The Dead C are, as John Peel famously said of the Fall: ‘ always different, always the same’. Their performances remain infrequent, even at home, and are always unrepeatable. Their 30-year career has thrown up nearly 30 albums on a bewildering array of independent labels across the globe – in 2018 they are releasing ‘ Rare Ravers’, a new album on New York-based Ba Da Bing Records. They have pursued a path both fully international and thoroughly underground. Since then they have continuously walked a tightrope stretched between rock and free improvisation, from which they have yet to fall. THE DEAD C will play for the second time in France – the last and only time was in 2013 for the festival Sonic Protest.įormed in Port Chalmers, New Zealand in January 1987, the Dead C have always consisted of the trio of two guitars and drums: Michael Morley, Bruce Russell and Robbie Yeats. I won’t weigh in, particularly, one way or the other, except to point out that when holding this valuable book, it does feel like a work of some value.Save your date on June 11th 2018, a special evening will take place at les Instants Chavirés in Montreuil, that will bring together cult figures from the underground scene who have been active for over thirty years : THE DEAD C and DANIEL HIGGS. With the appearance of a heavily bearded tattooed prophet, Daniel Higgs emerged from the early-80s Baltimore/D.C. Whether you dismiss Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot - the music, the art, and the poetry - or embrace it as a possibly meaningful, artistically valid statement will be dependent on your tolerance for a) drone-based atmospheric instrumentals b) acrostics and c) spirituality in general. At their best, as on “Coccoon on the Cross”, the result comes close to a hypnotic trance, but the more squally moments of pure noise are harder to parse. Expansive and unhurried - “Cocoon on the Cross” and “Hems and Seams” clock in at near the ten minute mark - these tracks build off layered drones to create complex but perplexing meditations. The six tracks range in timbre from feedback-laden loops of sound to Eastern-style slow evolutions of banjo or jew’s harp. For more information or to buy the book/CD go to the. ![]() The album of accompanying music is dense, incompressible atmosphere. Download a track from the poet/musician/artists new album Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot on Thrill Jockey. Facing a series of abstract plates that seem full of unrevealed symbol (geometric shapes, womb-like curves), acrostic poems are printed ranging from clever (“Belief Is Blasphemy Lovingly Encoded” for BIBLE) to the oddly beautiful (BELOVED becomes “Beyond Existing Language Our Verses Encircle Deities”). As an artistic statement, the book is no more comprehensible. ![]() Sounds ridiculous, right? But given Higgs’s self-stylings as a prophet of the spiritual realm, we shouldn’t judge on this basis alone. Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot may refer to a new (atomic) way of achieving cosmic connection (yggdrasil) through spirituality (tarot). The yggdrasil is a tree out of Norse mythology that supposedly connects all the worlds in the cosmos together. As to precisely how the six instrumental compositions are meant to relate to the abstract artwork and acrostic poetry of the art book - let alone to their titles themselves - remains something of a mystery. You could easily flip over it if you didn’t know it was an essential part of the experience Higgs has created for us. The book, a handsome blue hardcover, has the CD slipped into the front cover. Again, the packaging is exquisite, and justifies the purchase price on the collectible aspect alone. Higgs’s Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot is the second in Thrill Jockey’s limited edition book-CD series, and it’s more of a challenge than Aki Tsuyuko’s childlike electronic compositions and oil painting pairing. ![]() Sometimes unraveling vision from hallucination is not so simple for the uninitiated. Despite the fact that he’s undoubtedly accomplished at his chosen instruments, the artist’s material can sound, at times, little more than the improvisations of a hallucinating mind. Most well-known as frontman of post-punk band Lungfish, Higgs has recorded under his own name as well as the moniker Cone of Light. I can’t say I’m a Higgs follower or even much of a Gnostic re: his fiercely cultivated out-there image and famously wild beard, or even the addendum to his name, but the Baltimore-based artist and musician has been making music for twenty years. Daniel Higgs and guitarist Asa Osborne formed. into his name, standing for Arcus Incus Ululat, in case you were wondering. Feral Hymns (Dischord, 2005) continued to focus on those two elements: Higgs lyrics and the bands heavy sound.
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