Carl Abrahamsson's Blog, page 53

The larval stage of a bookworm remixed

 

Announcing a new, exciting release from Highbrow Lowlife: the “The Larval Stage of a Bookworm” REMIX album. It contains revitalising contributions from the following great artists: Vanessa Sinclair, Sheer Zed, Mathias Lodmalm, Michael Idehall, Knifesex, A Place Both Wonderful and Strange, Sun Duel, Hymnambulae, Sinnelag, Blue Hour, and Serena Stucke. To be released all over the digisphere late May. For more information on other similar releases, including the original Bookworm album, please visit: www.highbrow-lowlife.com

 

Silver Apples of the Moon and then some

 

[The following interview with Simeon Coxe III of the seminal group Silver Apples was first published on my previous blog in 2011 but not moved on to this one. Now, this has been rectified. Enjoy!]

Want legend? Want demi-god? Want a juicy Silver Apple to chew on? Meet Simeon Coxe III, who qualifies for all of that and then some. Silver Apples’ (originally Coxe and drummer Danny Taylor, who died in 2005) mind-boggling mix of rock, poetry and electronics in the late 60s transcended everything, and I mean everything. Eerie singing, strange melodies and ultramodern rhythms lovingly hugging  electronic oscillations galore from their own gadget called, aptly, “The Simeon”. Thus was a foundation chiseled for German Kraut-explorations, Suicide’s suavely brutal synth evergreens, Throbbing Gristle’s homemade and existential electronics, Stephen Morris’ drumming, Martin Hannett’s production values and a million more ripples on the water into which Silver Apples threw the very first gemstone of creation.

Mr Coxe is seemingly as young as then, energized by success and by the respect of both young and old fans alike. What a guy! Not only a sonic pioneer in so many ways, but also a great human being. Yes, he builds his own synths! Yes, he’s an accomplished painter! Yes, he broke his neck in a car crash and was paralyzed! Yes, he survived and worked his way back! When Coxe enters the stage and revs up his sonic gadgets and audio-emotional vessels, he moves from nice, well mannered, hard working artist to a vibrating poetic and equally peyotic space person. Still beyond and still ahead after almost 45 years of music- and art making. Who can beat that?

Could you ever imagine that you’d be here in Stockholm in 2011 in some club with loads of multi-generations of fans?

 

The multi-generational thing never occurred to me. I was never looking that far into the future but I always wanted to play in Europe back in the day. I imagine this is what you’re talking about. Back in the 60s and 70s, when Danny (Taylor) and I were the original Silver Apples, we envisioned playing in Europe a lot, and I think that it was on the books to do it. But when the record label found itself in financial trouble and they started pulling back on the touring and the sponsorship, we just never made it across. But I always envisioned playing Stockholm and the whole Scandinavian area, because we knew there were record sales here. So I always wanted to come. 

 

If one could sum up the early phase, I would say there was a lot of spontaneity, in the concept and the live stuff and the recordings. It was just really spontaneous stuff. Has that spirit stuck with you?

 

Absolutely. Always. I don’t have the patience to be a meticulous recording person/musician. I work pretty much from the gut, from the heart, and I kind of just let the mind follow along. I try not to think too much. I find that if I think too much I get in my own way, so I want to record spontaneously, one cut. That’s how I do it because it’s more like performing, which I really love to do. That’s my main love in life, performing, so that’s the way I do it. 

 

Do you think that there is the possibility of creativity within a perfect structure, a perfect order, or do you think there needs to be some chance element to make things exciting? 

 

I think it has to be according to your own individuality. I know that there are certain artists out there who do beautiful stuff that work on this meticulous, almost engineering kind of level. One that quickly comes to mind is Damon Albarn. I just think he’s a marvelous musician, but he is meticulous and precise. Another one I would mention is Geoff Barrow, who can be that way when he records with Portishead, but he can also be spontaneous, as with BEAK>. So there is a guy who works both ways and I’m envious of that. I can only work the one way. I just play and what happens happens.

 

Do you believe that frequency affects emotion?  

 

Probably. I don’t understand the science of it. I just know that there are certain levels and also certain pitches that make me feel good, so I tend to gravitate towards them. 

 

Is that something that you consciously use to make people feel good in a live setting?

 

Yeah, I think that if it makes me happy, then it must be making somebody else happy, if they are being sensitive to it. 

