day 12: Origins #2 – Lost Archetypes, Fading Shamans and Unfinished Labyrinths

Part #2

Chilly Interlude

After that we changed our name to Chill.

Musically the best period.
All jammed, improvised and structured in the moment.
Sentient Chaos and Random Order indeed!

But no more additions to the Confessions trilogy.

Koen had already moved to SF.
Bjorn to LA, but you know that already.
Michiel to Joop van de Ende.

The 01/03 - Unsolved Labyrinth - version

Then Auracle happened...

Which was Mythica at first, but Epica beat us to it and so we came up with a way cooler name. They were Fortuyn-enthusiasts from Limburg, at least some of them were and probably voted Wilders in the last election, so who cares what they have to say. Write about the wise and rich Islamic culture for a change ;-) I was also enthusiastic about Fortuyn as a debater and would have loved to see him shake hands with Bush, but would never have voted for him and really wish he were here right now instead of the new guy.

And Joris created the best version of confessions yet. The lyrics which now also included part of “All in a day’s Dream” and stage two as well were changed a bit to accommodate the new music.

Eventually ex-Scrythe/Chill drummer and good friend and the one who’s girlfriend’s brother Hank.... well you know that story, Marco joined the band.
He lives in Norway now.

Amazing... when I type in “Confessions of a Demi-God” in google you get to the strangest pages. With Torrents, Rapidshare links, wow! I love it. Very good reviews as well (90/100), also of the follow up (88/100). Even to pages with full info on our demo’s that I don’t even posses anymore (certainly forgot about all the details like the year):

Mythica - Confessions of a Demi-God (2003) - Rating: 9.4 / 10
Auracle - Crystal Lies (2005) - Rating - 9.6 / 10

It says in Spanish: “Here I present you another band, they only have two demos. How I would love it if they would make an album... If you want to hear a very beautiful song by them (which is not encountered on the demos) go here... Enjoy :)” It links to a dead youtube vid.

Yes, we had a fully recorded album, just some vocals missing. It sort of disintegrated as bands so often do.

I don’t really care whether I should or shouldn’t, here’s a snapshot of something that could have been popular at least in some spanish and german speaking countries :)

[caption id="attachment_325" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Auracle"][/caption]

[audio:Confessions of a Demi-God.mp3]

Oh, right, for those of you who didn’t know...

I traded my guitar for bass-hide.

Better match.

So, press play and read.
Great performance!

Confessions of a Demi-God

And of all the voices I had ever heard,

this voice was the softest,
the deepest and the most frightening one. Then he took a piece of my brain
and as he slowly merged
with the dark surroundings
he said: "You won't be needing this." Overt and blurred
The race for time begins now!
Naked and hurt
I breathe life! Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity! -
Systems within systems
So relieved to have found the shores of reason
The burning dream I left behind
A testimony to my treason
- Wild guesses, my new vessels
Across the planes of panic
Beware of the two-faced trespassers
Their touch will leave you frantic The attempted blend with reality
Left me blind to the light of relativity
Crippled, in a way, I seek my refuge
To keep me from collapsing in continuity Systems within systems
I release the firm hold
And dive into a free-fall
Of distance through cold Reach for my land
Intangible leash
Can’t be set free! Somewhere between stimulus and response Tempt me all you like There is just one way Out of this apocalypse Strife drowns my pride Forget
Reject
Relay
The will to crave [new “lyrics”] I can see you
I can hear you
I can feel you

[formerly known as: stage two with lots of new stuff] So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure,
never claimed to be a soulless one,
I found that chaos speaks to us through order, Mastering the flow of reality
Blinded by the light of causality
Precognition?
In a way
I saw my fate re-designed and of all the places I had ever searched,
this place was the strangest,
the gravest and most mysterious one This is the evil playground,
the factory of lies,
built in the city
where truth was born. Overt and blurred
The race for time begins now!
Naked and hurt
I breathe life! Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity! Oh no!
Not again,
Not now
Recounting my years in captivity,
Twenty-one and some,
A raid of ego to bind the last to the least,
The anguish arrives!
Here it comes!
HERE I GO!

 

From Lost to Last

My guess is that the Spanish he or she is talking about the “Last Avatar” video recorded at the Mezz, which happens to be the last song lyric I wrote about 4-6 years ago. And ehh, I can’t find it. Don’t have a digital version. The lyrics actually reflect most of what I would have liked stage: free to be. Oh well.

I found some other, ancient scribblings for that part however:

Confusions of a semi-God

Stage: Free

The Lost Archetype

i - East, West, where’s my Quest?

Walking the path of virtue with no concern for the truth,
I roam the eastern hemisphere in search of a long lost (hidden) youth.
Trying to forget analysis, without losing sight for facts,
I crave for western atmosphere on the verge of an ancient arcane act.

ii - The Void (Reductio ad infinitum)

I am here, the space between matter,
I realise what I found and relapse in confusion,
So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure

Like coincidence, it is in the mind,
It’s here, even inside this void,
A hint of evolution?
Or a fragment of infinity?
Or maybe it's just me.......

iii - The Lost Archetype (Reductio ad absurdum)

To wonder "What if?", a waste of precious time,
And time is still my cage
Forever trapped inside it's invisible walls
I am a prisoner in uproar

My futile conquest of relativity
Had reduced me to an absurdity
Strengthened in a way, mind and body aligned
I saw my fate redesigned

iv - The Master will be proud (Or: Can I have that piece of brain back now?)

