Album: Modern Bön IV – Urdhva Kundali [Exaltation]
Artist: Various Artists
Label: Modern Bön
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Xmtr
– Abara
2. Skuv
– Urzeit
3. Evestrum
– I am the last… I will tell the audient void
4.
Human
Spine – Abyss
5.
Drought
– Collapse of Maya
6.
Laache
– Ms
7.
Lorenzo
Abattoir – Identityisreclusion
8.
Corps
– Uncompromising #8
And so, after
three compilation albums (Puraka [Inhalation], Kumbhaka [Contemplation], and
Rechaka [Exhalation]) in this series, we finally reach the goal of our
spiritual efforts – Urdhva Kundali [Exaltation], the crown of achievement,
where the adherent attains enlightenment and has freed himself from the
repetitive cycle of Death and Reincarnation. In the Western Magical and
Hermetic tradition we would call it ‘attaining Godhead’: in other words
transcending the material limitations of Earth and rising up through the layers
of spiritual refinement until dissolving into the Ain Soph, as diagrammatically
delineated by the cabalistic Tree of Life. For this final volume, the compilers
have taken the tack you’d perhaps least expect: you’d imagine this would be
more of a pure ambient selection, all soaring and airy chords taking flight to
join with an ineffable effulgence of light, but instead we find dark ambient
drone, industrial stylings, dramatic percussion, the sweeping breath of
God(head), the unfolding of revelations. I’ve always held that total awareness
doesn’t just encompass all that’s good, but also all that’s evil – you cannot
be aware of one without being aware of the other – for balance, one must
co-exist with its opposite quality.
My reading of this
is that it’s a slow unfolding of history, a virtual cinema reel of events that
have happened since the world metamorphosed from clumps of rock into a planet, Xmtr’s
‘Abara’ begins in formlessness, vast winds blowing through all creation (or
perhaps the time before that point), until very gradually matter coalesces
under its own weight, clumping together into shapes and solidity, until the
universe and all within it are revealed. Skuv’s ‘Urzeit’ delves into
prehistory, the time before words and writing, bolstered on a solid foundation
of drone, with a mixture of chaos (counterpointing drones and voices) and order
(percussion). This is the period when the world was young, a time when it was
still an experiment, when evolution was still feeling its way. The pulse of
life is evident, but it still only exists as potential at this point.
‘I am the last… I
will tell the audient void’, Evestrum’s contribution, is pure industrial
barrage, a growling behemoth stamping its presence on the new world. This is
now a world of giants, where all is on the grand scale, and nature is
establishing the rules. It’s a world everything fights for attention and
survival, and so survival of the fittest is etched into the DNA of every living
creature, then and on into the future, from the lowliest to the most complex.
Human Spine’s ‘Abyss’ sounds like the oceanic depths, the true abyss of the
world, then as now, an unknown void where there is still much to be discovered.
Doom-laden bass accompanied by distorted voice and guitar scrapes, as well as
funereal drums, paints a picture of utter darkness, an abyssal space where man
cannot yet go, full of danger and potential. Drought’s ‘Collapse of Maya’
rumbles into existence, piling itself up on a guitar refrain, crunch and
crackle quickly gathering pace in the background, until the guitar chords
explode in a welter of fuzzed out heaviness. Over this comes black metal
vocals, rasping and snarling, biting and snapping, as the foundations of what
we call reality appear to be faltering and crumbling, getting ready for the
inevitable crash. All semblance of the life the adherent knew is stripped away,
shorn of its gaudy trappings, to reveal the deceit at its core, and the unsteady
framework it’s been built upon.
Laache’s ‘Ms’ hits
the airwaves next and is a completely different beast, beginning with a woman’s
voice informing listeners that one should be careful with one’s medications and
follow doctor’s orders before changing into a reverberant, stuttering
noise/ambient/industrial experimental piece. That opening voice passage is
clever – a way of saying that society (and life) will always find ways to tempt
you back to ‘normality’, the ‘consensual reality’ that’s imposed upon everyone.
The true seeker will ignore and carry on being who they really are, whether
it’s acceptable to the norm or not. ‘Identityidreclusion’ by Lorenzo Abbatoir
pops up next, the second-longest track on the album after Drought’s entry. This
one begins with footsteps and glitchy cracklings, a fractured and shattered
mirror reflecting the true nature of the world most people live within. Noise
outbursts are always ephemeral, lasting for only seconds at a time, unable to
establish any kind of permanent foothold, indicative perhaps of the
ephemerality of existence.
‘Uncompromising’
#8’ by Corps is exactly what it says it is – a blast of hot noise, obliterating
deceit and illusion, destroying anything and everything false that stands in
the way of truth. It’s a blistering flensing of distortion and deception,
dissolving it in a bath of acid. It’s essentially a clearing away of all that
hinders and keeps the human spirit from progressing. The adept, though, knows
the signs, and has all the spiritual weapons to ward them off at his disposal.
This is a fitting
conclusion to the four-part series exploring the process of attaining a state
of spiritual enlightenment, a long journey with perhaps no end in this lifetime
or even several lifetimes. Using music to express these concepts is probably
the most effective way of doing so: catching the ‘mood’ (for want of a better
word) is almost futile in any other way. The compilers should be congratulated
for curating such a wonderfully broad collection of pieces across all four
volumes, each of which speak individually to its allotted theme and narrative.
I sincerely hope that we’ll be hearing more from Modern Bön, exploring still
further the outer (and inner) limits of human consciousness – this has been
quite the journey.
Available from the
Modern Bön Bandcamp page:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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