Snowdrops In The Curate’s Garden
(The Epicurean - CURE.8) LP $22.00
This 2011 live recording of industrial veterans John Murphy (Shining Vril, Krank, ex-SPK / Whitehouse / Current 93), John Evans, and Julian Percy is the missing link between the grainy, demo-type 1990s recordings that became The Tyranny Of Distance (Tesco, 2004) and the more contemporary Towers Of Silence (The Epicurean, 2014). Its shuddering analogue sounds, clanging metal rhythms and feedback, ritual percussion and chants focus on hypnotic and mental aspects of music, psychopathology, debasement and religious deviation. Packaged with photographs of the infamous Victorian-era lunatic asylums in Kew and Beechworth, Australia, the album commemorates the country’s history as a penal colony, when the majority of white Australians were poor, dispossessed and desperate, long known as factors that encourage depression, alcoholism and psychological ill-being. The process of transportation was attended by squalor, disease and rape. These damaged individuals were then thrust into a harsh and alien environment, housed in circumstances worse than a modern refugee camp, and expected to build their own prisons – circumstances that effectively made mental illness one of the colony’s very first imports. From there the dismal history of mental hospitals took its course, evolving from incarceration over therapeutic occupation to, ultimately, medication. It is the practice of oppressing those who cannot “conform” to the norms imposed by the system, the root cause of the underlying aggression with which the Australian general public continue to treat each other. Beautiful black and gold printing on 12 x 12 natural paper. Includes postcard and free download card. Numbered edition of 253.
Towers Of Silence
(The Epicurean - CURE5) CD $16.00
(The Epicurean - CURE5) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
John Murphy (Krank, Knifeladder, Shining Vril, ex-SPK), Julian Percy (Ratbag), and Jon Evans show how loud and infernal the silence of ending can be imagined. Screams of rage and anxiety intermingle with shouts of warriors (or the croaking of vultures gathered around corpses) until all is buried under an avalanche of infernal noise. Guest contributions by Neubauten collaborator Ash Wednesday, Till Brüggemann of Gerechtigkeits Liga, and Annie Stubbs. Edition of 300. Listen to the title track here: http://epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/towers-of-silence