Review of INDEX FOR WORKING MUSIK Which Direction Goes The Beam?

 

Index For Working Musik emerged from London's sulfur skies to carve out a rough diamond of a debut record in 2023 and are now back with their sophomore brainchild. These spiritual heirs of The Velvet Underground are keeping Lou Reed's foggy notion alive and kicking with their chiaroscuro of atmospheres, hushed vocals and dissonant guitars. 

In their first album, the band conjured up a kind of dystopian world as a background, in their own words, as if the world of the living was no more. While the darkness remains for good measure, this follow up bears a more inward and confidential aura, leaning towards a more muffled and sensual overtone, with fuzz still having pride of place. 

 “Thursday’s Bells’ thrusts you into the abyss right away but rest assured, it's like falling at the bottom of a well made of gold to a private lounge area. These bells are a good omen, Natalia Bruno's delicate vocals are the key that bids you welcome and lets you into the secret place, then “2x1” really hits home with its eruption of fuzzy grinding guitars. London 2020s via the Factory in NYC. “Run Run Run” instantly springs to mind as a kind of teaser but the band delve deeper into their own niche, elegantly expanding the canvas of their first release. 

“Fog”is tantalizingly cinematic, as if someone was walking stealthily up a staircase to uncover a treasure or a skeleton in a closet, the suspense rises higher and higher. 

“X says” has a contrasting rhythm, yet just as enticing with its sovereign drum that feels like an epic chase throughout.

Halfway through the record emerges the pinnacle “Sparrows Hill”, a serpentine lined symphony that slithers majestically, all the way to our brains and encapsulates the essence of Index For Working Musik's sound. Hypnotic, voluptuous, enigmatic, befogged and crepuscular with sensory voices that mingle as in a tight embrace. 

“Sister” is in the band's more instant register, which gravitates around shifting shades of darkness and electricity. It radiates raw vibrancy whilst carrying that shadowlike imprint which is the band's unflinching trademark. 

This five-piece loves to cover their tracks with noisier interludes, then revert to a seemingly soothing and sprawling tour de force with “Purple Born” which starts as a confessional lullaby with both vocalists at their mellowest, taking turns, then gradually builds up within an unpredictable song structure, with a teeming tapestry of roaring guitars and painterly strings.

This collection of songs could have been titled Black Light, Black Heat. It revolves around towering, freethinking and visually evocative soundscapes whose riot of sounds remind of abstract expressionists's brush strokes. An immersive experience. 

Review of Lay Down & Get Lost

Reading Lay Down & Get Lost is like cracking open a clothbound embroidered scrawl about the underbelly of bohemia. This is way more than a poetry book, it is a love letter and testament to misfits and renegades of all time, from Victorian times to the twenty-first century, Nikola Pepera takes us on her exquisite time traveling adventures across continents through the kingdom of psychedelia. 

Our storyteller is an adult Alice in Wonderland, tripping on acid, whose enchanting stream of consciousness is endowed with a luxurious patchouli scent and hallucinogenic mental pictures. What are the odds of Charlie Chaplin, Andy Warhol and David Crosby crossing paths and crashing your party? One will make a plethora of iconic encounters via the wordsmith wizardry of Lady Pepera, from well known figures to underground legends, crossing dimensions to be scrutinized like a Persian rug, immured or revered for posterity, castigated in style or worshipped at the altar of jest. 

The poetess has crafted a one of a kind realm which, if it were a potion, would have been brewing in a cauldron filled to the brim with Allen Ginsberg's scenic rhythm, Bukowski's dry wit, Vali Myers’ soulful flamboyance and Eve Babitz’ acute chronicling, sprinkled with some sage and a pinch of salt. This feels like sipping on the most delicious wine with Dorothy Parker whilst having Picasso paint your back, Rimbaud whispering bits and pieces of A Season in Hell in your ears and watching The Velvet Underground perform at the Psychiatrists’ convention in NYC circa 1966.

This word sorceress would have been burnt at the stake for her clairvoyance. 

A master of all crafts, her illustrations are part and parcel of her hypnotic incantations and adorn the book with more dazzling opulence. 

These paisley laced aphorisms are wrapped in vibrant velvet and filled with purple haze. Bask in the alluring and enticing aura of the secretary of insanity, Lay Down & Get Lost is bound to be a counterculture classic, it is the Holy Mountain of poetry.

Lay Down & Get Lost was released on Far West Press in 2024.