 

You’ve been performing for a long time and in different phases. Do you ever feel that you get high on performing, almost like a psychedelic high?

 

Every night. I never get bored. Every time I do a song is a new thing. It could be anyone from the ones that have sort of a loose structure where I can do what I want to pretty much on it, to others that are fairly rigid. I wouldn’t say rigid but fairly formally structured, where I know I have to change chords at a certain time and all that kind of stuff, in order to stay true to the melody. I don’t even get tired of those because every night, there’s just some different little thing that happens that makes it a new song for me. And I feel excited about it as though I’m doing it for the first time. 

 

I can’t really see that happening in a rock context. Your music is loose enough to make it happen.

 

I deliberately structure my set so that I can have a formal kind of piece and then a loose one. And then a formal one, and then a loose one, and it’s kind of like a discipline thing for me to do the formal thing. I don’t want to let it get just out of control-loose you know, one after another, so I kind of alternate them like that to keep myself in control.

 

In terms of a general high or a buzz, have you ever experienced something like an extra sensory stuff or lost yourself on stage?

 

No. The only time I ever lost myself on stage was fairly recently, actually in May, in China, when they had like seven strobe lights that went on all at once at different rhythms and that threw me into such a feet-off-the-floor strange place that I didn’t know if I was passed out or if I was going be sick. I just had to close my eyes and almost stopped playing, and just had some of the oscillators continue to cook until I could feel the strobes were calming down a little bit. And then when I did my encore I got hold of the light guy and said, “turn off the damn strobes, please! Or I’m not going to go back out there”, so he shut it off. 

 

Yeah, that sounds potentially epileptic. 

 

It had that effect. The strobes discombobulated my electrical impulses inside the brain that make me able to think. 

 

When I’ve read what you’ve said about the early phase, you mentioned not being aware of that sort of more scholastic art music, and that that was something that you got caught up with afterwards. Can you see yourself as having integrated any notions or concepts or teachings from that more scholastic vein?

 

No. You know, I’ve been interested ever since I learned about the theory of atonal, the theory of dissonance, the theory of arhythmic structures and things like that. I’ve been interested but only from an amusement or entertainment point of view. I don’t like to do it myself. I mean, I love dissonance. Dissonance to me is an amazing tension-relieving kind of tool, and I think that music that doesn’t have dissonance gets boring after a while. But that’s not because I learned it from some concept that somebody wrote in a book that I studied in school – it’s because of the way I feel. I just play music the way I feel it and I don’t have any musicology background at all.

 

At that time, was there someone around that you could say was an inspiration in this very free-spirited sense, this experimental sense?

 

In a way, Sun Ra. I used to go to a little club in New York called “Slugs” which was way down on the lower East side, in what you would call a bad drug neighborhood, and I remember he played every Thursday night. My girlfriend and I and sometimes some friends used to go down and we’d sometimes be the only people in the whole club, and Sun Ra would just play all night long and I remember just being totally enthralled by what I heard and by the freedom that he allowed the music to have. He would have musicians standing out on the street corner or in the men’s room, standing on a toilet. He’d have a sax player there. You’d go in there to take a leak and there would be a guy playing the sax. His band was just all over the place. He’d go upstairs into the apartments and play out the window, during the set. And I just thought that was marvelous and I’m sure some of that has to have rubbed off. Music doesn’t have to be a formal and serious matter. It’s from the soul. 

 

Even given that sort the proto-experimental attitude that you’ve always had, can you find some other strains or something, for instance in the music that you’ve grown up with? 

 

I hear Fats Domino in everything I do…

 

Wow… Sun Ra and Fats Domino…

 

Yes, they are my two heroes. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, I used to go down to Rampart Street in New Orleans where all of the old artists were all playing in these bars – what they called at the time race music, which is now called R’n’B or soul. They weren’t like the venues we think of today. They just played in bars. And I’d go there and there’d be Big Joe Turner or Big Mama Thornton or Little Richard or Fats Domino. I mean, you just never knew when you walked in the door who was going be there, and many times I’d be the only white person in the place and nobody cared. Everybody was there for the music. I was fifteen years old, underage, but they didn’t care. New Orleans is very loose and so I’d stay in the back of the room and just listen to the music in a trance. I grew up with Fats Domino in my veins and I still hear him and the triplet pianos and the way he sings, the way he structures his songs, the simplicity of it all, all through my music, and I shout his name from the hilltop.