I was reborn from the ashes of deceit,
Hope was regrown in the gardens of sleep.
As for you, the ghost of agonies' past,
I will exorcize you, and you will not be the last.

I think parts of this have been used for the most amazing never performed or finished Auracle song called “Perpetual Requiem”

Maybe it’s not a coincidence I stopped writing lyrics after Auracle.
Back to making music...

With Hoer, Xtort and as Mr. Botak

Very nice but... not live enough for me

Now I met these two guys who have their controls set for the centre of the galaxy where the supermassive black holes reside

We are not bothered by any ambition or neatly polished songstructures



Here’s a few tastes, it’s all improv.... jamming again you know, you know mon?
ya’man... 2 mics and 1-take and 1-track mono recordings this time

tørdsåls:
[audio:tordsalsa.mp3]

d-låid:
[audio:d-laid-3.mov]

 

[gallery exclude="367,385" columns="4"]

“Hey, en als je hem kent mag je meezingen he!”

[audio:Auracle live @ popei 07 - Confessions of a demi god-6.mov]

Auracle @ POPei

Some links:

Chill: http://www.myspace.com/chillnomore

Hoer: http://www.myspace.com/hoerindustrial

Xtort: http://www.xtort.nl/ - http://www.myspace.com/xtortmusic/

Auracle: http://www.myspacecom/159920328 - http://youtu.be/d0aULOcm13c - http://youtu.be/b3ZlfEkEqRQ - http://youtu.be/jmHLfy-6aw4

Mr. Botak: http://www.myspace.com/mrbotak - http://www.youtube.com/user/MisterBotak?feature=mhsn

 

 

 

天
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day 11: Origins #1 - Lost Archetypes, Fading Shamans and Unfinished Labyrinths

[caption id="attachment_332" align="alignnone" width="427" caption="Masters of the Labyrinth - Lyrics"][/caption]

Apparently this was too much for slow connections in combination with slow iDisk servers, so I split it in two.

Part #1

A long time ago in a Netherlands far, far away...
Before I knew anything about things that look random but are not
Before I knew anything about branes, brains and automatons
Before I knew about Musashi, Lao Tse, Gödel, Escher and Bach
Before I knew about structure and systems

I wrote Confessions of a Demi-God, a song lyric

Well... “wrote” is not really the correct tense here, maybe “started to write” is better.
I didn’t write it as one piece, not in one go, but it was always meant to be a trilogy in three stages:

Confessions of a Demi-God stage one: Random Order
Confessions of a Demi-God stage two: Sentient Chaos
Confusions of a Semi-God stage free: The Lost Archetype

Always a part of it and appearing as a piece of prose was All in a Day’s Dream: An epilogical prologue

Over the years it emerged from high-school scribblings between homework assignments into an epic that has been (partially) set to music three times now by different musicians...

The 92/94 - Lost Archetype - version
The 97/99 - Fading Shaman - version
The 01/03 - Unsolved Labyrinth - version

Over the course of the years lyrics have been added, removed, changed and reintroduced again.

The 92/94 - Lost Archetype - version

The second stage was actually performed and recorded first chronologically, in the period of 1992-1994. Back then we changed our high-school band name from Nightcrowd to Scrythe (yeah, I know), as we changed our musical direction and dropped some personnel. We made a demo tape on a 4-track recorder (yes youngsters, that’s what people did in the old days)! Incidentally, Hank Heijink the owner of the 4-track, whom I didn’t know very well at the time, was the brother of the girlfriend of our drummer Marco, became my colleague at the Radboud University many years later as he got his PhD in cognitive (music) psychology @ the Music, Mind Machine Lab, after his masters degree in computer science and after he finished the Brabant Conservatory in Classical Guitar, only to continue after his PhD to get a degree in Lute and Theorbo at the famous Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Apparently he’s also writing iPhone apps now, in NY. I just knew his reputation as an extremely talented drummer and percussionist in 1992.

Oh, how people can change...

But I digress, back to the trilogy that never was:

Here is a part of the booklet (click the image to download the entire thing). All in a day’s dream is already there as prose to fill the booklet. In the last column it says: Not included but definitely part of the story... Those songs did not exist as music back then.

[caption id="attachment_334" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="Masters of the Labyrinth Booklet"][/caption]

Now about Hank’s 4-track, we did not have anything else. Just some cheap mics. The noise you hear (especially in the beginning as I play the harmonics with delay, is also because of the effects unit I had at the time for my guitar: a cheap Zoom that the entire band called zoem (hum). The distortion was of course worse than the delay as you can hear. So we used all four tracks to record the music, then down-mixed some tracks to create room for vocals... we just didn’t have a vocalist.

