Above Air

“We always think of the imagination as the faculty that forms images. On the contrary, it deforms what we perceive; it is, above all, the faculty that frees us from immediate images and changes them. If there is no change, there is no imaginative act. If the image that is present does not make us think of one that is absent, if an image does not determine an abundance — an explosion — of unusual images, then there is no imagination.”

Gaston Bachelard “Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement”

 

Ao contrário do Sr. Brian Eno, (ok! também já militei nas hostes de um certo glam rock tardio) nunca fui alvo de nenhuma hierofania, ou insight ocorrido naqueles impessoais não lugares que são os aeroportos. Todavia, desde o final da década de 70 do século passado com o baptismo de voo realizado através do trajecto Croca /Santa Marta/ Düsseldorf (também aportuguesada na forma de Dusseldórfia  , que sinto uma necessidade de viajar impossível de satisfazer… de preferência par avion.

Sempre que tenho essa possibilidade, gosto de me fazer acompanhar dos seguintes disquinhos que me ajudam a usufruir da viagem e a esquecer o linguajar babelizante da crew e demais passageiros entrecortados por publicidade a produtos, alimentos e bebidas escandalosamente exorbitantes.

Esses disquinhos são, por esta ordem, o seminal e intemporal “Ambient 1: Music for Airports” do já anteriormente referenciado ex - Roxy Music.

Reza a lenda que: “The music was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to defuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno conceived this idea while being stuck at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in the mid 70s. He had to spend several hours there and was extremely annoyed by the uninspired sound atmosphere.”

Depois temos, e saído da genialidade dos Zoviet France, “Skandinavien” creditado ao projecto de seu nome Penumbra. Este é o disco que mais gosto de ouvir, sempre que me desloco a latitudes mais boreais.

Eis uma excelente review publicada na Judas Kiss:

“Consisting of field recordings and sampled sounds recorded during regular visits to Scandinavia whilst performing as Zoviet France, Penumbra has intermingled lavishly dark and powerfully hypnotic soundscapes with them to create a surreal dream like ambience, in which you could almost drown in its depth and stirringly compelling cold beauty, that conjures up the strikingly beautiful and remote landscapes which make up the majority of this still relatively unexplored and mysterious collection of Countries, with the two opening tracks personifying this sheer beauty. Gliding gracefully from the hypnotic female vocal samples that accompany the extremely emotive dark ambient structures of ‘Deep Listening’, the album slowly moves away from this area and introduces more beat driven sounds and rhythms that intermingle subtly with the lighter soundscapes that still work as a backing to the majority of the album, creating a more chilled out atmosphere as apposed to the hauntingly captivating aura that the two opening tracks created, which isn’t to say that the rest of the tracks are dislikeable, on the contrary, it’s just that they take on a different form and move in slightly different directions whilst shedding the beauty the opening tracks created. After assuming a more minimal techno approach the album carries on with the constant play offs between beats, electronic sounds and drones, samples and ambient sculptures until a natural climax is reached and this magical journey to Scandinavia is finished…”

E por último “Above Air” (2007) álbum da autoria de CoH e que marca o fim da saudosa e mítica editora Eskaton. E com ele vos deixo enquanto vou ali a Madrid e já volto!

CoH “between heaven and earth”

Power, Corruption & Lies Covered

“There was definitely a change in style. Movement sounded like Joy Division, but Power, Corruption & Lies is the first New Order record. That marriage of electronics and rock is a distinct, very unique sound.”

Peter Hook interviewed by Ian Harrison (summer 2011)

Power Corruption & Lies Covered

Label: Mojo Magazine — February 2012

Format: CD, Compilation

Não será com certeza grande novidade afirmar que uma das minhas bandas favoritas se chama New Order. No início (antes do Verbo) eram os Joy Division…depois…todos nós sabemos a história da banda que animou muita pista de dança, desde Ibiza, até aos lugarejos mais recônditos do Portugal profundo. Tenho ainda bem presente na memória os “bailaricos” ao som dos New Order em localidades como Castelo de Paiva ou Cinfães do Douro mas isso também são outras histórias….

