Litaniæ Mortuorum Discordantes
(The Epicurean - CURE11) CD $21.00
Soul-shredding funeral music built on dissonance, intended for church performance, triggering spiritual delight (aka dread, existential anxiety, feelings of death and decay). Anemone Tube and Post Scriptvm stage a linear, gradually unfolding “oratorio” which begins with layers of lush brass synths resounding a time and place enveloped in ancient mythical beauty. The pristine serenity, however, slowly deteriorates through the influx of anguish, social decay and profanity. Raw field recordings, throbbing electronics, metallic tremors, distant voices and chants portrait a life of numbness and confusion, where man — tormented by ignorance, ignoble desires and anger — has become a plaything of insane “Weltanschauungen” and the commercialization plague. Ka-ching.
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
Séance
(The Epicurean - CURE.7) LP $25.50
Eight tracks recorded at various locations from 2003 through 2014, compiled into a single monolithic containing the full spectrum of Post Scriptvm’s mind states and atmospheres — from the death-ambient claustrophobia of “Corners” and “Etherized Erosion,” the hypnotizing analog textures of “Tarantula Pattern” and “The Binding,” to the violent power electronics of “Exacerbation” and “Upon Decadent Scum.” Beautiful black and gold printing on 12 x 12 natural paper. Includes postcard and free download card. Numbered edition of 50 with sew-on patch
Epicurean Escapism
(The Epicurean - CURE1) CD + DVD $26.75
The episodic track by Swedish industrial trio IRM is constructed with elements from Indications of Nigredo (Segerhuva 2008), Order4 (Cold Meat Industry 2010), and Closure (Malignant 2014) — unified into a new, holistic composition which contrasts aggressive noise segments with illusionary moments of lavish quasi-folk. The track by John Murphy’s Krank is a dark collage of fragmented noise, acoustic samples and female vocals. Erik Jarl (of IRM) contributes a subtle piece of circulating drone with a tranquil surface that makes partially hidden harshness more audible. Anemone Tube and Human Larvae’s lucid piece combines the knock-on effect of the former’s flow of sounds with the heaviness of latter’s doom-like industrial. The ninety-two-minute DVD by IRM’s Martin Bladh includes his earliest short film Pig and Tomboy (2005), the epic pentalogy Cycle (2006), and the conceptual installation video DES (2009), among others. All the films present unvarnished set pieces of the human body subjected to subtly implied violence within claustrophobic spaces, where the camera itself, the voyeuristic eye, is the only free player. The accompanying art catalogue includes collages and Polaroids, short essays by Bladh, and introduction text by Carl Abrahamsson. Edition of 350. Listen to an excerpt from “Triptych” by Irm here: http://epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/epicurean-escapism-i
All My Sins Remembered - The Sonic Worlds Of John Murphy
(The Epicurean - CURE.10) 3xCD $23.25
All proceeds go to widow of this much beloved Australian musician. Carefully curated and compiled, All My Sins Remembered follows the chronology of Murphy’s career, from his high school band through his last studio recordings — a treasure of previously unreleased recordings by Associates, Shining Vril, Krang, Krank, Browning Mummery, Knifeladder, Sooterkin Flesh, Blood And Iron, Wertham, Foresta Di Ferro and Gerechtigkeits Liga, as well as rare collaborative tracks with Lustmord, News, Whirlywirld, Hugo Klang, Maa, Orchestra Of Skin And Bone, Slub, Dumb And The Ugly, Vhril, Bordel Militaire and The Walking Korpses. Murphy’s performances can also be heard on exclusive live recordings of Blood Axis, SPK, Whitehouse, Naevus, Nikolas Schreck, My Father Of Serpents & Disciples Of None, and Mandrix, while newly recorded personal dedications (partially making use of John Murphy recordings) come from Of The Wand And The Moon, Die Weisse Rose, Genocide Organ, Andrew King, and David E. Williams. Last but not least are live and studio recordings from March and May 2015 with The Grimsel Path, Zeena Schreck and Murphy’s last main band Last Dominion Lost. Outer cardboard folder, cardboard sleeves, 32-page booklet with texts by The Epicurean, Andrew King, Alan Bamford and Jon Evans, and photographs from the personal archives of friends. Edition of 750.
Epicurean Escapism III
(The Epicurean - CURE.3) CD + DVD $21.75
The third and final edition of this series again unites music, film and visual arts in a vision of uncompromising utopian transgression, diving into this subjective counter-world. On the forty-nine CD Sutcliffe Jügend present a straightforward power noise track with a pulsating electronic hook; Swedish units Alfarmania and Skin Area dig deep into the depraved consciousness, each with of a unique version of morbid industrial resonating with decay; Budrus seduces the listener with beautifully melancholic Lithuanian poetry; German act Gerechtigkeits Liga clank and rattle with their brand of organic industrial; appearing as a vaudevillian, prominent voice of Radio Werewolf Nikolas Schreck’s perverse neo-psychedelic composition alludes to Lord Sutekh, merging European neoclassical with ethnic Indian music and poetry; one of the last recordings of John Murphy on drums can be heard on Last Dominion Lost’s ritual piece “To The Master, A Long Goodnight.” On the three-hour DVD are: video works, live performances and collaborations by radical Swiss sound artist Dave Phillips of the notorious Schimpfluch Gruppe, whose work has many facets — composition, performance, psycho-acoustics, sonic rituals, voice, video, field recordings, objects and electronics, etc. — and is presented here in all its undiluted brutality, urgency and topicality; documentation of unique solo live actions and the notorious Paris 1996 performance of Schimpfluch-Gruppe; recent collaborations with G.X. Jupitter-Larsen; visual interpretations of Phillips’s audio works by video artists Pakise Akin, Jan Van Hasselt and Remote-Control Rectum. Includes 24-page catalogue with a text about the work of Phillips, collages, pictures, drawings and lyrics.