Album: Zamia Lehmanni (Songs of Byzantine Flowers)
Artist: SPK
Label: Cold Spring Records
Catalogue no: CSR274CD/LP
Tracklist:
1. Invocation
to Secular Heresies
2. Palms
Crossed in Sorrow
3. Romanz
in Moll
4. In
the Dying Moments
5. In
Flagrante Delicto (Introduction)
6. In
Flagrante Delicto
7. Alocasia
Metallica
8. Necropolis
9. The
Garden of Earthly Delights
10. The
Doctrine of Eternal Ice (CD only)
SPK, along with Coil
(whose album, Stolen & Contaminated
Songs, has also been reissued by Cold Spring Records and which I reviewed
very recently), can be considered as the wellspring of inspiration behind many
projects that came to define the early to mid-period industrial music scene. This
seminal album was originally released on Side Effects Records all the way back
in 1985, and listening to it now it’s apparent that, as with Coil’s album, it
has lost none of its grandeur and scale. This, according to the blurb, was
something of a transitional period for main man Graeme Revell, in that this was
a solo effort rather than a group one, and here we see the prognostications of
his later soundtrack work. In spite of those signposts pointing to his future
direction, however, there are still elements of the original spark which
ignited it all, albeit stripped back and created to serve the specifics of the
pieces in question. But, as the blurb also points out, when Revell was
recording this he was of the opinion that industrial music had ossified and was
going nowhere, and so in these pieces he sought to reveal the next step in the
evolution of the genre – and the ubiquity of the style and its offshoots today
are testament to his vision. And, it should be noted, the reissue has received
the benefit of remastering and the
approval of Revell himself, who also wrote the liner notes.
This could definitely be
classed as a timely reissue, as it will not only introduce a new generation to
Revell’s music but will also save you quite a sum of money in the process. I
looked on eBay and saw that there’s an original vinyl copy for sale that, with
postage, is going for over $100. Save yourself the money and pre-order this instead
– even the vinyl versions on offer (see below) are cheaper and probably of
better quality.
In resonance with the
album’s title much of it is shot through with distinctly Eastern flavours,
starting with ‘Invocation to Secular Heresies’, a fanfare of an opener that
states its intentions for what follows right from the get go. The time-worn
ruins of ancient Byzantium appear to rise up hauntingly, a stark reminder of
what had once been a glittering jewel of a city and the centre of the known
world for 1100 years. A looping, slightly distorted voice ululates and chants
against a backdrop of trumpet blasts and brooding bass drones along with the
massed voices of a male choir. It’s powerful and stirring stuff, to be sure, entirely
apposite of the Byzantine Empire at its height, an empire that stretched from
the mouth of the Black Sea and into Asia Minor and downwards through Jerusalem
and thence to Egypt, even encompassing southern Spain, Italy, and Greece at its
most westerly extent. It speaks of mighty armies clashing, and citizens of the
glorious city of Constantinople standing proudly at the cultural and religious
centre of the pre-medieval world.
‘Palms Crossed in Sorrow’
is at once full of mystery and grandeur, and yet it comes from a place deeply
subterranean and cacophonous. It speaks of the greatest mystery of all – the
mystery of the afterlife, and our relationship to it. This isn’t as jarring as
it may appear on the surface – Constantinople later became one of the major
nexuses of Christian power, eclipsing that of Rome itself for a time and was also
the birthplace of Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, the listener gets a glimpse of
its future pre-eminence with the inclusion of ritual singing and musical
accompaniment, perhaps some species of song to say farewell the dear departed.
‘Romanz in Moll’ brings us echoes of the industrial with stark metallic
percussion, but blended with sweeping chords and piano passages, wrapped up in
classical phrasings. It is indeed romantic, yet whatever romance it’s meant to
celebrate is bathed in darkness.