Por norma a Mojo não faz parte das revistas que costumo adquirir. Como já aqui confessei anteriormente, sou um grande entusiasta das sonoridades electrónicas (nas suas vertentes Industrial,  techno-acid-house e musique concrète

Não me parece que nenhum destes subgéneros faça parte da linha editorial da prestigiada publicação. Justiça lhe seja feita, com esta iniciativa relativa a Fevereiro do corrente ano. Nada mais, nada menos do que revisitar o “Power Corruption & Lies “ (1983) com uma série de covers bem conseguidas. Eis o alinhamento:

THE GOLDEN FILTER Age Of Consent (6:25)

TARWATER We All Stand (4:52)

ERRORS The Village (4:41)

S.C.U.M. 586 (5:56)

FUIYA & MIYAGI Your Silent Face (6:32)

SEEKAE Ultraviolence (3:41)

WALLS Ecstacy (4:33)

DESTROYER Leave Me Alone (4:30)

…Blue Monday 12″

BIOSHERE Blue Monday (5:28)

ZOMBIE ZOMBIE The Beach (4:25)

LONELADY Cries And Whispers (3:51) – Bonus Track

ANOTHER’S BLOOD Lonesome Tonight (4:32) – Bonus Track

K-X-P Murder (4:10) – Bonus Track

Todavia o meu destaque vai direitinho para a versão de “Blue Monday”,a cargo do norueguês  Geir Jensen (aka Biosphere) e ex Bel Canto. De contornos glaciais emprestados pela utilização do vocoder à la Kraftwerk, esta versão nada perde  da euforia orgiástica presente na sua versão original.

TOP!

Biosphere – Blue Monday (New Order cover)

The Edda: Divine & Heroic Mythology of the North

“The Edda: Divine & Heroic Mythology of the North” gathers in a single volume two studies authored by Winifred Faraday. These studies were originally published in two volumes as part of the Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance and Folklore series.

Besides the studies on the traditional pagan aspects of “The Edda” this volume was enriched with the inclusion of “Paganism as a Weltanshauung”, a classic essay by Ramón Bau, a Spanish author, intellectual and devoted Wagnerian, former president of the Circle of Indo-European Studies.

Bau’s essay deals mostly with modern paganism, its deviations and misinterpretations, and its validity as a worldview even today for those seeking an alternative way of life, an excellent supplement to Faraday’s studies on the ancestral pagan world, as pictured in “The Edda”.

NSK at New York

IRWIN – NSK Passport Office, New York

Print Studio, in Conjunction with the Exhibition Print/Out

Museum of Modern Art

The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building Lobby

4 West 54th Street Entrance,

New York, NY 10019

 

 

Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 12:00–4:00 PM

Thursday, February 2, 2012, 12:00–4:00 PM

Friday, February 3, 2012, 12:00–4:00 PM

Originally founded by a collective of artists, musicians, and philosophers, the NSK State in Time came into being in 1992 shortly after Slovenia’s independence from the Yugoslav Federation. Its declaration of existence was accompanied by the issuing of passports at various temporary embassies, which operated alongside NSK exhibitions and events. Led by the Slovenian artists’ collective IRWIN, Print Studio will host the NSK Passport Office, New York for three days and issue a limited number of passports. A concurrent series of presentations, discussions, screenings and a culminating NSK State Citizens’ Rendezvous offers a forum to engage the public with ideas central to the NSK State and what it means to be a citizen of this non-territorial entity. For more information about the program schedule and updates, please visit MoMA.org/learn .

A limited number of passports will be printed during IRWIN’s NSK Passport Office, New York.

Admission to the NSK Passport Office New York is free. Passports will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis. Open to all ages. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Info via NSK

Black Joy

“Black Joy” DVD includes 2 full length programs previously available only as two separate VHS tapes.

“Black” was filmed live at the Subterrania Club, London, in March, 1991, capturing the band at the height of their acid-phase. “Joy” includes live footage from a show at Manchester Poly in October 1988, as well as promo films for “R U Experienced” and” IC Water.”

Psychic TV “Black Joy”

“Black Joy” consists in collaboration between Psychic TV and film maker Karen Bentham.

You can purchase it on DVD at See Of Sound’s website.

Walking in the Air

Above, the gemmed azure is

The naked splendour of Nuit;

She bends in ecstasy to kiss

The secret ardours of Hadit.