 

You’ve always been associated with the East Coast and a sort of harsher sound, but at the same time I can associate your style of singing on the two first albums with an almost West Coast-ish sort of psychedelic rock…

 

I don’t know where that comes from. I’m definitely an East Coast person. I have a country background, and I was born and raised in the South, so there’s maybe some bluegrass or some country music in my vocals, but it’s not meant to be psychedelic. I have no idea what the word psychedelic means.

 

I think that the musicians on the West Coast just probably had the same sources of inspiration –  blues and early American music. Anyway, early on, you collaborated with a poet on the lyrics?

 

There were several poets that I worked with. Stanley Warren was one. We worked a lot with the first record. We worked with, I guess, about five or six poets. We put a notice up on the bulletin board at in the bar at Max’s Kansas City that said, “Rock band would be interested in lyrics. Submit poetry”, and gave our phone number. We got dozens of poets who wanted to be involved. Stanley Warren had some nice stuff and there were several other people who had nice things, and we thought “OK, rather than write our own stuff for the first record, we’ll involve these poets. Let’s get them in here. Lets make this a group effort.” And so that’s what we had there on the first record. The second record we still had a few poems left over from one or two of the other guys but I basically wrote the stuff on the second record. And the third I wrote totally. 

 

And you continued in that vein, writing your own stuff? 

 

Yeah. I thought it was an interesting idea to have poets submit lyrics, but that was just an idea for the first record and I really liked writing my own stuff.

 

Can you see a recurring theme, lyrically? Can you see a pattern?

 

No. What comes out is always a surprise. 

 

This will to experiment that you have, what would you ascribe it to? Where do you think it comes from?

 

I’m impatiently intolerant of boredom. I need to have something to tickle my fancy and make me feel challenged. And so I guess that’s the root of it. I just can’t stand to be bored. 

 

I assume that when you were a kid, it was the same?

 

The same, it’s always been that way. 

 

Itchy pants… Were you encouraged  into art and creative endeavors as a kid?

 

Yes, by my grandmother. My parents had no interest whatsoever. There wasn’t even a record player in the house. There was no music whatsoever. But my grandmother had an art background. She  had studied in Paris when she was a young lady and so forth. So she taught me how to paint when I was quite a young kid and that kind of interest in art stuck with me. 

 

And you’re still painting, right? 

 

Oh yeah, I’m very active as a visual artist. Inbetween tours. 

 

I assume it’s a great thing to mix these two. 

 

Oh, I love it, yeah. I can’t do them both together, but I love to jump in head first into one or the other. 

 

Well, except for the itchy pants, the boredom aspect, is there something you can see as a general inspiration for you, a creative source? 

 

Just to be very broad, the human experience, the inter-relationship among all human beings whether it’s a love thing, or a companionship thing or a group thing… I think human beings are fascinating creatures. I’m not one of those people that feels horribly guilty that we’re here, that we’re destroying the landscape. I don’t think we are anymore than an elephant is… So I don’t feel any guilt at all. I love being human and I love human beings, I love all things that we do. I’m very happy to be here. Maybe next time I’ll come back as a worm? That’s still okay. I have been a human and that was cool.  

 

How would you yourself describe Silver Apples’ music to someone who’s never ever heard of it?

 

Electronic pop. If you want to get just simple words. That tells you that it’s electronic and that tells you that it’s not one of these serious, studied laboratory experiments. These academic approaches to music that I have no interest in whatsoever… So “pop” is a big word for me. I’m proud of it, and “electronic” of course, because that’s what I do.

 

I assume that bands or young people send you records all the time. Apart from that, do you also try to actively keep up with what’s going on in this vein? 

 

I’m not a real student. I don’t go to record stores and seek out new stuff. I love it when the musicians come backstage and say, “give it a chance on the road, listen to this”. I love that, and I contact them back. So I have an awareness of the new music just because of that, because I’m close to the musicians, having been on the same stage with them. Playing festivals is a real rich thing for me because I get to meet with all these other guys and girls and exchange musical ideas and just move on. So in that sense I’m up on it, but I’m not a student of it. 

 

I would say that it’s not an understatement to say that your work in Silver Apples has been hugely influential on the electronica scene and on so many scenes, from Kraut, Suicide and onwards… What does it feel like, to have played such an instrumental part?

