Monday, August 22, 2011

Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith (Idle Hole, 1988)

Stephen Stapleton is one of my music gods. He's one of those artists with an unbelievably prolific output over many years that never really disappoints. Often touted as an industrial artist, much of his dark ambient and drone work seems to fall by the wayside for most. This is his magnum opus. Its quite simply 106 minutes of meditative creepiness. I forget what an impact music like this can make on the psyche. I was just out for a late night stroll through the neighborhood with my dogs while listening to this one, and succeeded in spooking myself a bit. The frequencies in these drones really did a number on me. For those of you a little disillusioned by goth or black / death metal or horror scores, try a bit of the drone. It can cure your desensitized ears and give you the creeps you thought were a lost cause. A big hit if you're a fan of Coil's "Time Machines" record.

"The album was recorded by Steven Stapleton and his wife Diana Rogerson in May 1988. The only sound source was a number of effects units which he had set up to operate in a feedback loop - there was no original input signal being processed, simply the feedback hum generated by plugging the original chain of pedals back into itself. However, when Stapleton went near the pedals he found the sound changed in accordance with his proximity to the various pedals and units. Stapleton told author David Keenan (in the book England's Hidden Reverse) that he had created the album by gently moving his fingers above the various units to create the slow, subtle changes in the sound. As this shouldn't happen, Stapleton has put the album down to an electrical fault of some sort in the studio. This was acknowledged on a later reissue with the credit "our thanks to Electricity for making this recording possible". He remains proud of the album, describing it to Keenan as "fucking brilliant". The album title refers to Stapleton and Rogerson's daughter Lilith who was born that year." -- from Wikipedia

Get pt. 1 here
Get pt. 2 here
Get pt. 3 here



2 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Lovely blog you have here my friend! While browsing along, I stumbled upon your post on NWW : Solliloquy For Lilith is also my favourite piece. For a while, I used to fall asleep each night with it playing in the background. I soon quit this habit : too strong a stuff for my brain!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. interesting music,thanx from argentina

    ReplyDelete

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