All The More Hardcore

In hope that he will see this tribute before he departs into the woods for the next several months, I am posting the latest Nick Persons album now. I apologize for interrupting my occult Italian trilogy but one must Goethe with the floweth. With the terminal defunctness of his group Fucked Butter, rap antagonist Nick Persons has had to keep busy creating his own brand of fucked hop. 2012 has so far seen the release of his primarily instrumental debut 66 Cents and more recently his return to the mic in Depart. Produced largely in bed in the wee hours of dusks and dawns, Depart captures the various altered states which occupy the mind at such times. "My House In Compton Is Off Limits" sounds like Prince on crack at 5AM after a wild house party in the 80s that Foreigner showed up to with some bad blow that gave everyone bloody nostrils. A hit to be sure. "Popular Kids" coins the proverb "we all know how to party, just clap" and makes one believe they do so much so that they will. "Yellow Drink" sounds like a stoned and tense philosophical conversation between Nick himself and Pizza the Hutt. "All the Hardcore" closes off the strange trip with the only sample Dilla was not lucky enough to pick up. All in all, Depart is an incredibly strong effort from a frighteningly deranged mind and deserves to be lauded as the truly innovative take on the hip hop idiom it is. Word up Persons.

Agony Ecstasy Discipline Harmony    

Cult of Blood

As promised (tweeted, that is) here is another tome from Italy's cobwebbed and shrouded vault of occult rites. Released the same year as In Absentia Christi and featuring Agua Regis (Roberto Mammarella, vox + gtr with MonumentuM) on guitar and bass, Cultus Sanguine's epononymous EP is a morose ritual of Lombardian anguish. This is a good soundtrack for the type of party where no one shows because there is a thunderstorm and you drink all the bottles of high percentage table vino you bought and then wander through the darkness and rain into the cemetery only to leave a white rose at the wrong grave and remember that you left candles burning in your appartment. Since those don't happen every weekend (or so I'm told; for me they do) you could just listen now and feel sad.

Ride the winds of hate

In The Absence of Christ

Friends, devoted followers, trash collectors, forgive me for not posting in so long. I have been in a dark place, I am still there. It is a place of text, quotes, indents and of ancient philosophies. It's kind of like the scene in Hackers where they get into that secret folder and E=MC2 is floating around, but more monocrhome and monotonous. Don't fear for me, though, I can see a light at the end of this bleak tunnel of intellectual purgatory. But for now, I barrel on. However, I felt I must share with you the music that both best reflects the interior of my mind at the moment and makes the best soundtrack for this taxing journey I am embarked on.

Very special thanks to Aesop over at the Hearse for dropping yet another forgotten classic quickly become personal fave on my miserable earholes. MonumentuM's In Absentia Christi is just what I've been craving, some good old fashione Italian occultitude. Not easily described using metal terminology (because it sounds like little other metal I've heard) I will attempt to give an experiential equivalent to what I feel listening to this album. Imagine you are at an Italian Catholic funeral in a huge church, everyone is dressed in black and sobbing as the incense burns and the sound of murmured prayer gets louder and louder. The procession starts and you shoulder through the crowd to the son of the deceased to voice your condolences. This sends his long, dark-haired, pale, lanky frame into convulsions of bellowed balling. His tears soon turn to morbid reflection and he begins expounding to you his every thought of dejected agony, in Rozz Williams-like oration, while the chorus of chants and bells behind you rises and falls. He becomes more and more animated as the unusually long walk to the graveyard grows longer and stranger. Daylight turns to unsettling twilight and shadowy cobblestone streets stretch on into infinity. You feel very odd. You realize that the libation someone gave you at the church seems to have had hallucinatory effects. You want this depressing journey to end and yet with his every word you become more sympathetic for your host's bleak revery. Suddenly, the buildings fall away and you look out in front of the crowd to see an expansive cemetery, tombstone upon tombstone, crypt upon crypt, restful and still in the soft hues of the setting sun.

fade to grey...