 

It’s a huge honour for me. I feel completely overwhelmed that some of the most beautiful music that I’ve heard out there has its roots in my little ideas. It’s a huge experience. It’s humbling. I’m not sure I understand why. But it’s there, so I accept it. I’m not going to say “no, no, no, that’s not true”. I know it’s true, because I’ve talked to enough guys about the way they feel, the way they compose, to know that I have had an influence. But to tell you the truth, I never started off thinking that it would be that way. I was always in awe of other people and wanting to be like them, and wanted to be as good as them and never thought I would ever be, you know. And now I have people telling me that they wish they could be as good as me. 

 

So apart from that – the joy of being a human being and the joy of having these things projected on you – what else makes you really, really happy?

 

My little kittycat, that’s one thing. My girlfriend. My boat, a sailing boat. Very simple and direct. I’m not a complicated person. Maybe that is why I’m bored unless I’m being creative, because I’m otherwise a simple person?

 

Just one final thing in terms of the recording stuff… Do you actually work with sequencing, computers and MIDI-stuff or is it just the same there: “Hands on”?

 

No, I do work with the new stuff when I’m recording. When I’m performing, the rhythm tracks, the drum tracks are sequenced and sampled, because Danny died. Rather than get a new drummer and teach the new drummer all of this stuff and then have him being unfairly compared to Danny, I just figured that Danny would be happy that I sampled him. I went through banks of tapes of him practicing in the studio, found all of his sounds, sampled them, categorized them, libraried them and now, when I go to make a new song, I can pull Danny’s sounds out and figure out what I think he might have done, and so it’s me working with Danny, the same as I’ve always done. We used to always work together like that. He would say: “what do you think of this?”, and I’d say, “try that”, and he would go (drum sounds)… I’ve always been a little bit involved in his rhythmic structures, so it’s all the same. I think that he’d be very happy that I’m sampling him, and that he’s out there on the stage with me still.

[Silver Apples’ webpage can be found HERE!]

 

Learning by teaching (and vice versa)

Photo by Vanessa Sinclair.

 

I’ve recently experienced a rising curve in my “life chart” when it comes to teaching. I’ve been used to being offered lectures at art schools, universities and other environments but these have usually been one-off occurrences: a talk about something or someone specific, etc.

Recently I’ve been brought in to teach more properly, and that’s an entirely different matter. At both the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and Prosjektskolen in Oslo, for instance, I’ve been invited to spend more time with both faculty and students, and it has been very rewarding for me and, I hope, for them as well.

Under the banner of “Occulture” I have looked at not only how previously “occult” phenomena and protagonists have become integrated in mainstream culture but also at how many of the thoughts, techniques or ideas presented have a potentially great value for creative people in general. The only thing that is usually needed is an exchange between one set of terms and another. It has mainly been a temporal intolerance or insensitivity to one set of terms that has made that set unwelcome or unacceptable.

But in the present time, when teaching environments need to reinvent themselves by looking at basically the same things in new ways in order to not stagnate or go completely inert (just like many other environments) my angle/perspective has proven very useful and appreciated.

Much knowledge and wisdom relating to the “magical” process within traditional occultism has been about defining and refining the Self with a kind of inner alchemy, and then, once one knows oneself better, to head on toward fulfilment and satisfaction in meaningful work (not seldom by using techniques and approaches that defy contemporary “normality”). We can use traditionally arcane symbols and techniques and put them to great use today – individually as well as in group settings. All of these aspects can easily be clothed in terms artists can understand and integrate. The main thing is simply that the creative individual blooms in individuation and progress.

Bringing in a magical perspective also helps place art as a proto-human Ur-phenomenon in its rightful central place in culture again. Art needs to be invested with intention and will. It needs to have truly personal content. The formal aspects must be subjugated to individual vision and desire. In this sense the formal experiments rooted in intellectual environments (rather than those stemming from the human soul) have been uprooted. I can sense that many young students find this very liberating. For too long, art in general has taken on a one-dimensional form that may or may not contain certain attractive elements but is usually completely devoid of the traditionally inherent potential for change through the integration of deeper layers of human consciousness (the sphere of myths, stories, fantasy, etc). The intellectual death-drive has almost killed off the ultra creative life-drive of art. But all of this is changing now, due to necessity more than mere decision-making. Art is strongly linked to our survival instincts, and unfortunately this is where we’re at in our culture today: we can change and survive, or not.