So I did it, in a room the mother of our bassplayer (and my neighbour) Bjorn used to cut people’s hair in. With a mic that didn’t even have a detachable cable, or an XLR plug. I don’t even remember if I had headphones....

[audio: 05 Scrythe - side b - 05 - Confessions.mp3]

Yeah it sounds terrible and so do I, but the music is still pretty ahead of its time :)

Bjorn came up with the the term Lost Archetype by the way. In a phone conversation about band names I had suggested Lost Horizon and Ancient Archetype, a simple contraction did the trick. He is the best bass player I know, I mean listen to the bass slap breaks in this song, we were 18 for God’s sake. I have NO idea how to do that. He lives in LA now.

The Lyrics to stage two at the time were as follows, maybe you should read them as the music plays:

Confessions of a Demi-God
Stage: Two

-- Sentient Chaos --

So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure,
But I never claimed to be a soulless one,
I found that chaos speaks to us through order,
Controlling the flow of reality itself.
Precognition?
Indeed!

This is the evil playground,
Where we witness the creation of our own damnation.
This is the factory of lies,
We built in the city where truth was born.

Oh no!
Not again,
Not now.
Recounting my years in captivity,
Twenty-one and some,
A raid of ego to bind the last to the least,
The anguish arrives!
Here it comes!
HERE I GO!

The really funny funny, strange, weird -I don’t know- thing about this text is that it makes a LOT of sense to me now. I can’t imagine what I meant by it back then when I was 21. That’s actually the age I first started drinking beer. Well... there you go

The 97/99 - Fading Shaman - version

Then some years later (1997/1998) and some personnel changes later we did some proper recordings, this time of stage one and we asked my brother to sing (he added some cool lines too!). Below are the lyrics, read them as you listen. The three song demo (on CD this time!) was called “All in a Day’s Dream” and of course again featured All in a day’s dream as prose in the booklet.

About a year after the release, I met the people of Entheon in Nijmegen who translated and published Terence McKenna’s “Food of the Gods” in Dutch. We cooperated for a certain underground movement, on some stuff... that... well... eh... is not for this blog right now.

Anyway... When the translator read All in a day’s dream and Confessions stage one, she said: “Wow can I send this to Terrence? He’ll love it!” ... uhh ... hey well who am I to refuse such a great mind? Well, it turned out he had just been diagnosed with brain cancer, or glioblastoma multiforme. I am not sure he actually read it, because this thing is so aggressive he died a few months later. Since then, the subtitle in my mind has been:

For Novelty, whenever I may find her. Well, perhaps in two years :)

Ok, so here it is, in honour of a great shaman:

All in a Day's Dream
An Epilogical Prologue

The Master of the Labyrinth sighed as he knelt beside me. I saw his eyes focus on my naked brain and I guessed he was examining it for abnormalities. He then spoke to me:

"Foolish young creature, your quest continues. I will share with you the Truths you must pursue, for they are One and they are All. First, analyse the manifestations of Order, then delve for the powers of Chaos. When you are still in possession of your life after having done these things, you must begin the search for the Lost Archetype. Be everywhere, investigate nowhere."

And of all the voices I had ever heard, from the roaring of the pit-demons to the angelic high whispers of the air-spirits, this voice was the softest, the deepest and the most frightening one. Then he took a piece of my brain and as he slowly merged with the dark surroundings he said:

"You won't be needing this."

----

Confessions of a Demi-God
Stage: One

-- Random Order --

I - RES EXTENSA

Overt and blurred
The race for time begins (now!)
Naked and hurt
I breathe life!

Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity!

II - RES COGITANS

Systems within systems
So relieved to have reached the shores of reason
The burning dreams I left behind
A testimony of my treason
Wild guesses, my new vessels
Across the planes of panic
Beware of the two-faced trespassers
Their touch will leave you frantic

The attempted blend with reality
Left me blind to the light of relativity
Crippled, in a way, I seek my refuge
To keep me from collapsing in insanity

Systems within systems
While I release the firm hold
And dive into a free-fall
Of distance through cold

Overt and blurred
The race for time begins (now!)
Naked and hurt
I breathe life!

Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity!

III - UNITAS MULTIPLEX

Crystalline dreams
Lost in my world
Blessed and deceived
Losing the race!
Violent minds
Reach for my land
Intangible leash
Can’t be set free!

Somewhere between stimulus and response

IV - SOMEWHERE BEYOND STIMULUS AND RESPONSE

Tempt me all you like
There is just one way
Out of this apocalypse
Strife drowns my pride
Self preservation
Must delete itself
Prison deep within
Guarded by hauntings
Who appear to be
Mere fragments of me

"Lie not", they tell me
And with lies they hold me

Forget
Reject
Relay
The will to crave

<As far as I can remember the underlined words were added by my brother>

I used to have a website called Purple Brain Recordings whose index page looked like this:

[caption id="attachment_324" align="alignnone" width="380" caption="Purple Brain Recordings"][/caption]

L.A.P stood for Lost Archetype Productions