The winged globe, the starry blue,

Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

 

Aleister  Crowley

The Snow Man (Walking in the Air)

The Final Solstice  by  Rosa Mundi (John Balance & Rose McDowall)

Summoning the Gods: Essays on Paganism in a God-Forsaken World

“Jung compared the absence of the gods to a dry riverbed: their shapes remain, but devoid of the energy and substance that would make them live among us as they used to. What we await is the energy and substance to flow once more into the forms. The words of Collin Cleary, his thoughts and ideas, constitute the kind of fresh and vital energy that is needed to effect the renewal of the gods in our contemporary world.”

— Dr. Stephen E. Flowers, author of The Northern Dawn

“I have admired Collin Cleary’s work in TYR and Rûna for years, and I am delighted that this volume of nine essays has arrived in the world. Cleary possesses the admirable ability to write with a frank ‘openness to the divine’ (to use his own phrase). He does so both clearly and profoundly, on a number of inter-related subjects. The essay ‘Philosophical Notes on the Runes’ ought to be required reading for all serious students of the runic systems. This book belongs in every radical Traditionalist library.”

—Juleigh Howard-Hobson, author of Sommer and Other Poems

Summoning the Gods: Essays on Paganism in a God-Forsaken World

Edited with an Introduction by Greg Johnson

San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2011; 220 pages

 

Collin Cleary, Ph.D. is an independent scholar living in Sandpoint, Idaho. He is one of the founders of TYR: Myth—Culture—Tradition, the first volume of which he co-edited. A Master in the Rune-Gild, his writings have appeared in TYR and Rûna.

In nine wide-ranging essays, Collin Cleary also explores the Nordic pagan tradition, Tantrism, the writings of Alain de Benoist, Karl Maria Wiligut, and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Patrick McGoohan’s classic television series The Prisoner. Cleary’s essays are models of how to combine clarity and wit with spiritual depth and intellectual sophistication.

You can read the entire chapter “What God Did Odin Worship?” HERE

Finis Mundi # 4: Occultus Rex

«Para el guerrero de la Orden de los Caminantes de la Estrella de la Mañana, de los Vigilantes de la Aurora, una batalla que termina mal es una aventura espiritual que há tenido êxito.»

Canción de los Caminantes del Alba em “El Cordon Dorado” de Miguel Serrano

 “The Last  Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon” Edward Burne-Jones (1881-1898)

 

Já se encontra disponível o quarto número da revista Finis Mundi.

Compra imediata no estrangeiro:

Amazon.com (internacional) e Clube de Leitores (Brasil).

O 4º número desta publicação, que já se tornou de referência, conta com um texto da minha responsabilidade intitulado “Occultus Rex”.

Neste, partindo da premissa de que a História é símbolo e mito, subscrevo na íntegra a opinião de Julius Evola, quando enfatiza a possibilidade da dramatização e repetição rítmica, ocorrida através de certos factos ou personagens históricos e que contêm de forma intrínseca à sua essência, estruturas e símbolos supra-históricos.

Estes factos ou personagens assumem, desta forma, uma ambivalência que lhes outorga a qualidade de pertencerem simultaneamente a tempos distintos. Contenham eles uma carga histórica ou simbólica, podem ser transportados e recontextualizados através de diferentes períodos temporais. Assim, toma a Humanidade contacto, com as lendas que compõem um substrato comum a uma certa unidade mítica transcendental. Neste manancial mítico e lendário encontramos certos personagens que são transportados, à margem de uma perspectiva histórica mais positivista, para o domínio do “invisível” mas ” nunca mortos”, e que hão-de levantar-se ou manifestar-se um dia, após um certo tempo de obscuridade…

Este número conta ainda, entre várias outras, com as sempre interessantes e enriquecedoras participações de intelectuais como Claudio Mutti, Alain de Benoist, António Marques Bessa e Tomislav Sunic.

Legba

HHY & THE MACUMBAS

“Legba (Wire Tapper Version)”, vídeo realizado por Eric Desjeux (aka Tzii), a partir de filmagens feitas no Benin, em 1992.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

John Perry Barlow <barlow@eff.org>

Davos, Switzerland ,February 8, 1996