Making art-students aware of their own potential – not as some kind of intellectual clowns chasing pseudo-cathartic vanities, but as seed-carrying filters in an overall process of enlightenment – is a proper noble cause. I’m very happy to be involved in this. And grateful for the increasing number of opportunities to bring substantial ideas back to a public discourse within art and culture after many decades of politicised deprivation and self censorship.

Next up is a summer course in Cali, Colombia, called, very aptly, “Occultures.” Please join me and the following people for a super-creative time in which your views on art will be challenged: Anselm Franke, Beatriz Eugenia Díaz, Boris Ondreicka, Catalina Lozano, Dick Verdult, Don Nadie, Ian Svenonius, Jennifer Moon, Lizzie Borden, Luisa Ungar, Michael Taussig, Rat Trap, Sebastián Restrepo, Susan MacWilliam, Teresa Margolles, and Tupac Cruz.

More information about the course, applications, etc can be found HERE!

 

In Conversation with James Jesso

Photograph by Vanessa Sinclair.

 

I was recently talking to James Jesso on his excellent podcast Adventures Through the Mind. You can listen to it right here:

 

”BY DEFINITION, OCCULT SIMPLY MEANS KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIDDEN.

In popular culture, however, the word occult often triggers thoughts of the supernatural and paranormal; thoughts of wizardry, alchemy, or maybe even satanism; maybe images of goat heads and pentagrams or sacred geometry and complex glyphs. You probably don’t think of Carl Jung, gene splicing, and Elon Musk putting his car in space, but according to the guest for this episode, you could.

You might be surprised to discover occult magic is much more accessible than you have been led to believe.

Magico-anthropologist, filmmaker, photographer, publisher and author Carl Abrahamsson is on the show to both expand and deconstruct occult magic and make it accessible to the modern world.

Since the mid-1980s Abrahamsson has been active in the magical community, integrating “occulture” as a way of life and lecturing about his findings and speculations. He is the editor and publisher of the annual anthology of occulture, The Fenris Wolf, and the author of Reasonances, he divides his time between Stockholm, Sweden, and New York City. Abrahamsson’s newest book is called Occulture: the Unseen forces That Drive Culture Forward.

Of course, occult magic is a massive topic with many winding, cryptic avenues and dark alleys to traverse. The topic has much more potential than what can be explored in a seventy-five-minute conversation. So, in relevance to the themes of ATTMind we venture into the world of occult magic with a compass pointing towards a Jungian psychological approach and the potentials of magic for personal transformation and individualization. (That said, we don’t shy away from the romance of all that hocus-pocus stuff, too.)”

EPISODE BREAKDOWN

The history (and future) of Occult Magic
The magical art of Carl Jung
Using magic to alter our sense of self and to process of individualization
The importance of direct experience over ideology and social norms
How magic in occult rituals can alter the subconscious mind, the sense of self and perception of reality
The difference between ritual and ceremony
Our capacity for willful and competent direction of energy
The role and value of sex and sexual energy in magical ritual and personal transformation.
The ancient art and importance of imagination and dreaming
Cautions and considerations for using drugs in magical ritual
Higher Learning: The value of building social institutions that enable safe and supportive psychedelic experimentation for young people.
The kinship between art and magic
Mythic impoverishment – the dangers of modern mass media entertainment culture on our imagination and potential for magic – PokemonGO!
Practical tips on embracing magic today

Occult Magic And The Transformation Of The Self | Carl Abrahamsson ~ ATTMind 70

In conversation with Whitley Strieber

 

I was recently talking to Whitley Strieber on his Dreamland-podcast about Occulture (both my book and the phenomenon), afterlife encounters, William Burroughs’s experiments with recording ”dead” space/time and a multitude of other interesting things.

You can listen to it right HERE!

”Normally, magic and the occult are presented in the media either as something to be snickered at or as a supernatural wonder and, often, danger. But there’s more to it than that, much more, and in this searching interview with Carl Abrahamsson, the author of Occulture, Whitley explores the deeper resonances of the age old practices that fall under the rubric of “magic.”

Their conversation about how art and magic intersect is powerfully mind-opening, and the way that Carl explains how magic actually works in the modern world, transforming our lives on a daily basis, is brain-bending.

Whitley talks with Carl about his powerful recent contact experiences and what they mean, and what Anne Strieber’s statement that the visitors are “inward beings” means.