‘In the Dying Moments’
announces itself with howls and whines, before tribal drumming comes in to
provide a backdrop to a stalking, menacing low bass ‘melody’ accompanied by
voices. This is the intersection between life and death, that subtle shift
between material being and loss of conscious being, the miasmic transition
point in between the light and the dark. It’s turbulent and unsettling, giving
rise to the notion that perhaps our ideas of what lies beyond this plane are
completely wrong. For the duration we appear to be blanketed in obfuscation and
darkness, where nothing is clearly defined and everything is elusive.
‘In Flagrante Delicto
Intro’ (which means something along the lines ‘caught red-handed’) floats in on
gossamer wings of sorrow made from the dust of millennia, with sustained string
chords that rise and fall like all the ancient civilisations did, building and
then falling away. ‘In Flagrante Delicto’ proper begins with a slow, deep bass
throbbing, creating the bedrock for more mournful, dirge-like strings, but this
time the atmosphere is aided by female voices singing, a subterranean operatic
swelling of emotion and regret. It feels like something has been lost, that
what was once something powerful and majestic has now been laid low, and is
gone, never to be seen again.
‘Alocasio Metallica’
initially appears to be a complete contrast, shimmering brightly and
resonantly, but if one listens carefully there’s melancholy and sorrow here too,
the voice and flute belying the instrumentation. Even so, it eventually
explodes into frantic drumming, almost as if it’s attempting to dispel the
prevailing atmosphere, in an effort to drive away the darkness, but even that
subsides into the original bell-like resonances the piece opened with. Listening
to it one most definitely reached back to the ‘industrial’ of the early period,
to a time when I was being exposed to new sounds and new sonic architectures.
‘Necropolis’ is next, and it prefigures the genre of dark ambient in a massive
way, dark orchestral chords, sweeping planes of sound that propel a lone violin
along, and it’s easy to see why this is such an aptly titled piece. One can
easily imagine walking through avenues of mausolea memorialising people long
gone, the heroes and the villains, all the great and good, and the ordinary
unremembered masses all in one place. Yet there is dignity here too, saying that
all lives are worth celebrating in however small a way.
Lastly, for the vinyl
versions anyway, is ‘The Garden of Earthly Delight’, a psychedelic tapestry of
sound and colour, swirling and whirling, cacophonous and yet sweet in its own
way. Creation is running riot here, with flora and fauna proliferating at an
exponential rate of knots: some ideas will take hold, whilst others will fold
back on themselves and disappear, finding their brief time running into a dead
end.
For those who purchase
the CD, you get an extra track, ‘The Doctrine of Eternal Ice’. Cold wintry
blasts introduce this piece, with sharp whistles and reverberations, echoes of
cracking and shattering ice, which all eventually morph into a weird
beat-driven piece descriptive of vast ice-caverns and broad plains covered in
nothing but snow. It appears barren, and yet there are hints that there’s life
even here. It remains hidden and mostly undetected, simply as a result of its
harsh environment. The thing is, though, because we can’t see what’s actually
out there, our imaginations are wont to fill in the blanks, and in the process
create all manner of wild and wonderful (and dangerous) creatures, all
seemingly hell-bent on hunting us. The truth is probably more prosaic, but
until we see with our own eyes, we will think otherwise.
I have to admit that I
struggled to review this album, certainly not because I didn’t like it (quite
the opposite), but simply because there’s so much going on here. Ideas and
concepts tumble over each other rapidly: in the end I had to go by first
impressions and flow with those. These pieces are simultaneously simple yet
complex, almost like musical Mandelbrot sets: the further you delve into each
piece, the more you see and the more you realise and understand. This isn’t an
album one can cursorily listen to – multiple hearings are mandated here in
order to fully grasp Revell’s mastery. If you need to buy only two essential
albums this year, then this one alongside Coil’s Stolen & Contaminated Songs are the ones you should purchase.
Available from 11th
December in two vinyl versions: either in standard black form or in a limited
edition gold version of 500. There’s also a CD in a 6-panel digipack. All
versions can be purchased here:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
