BY AUDIO
An inexpensive exhibition of music, art and dance from the creators of XXX starring Vin Diesel, All Magic Tricks Ever and Pulled Pork

Hex Breaker Quartet
(See Above)

Twisty Cat
(Woodwinds from Hell playing music that God takes “baths” too)

Liquid State Bypass
(Chi-town ganstas spitting rhymes about working in fast food establishments)

Paul Giallorenzo/Brian Labycz Duo
(My brain hurts too much to write something insane and much like the other bands I have no idea what this band sounds like)

Death By Audio
49 South 2nd Street between Wythe and Kent
L to Bedford Ave
8 PM – Some amount of money less than $7

Just in case that wasn’t enough news, Hex Breaker Quartet has a new tape out on NNA that’s still available in limited quantities. To get the tape that the New York Times described as “Chemical explorations of the known skull lead by heroic trumpets and churning synthesizers” visit http://www.nnatapes.com/.