The discussion about William Burroughs, who used to go to Whitley’s cabin in an attempt to meet the visitors, is just one example of how remarkable this show is.

This is a perfect example of why Dreamland is alone at the top of the long list of podcasts discussing the supernatural. There simply is no other place in the world where you are going to get information like this.

Please note that because of all the complimentary information that Carl and Whitley share, this is a discussion rather than a strict question and answer edition of Dreamland.

Carl Abrahamsson’s website is www.carlabrahamsson.com

You can also reach Carl on Patreon.com.

Click here to get Occulture!”

Get a signed copy of my book ”Occulture”!

 

You can get your signed copy of my most recent book Occulture HERE! Trapart stocks the book and it will be promptly dispatched straight from HQ in Stockholm.

”Art, magic, and the occult have been intimately linked since the time of our ancestors. Blending magical history and esoteric philosophy, Carl Abrahamsson reveals the integral role played by magic and occultism in the development of culture throughout history, including deep looks at major figures such as Carl Jung and Aleister Crowley.

Explores the role of magic and the occult in art and culture from ancient times to today 

• Examines key figures behind esoteric cultural developments, such as Carl Jung, Anton LaVey, Paul Bowles, Aleister Crowley, and Rudolf Steiner 

• Explores the history of magic as a source of genuine counter culture and compares it with our contemporary soulless, digital monoculture 

• Reveals how the magic of art can be restored if art is employed as a means rather than an end and offers strategies to rekindle intuitive creativity 

Art, magic, and the occult have been intimately linked since our prehistoric ancestors created the first cave paintings some 50,000 years ago. As civilizations developed, these esoteric forces continued to drive culture forward, both visibly and behind the scenes, from the Hermetic ideas of the Renaissance, to the ethereal worlds of 19th century Symbolism, to the occult interests of the Surrealists. 

In this deep exploration of “occulture”–the liminal space where art and magic meet–Carl Abrahamsson reveals the integral role played by magic and occultism in the development of culture throughout history as well as their relevance to the continuing survival of art and creativity. Blending magical history and esoteric philosophy with his more than 30 years’ experience in occult movements, Abrahamsson looks at the phenomena and people who have been seminal in modern esoteric developments, including Carl Jung, Anton LaVey, Paul Bowles, Aleister Crowley, and Rudolf Steiner. 

Showing how art and magic were initially one and the same, the author explores the history of magic as a source of genuine counter culture and compares it with our contemporary soulless, digital monoculture. He reveals how the magic of art can be restored if art is employed as a means rather than an end–if it is intense, emotional, violent, and expressive–and offers strategies for creating freely, magically, even spontaneously, with intent unfettered by the whims of trends, a creative practice akin to chaos magick that assists both creators and spectators to live with meaning. He also looks at intuition and creativity as the cornerstones of genuine individuation, explaining how insights and illuminations seldom come in collective forms. 

Exploring magical philosophy, occult history, the arts, psychology, and the colorful grey areas in between, Abrahamsson reveals the culturally and magically transformative role of art and the ways the occult continues to transform culture to this day. Published by Park Street Press, 2018, 256 pages. Foreword by Gary Lachman. This copy that you buy from Trapart is signed by author Carl Abrahamsson.”

Author portrait by Vanessa Sinclair.

 

New and old White Stains

 

In late April and early May I’ll release the two final White Stains albums online: Misantropotantra (1992) and Why Not Forever? (1994) I personally love these two albums, and only a few tracks from them have been made available digitally (on the compilation Exploratorium).

I made these albums together with Peter Bergstrandh, formerly of the Swedish band Lustans Lakejer. Peter is a really talented musician and he was the driving force behind White Stains actually becoming a touring band (ca 1991-1992) and not just a “project”. In this video clip, shot on a 1992 tour by my good friend and our tour manager Nicklas Kappelin, we even see Lustans Lakejer’s Christer Hellman on drums. I was a big fan of LL so for me this was heaven!

Both these albums contain a very different vibe than the other WS ones. The music is harsher, darker, very “minor key” and filled with long shadows trying to find a door to some kind of light, but basically only finding more darkness in each new room/space/structure. There’s a primitive desperation there that I still appreciate very much.

