Blanck Mass - Dumb Flesh - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Davis / London Philharmonic Orchestra - Das Lied Von Der Erde [COMPACT DISCS] date 08/12/2010

As humans, we are aware of our inner beast and should therefore be able to control it. We understand our hard-wired primal urges and why they exist in an evolutional sense. We understand the relationship between mind and body. Highly evolved and intelligent, we should be able to recognize these genetic hangovers and control them as a means to act positively and move forward as a compassionate species. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Recent global events have proven this. The human race is consuming itself. World Eater, the new album by Benjamin John Power's Blanck Mass project, is a reaction to this. There is an underlying violence and anger throughout the record, even though some of these tracks are the closest Power has ever come to writing, in his words, Inchactual love songs.Inch

What is the utility of pain? Can it do anything but fester? In Ferneaux explores pain in motion, building audio-spatial chambers of experience and memory. Using an archive of field recordings from a decade of global travels, isolation gave Blanck Mass an opportunity to make connections in a moment when being together is impossible. The record is divided into two long-form journeys that gather the memories of being with now-distant others through the composition of a nostalgic travelogue. The journeys are haunted with the vestiges of voices, places, and sensations. These scenes alternate with the building up and releasing of great aural tension, intensities that emerge from the trauma of a personal grieving process which has perhaps embraced it's rage moment. An encounter with a prophetic figure on the streets of San Francisco presented the question of Inchhow to handle the misery on the way to the blessing.Inch This is the quandary of the impasse we now all find ourselves in, trapped in our little caves, grappling with the unease of the self at rest - without movement, without the consumerist agenda of Inchnew experiences.Inch The possibility of growth, always defined by our connections with others, held in limbo. Sartre said that InchHell is other people,Inch but perhaps this is the Inferno of the present the space of sitting with the self. A blessing is often thought of as a future reward, above and beyond the material plane. With In Ferneaux, Blanck Mass wrangles the immanent materials of the here-and-now to build a sense of transcendence. Here, the uncanny angelic hymn sits comfortably beside the dirge. The misery and blessing are one.