 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL AND THE FREEDOM ORCHESTRA : Lucifer Rising

“Lucifer is the patron saint of visual arts.” (Kenneth Anger)

Much has been said about the very troubled soul of Bobby Beausoleil but his creative process far exceeds all the myth and gossip that surround him. The man found himself in jail after killing a man and, rising from his own inferno, unexpectedly penned one of the most momentous and timeless original soundtracks ever. This year sees the reissue of the latter, a must have record and spiritual trip.

“When I composed and recorded the soundtrack for a reconceptualized Lucifer Rising a decade after the first abandoned attempt I drew on my own life experiences to tell the story in music evocative of the mythical Lucifer awakening in his pit of despair, rekindling his torch, and rising like a phoenix from the ashes of his own unmaking to begin his long journey from the dark recesses of the underworld -shedding his pride along the way in his uncompromising desire to regain the Beloved.” -Bobby Beausoleil

Originally, Bobby Beausoleil had been approached by avant-garde film maker Kenneth Anger who wanted Bobby to play Lucifer and write the soundtrack. The latter agreed but got too caught up in his part in real life. After Anger and Beausoleil fell out, the director moved to London, while Bobby met the Manson family and murdered a drug dealer who had sold him a large amount of mescaline which was nothing but junk.  Kenneth then asked Jimmy Page to do the score but they didn’t get along, so when Beausoleil wrote to the director from Tracy State Prison to ask him to be a part of Lucifer Rising, the adventure began...

Goosebumps inducing, cosmic,  otherwordly, organic and hallucinogenic, the fully instrumental Lucifer Rising drops you into the abyss right off the bat, taking full hold of the listener’s senses. What makes this soundtrack a proper experience is its almighty hypnotism, when you listen to it, you cannot have any normal activity, it literally stops you in your tracks. You just yield to its rhythm to become a passenger, as if you were part of the story.

It is a landmark of occult culture, in the same way as Aleister’s Crowley writings. White magic, black magic songs blending into one another, somewhere halfway between orchestral music and experimental space rock.

The film Lucifer Rising is about Egyptian gods summoning the angel Lucifer, starting a new age. Imagine if Sun Ra had made a rock record... This is revelatory of a time when experimentalism was the raw material of change, both in art and in lifestyle.

A wild, dark and celebratory sonic trip, even more mind-boggling considering that it was written in prison. Beausoleil found in the Freedom Orchestra the ideal band for this project. Redemption through chaos, so the darkness shall be the light.

In the words of Louis Aragon, “Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites that people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.”

Lucifer Rising was reissued on the Ajna Offensive in 2017.

ALL IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON: The Fog Is Filled With Spirits

Experiencing and navigating through The Fog Is Filled With Spirits means getting lost in its otherwordly record cover first. Highly immersive and atmospheric, the sleeve leaves you daydreaming and flickering through its metaphorical and surrealistic elements. Gazing at it, you will find boundaries dissolving between dream and reality. You become part of the picture, slipping into that eerie fog. The first thing that catches your eye is this not so blurry silhouette whose hands are trying to reach the moon, it seems ready to levitate. Is it a ghost? One thing then strikes you, the silhouette has no head but its face with no eyes appears up close next to the album title, as if it was whispering those words. True artists don’t state the obvious, they arouse the viewer or listener’s imagination, which is precisely what All In The Golden Afternoon is doing here.

The opener “Magic Eyes” lures you even more with its sibylline vocals, it fully propels you into an uncanny dimension. The Goldstars are masters at depicting the elements in their songs, they have the power to paint not only mental pictures but the different sensations that come with your surroundings. “The Fear and The Flame” is a tune of hypnotic magnitude whose musical texture properly sets the tone of the record, it reminds of Broadcast circa 2005, especially with Rachel’s enchanting voice. The fog is filled with the spirit of Trish Keenan. That beat holds you spellbound. The foggy journey through the record is dotted with various recollections of places the band is smitten with. “The Long Goodbye” is a wondrous number that echoes “The Fear and The Flame”, it captures how hard it is to leave a place you hold dear to your heart. The melody is adorned with longing fairy-like backing vocals and attired all over in a sorcerous atmosphere.

All songs on the record are a sort of emotional rollercoaster, bittersweet and captivating that keeps you hallucinating. “With Your Eyes” lets you penetrate further into the fog with an angelical beginning and a stark ending.

The title track makes a final spectral pinnacle, signifying the end of the passage from blur to clarity. A staggering conclusion to the record. Let your soul get lost in the fog again, you may have a visual and sensory epiphany.   




The Fog Is Filled With Spirits was released in October 2016.

https://allinthegoldenafternoon.bandcamp.com/album/the-fog-is-filled-with-spirits