In going through and re-mastering these nostalgic gems, I’ve also roamed through the general archives. There’s plenty of stuff in there, and I intend to release a few oddities-and-outtakes albums too. But for now, please enjoy this memory lane film. As mentioned, the tour footage is from 1992, and the music is a very rare track called ”Absorb the hole,” taken from one of many late night “Immergeil Studios” sessions in 1991-1992.

 

White Stains: ”Absorb the hole” (1992) from Carl Abrahamsson on Vimeo.

 

A return to the Occultural roots

 

I can hardly believe it’s been four years since I worked with beautiful Scarlet Imprint on this tome: REASONANCES. It’s a book that should be checked out by anyone enamoured with or inspired by  the more recent OCCULTURE. This is where it all began. Thank you, lovely Scarlets!

“Reasonances is an anthology of selected essays, lectures and interviews by occultural pioneer Carl Abrahamsson. A subversive, creative, psychedelic collection of 23 essays spanning thirteen years at the forefront of occulture and magic, followed an interview with the author by Sylvie Walder. The unifying question of this diverse and stimulating collection can perhaps be stated thus: how does magic hack culture? Or perhaps even: what is the role and magic of the artist?

Abrahamsson proposes strategies of engagement that draw from TOPY, Thelema and Satanism, with which he is intimately acquainted. His magic is that of the interzone, the hinterland, of the unseen forces that drive culture forward. Reasonances is therefore a nexus of heretical possibilities investigated with calm reflection that goes beyond his native Scandinavian cool. It is with great generosity of spirit, a candour and lack of dogma that he outlines his understanding of magic as art. For Abrahamsson, boundless creativity is a necessary expression of Will. He suggests that we should be actively producing culture, artifacts, music, artworks, happenings. And that these ‘acts on the ground’ could be understood as a Gesamtkunstwerk, the Mega Golem, that will leak into popular and unpopular consciousness. He wants us to reason, to act, to live with meaning. To do our Will.

With an understanding of Magician as Artist, in a process of moving from what is hidden to what becomes seen, he employs a methodology that has become apparent in the thirteen years of work that this collection represents. Essays on the history of occult art, the formula of Babalon as supra-sexual transformation, the mechanics of magic, and more, provide a complete vision of a magician who is engaged with counterculture, occulture and incursions into the wider culture. Furthermore, he provides a constellation of stars by which to navigate these evolving realms. Japanese masochist and master writer Yukio Mishima and German novelist Ernst Jünger are considered, as are Bulwer Lytton of Vril fame and Australian artist Rosaleen Norton. He twice interviews artist of light Kenneth Anger, and is found in conversation with Beat avant-garde filmmaker Conrad Rooks. He recites his death rune for mentor Anton LaVey, and eulogises his friend Lady Jaye. These ‘stars’ are carefully observed with his astrolabe, enabling us to see into the past, comprehend where we are in the present, and project ourselves forward into a magical future.”

https://scarletimprint.com/publications/reasonances

 

More on the remix project

 

Since I sent out the information about the remix project connected to my album The Larval Stage of a Bookworm, I’ve received some pretty amazing offers. Among others, one from one of my favourite projects ever: Knifesex (check out Knifesex at Spotify, etc). This will be good! There are still a few tracks that need some TLC and re-engineering. Don’t be shy. Step on up and claim your dark place in the sun!

The idea is to have all the remixes from the album in by April 10th and to have a beautiful digi-release on April 30th. I can’t think of a finer way to celebrate Walpurgisnacht!

You can listen to the original album on Spotify and other streaming services. If you want to buy it, please do so at Highbrow Lowlife.

If you find a track you’d like to remix, let me know at  carl AT carlabrahamsson DOT com  and I’ll send you more info and files to work with.

There are many great videos for the album too. This is the most recent one, made by my very talented wife Vanessa Sinclair. If you want to see more of my work, her work and our work, please check out our YouTube HQ, and our Patreon page (which always has exclusive news and material).

Don’t be a stranger!

 

Carl Abrahamsson: Humbly Triumphant from Carl Abrahamsson on Vimeo.

 

I’m on Thelema Now again!

 

Recently I was on the podcast Thelema Now for the Nth time. It’s good to be a regular! The focus here is my new book Occulture – the unseen forces that drive culture forward. Thanks to Harper Feist and Thelema Now for bringing me onboard again.

You can listen here:

http://thelemanow.com/thelema-now-guest-carl-abrahamsson-58-minutes

And you can get the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Occulture-Unseen-Forces-Culture-Forward/dp/1620557037