aRternative

plunging into The Ocean

Posted by Attila Korsós On 5:01 PM 4 comments

When it comes to my musical taste, people often ask why don't I like mainstream pop bands if I admit that their music is catchy or even to my liking. The reason is that almost every time I recognize a popular song as being good music, I find that there is no real emotion or self-expression driving it. Popular songs are usually assembled by professionals with the sole purpose of entertainment for the masses. That's anything but art in my opinion.

The bands which I consider to be of highest value and which occupy the topmost places in my imaginary list are examples of pure self-expression, sometimes so sincere and bereft of decoration or disguise that they leave me shaken every time I listen to them. And there are also some bands which I hold in highest esteem either because of a complex ideology represented in each and every part of their existence or because of the conception they follow through a song, through an album or through a lifetime.

A very good example for a band with conceptions is the international formation The Ocean (or sometimes The Ocean Collective) based in Germany that has speedily become one of my favorite bands once I listened to their beautiful two-disc epic monstrosity, Precambrian. That unprecedentedly versatile and diverse piece of art had the conception of telling the history of the birth and childhood of our planet. Each of the songs bear the name of a prehistoric era, following each other in succession and trying to paint the image of the given age upon the canvas of our mind. That was a good three years ago by now, so it was high time the band produced a new piece of art. A lot of things around the band's house have changed since Precambrian, the greatest change being the replacement of the singer. Thus, all the band's fans and critiques awaited the release of the new album. At first, it was planned to be a two-disc set like its predecessor, but later, the band decided to release the two discs separately, one in April, one in October.

The conception behind April's disc, Heliocentric is accurately hinted at by its title. The album deals with the heliocentric idea proposed by Copernicus and the battle it had hopelessly fought against religion. As the songs progress, the theme's range is expanded into the greater opposition between creationist and evolutionist beliefs.

The band handles the topic with superb songwriting sense, all of the songs telling exactly what their titles propose, chapter after chapter in human ideologic history. The music is unbelievably different from that of Precambrian, having the same sludge/doom/hardcore roots but being far more softer and filled with clean vocals.

The lavishly packaged album is a marvellous sight to behold, black and silver dominating the meticulously designed box covered in the constellations of the sky. The song lyrics come printed on nine separate cards each illustrated with William Blake-ish paintings of metaphysical aspect.

Grandiose and epic both on the outside and on the inside, Heliocentric is a masterpiece to behold. Months of careful and attentive listening await those who seek full knowledge of every little nuisace of this disc. One can only wonder what surprises will October's Anthropocentric present.

Firmament
The First Commandment of the Luminaries
The Origin of God

dry sand, cold scales

Posted by Attila Korsós On 4:29 PM 1 comments

In today's manifestation of the whirlwind of genres and songs inside my skull, I will guide you to a land that you might find surprising to be a source of dark music. Take my hand and follow me into the vast and endless desert sands of Egypt, into the dusty and skin-crawling gravevaults of pharaohs, and to the soothing balm of the oases' waters.

One of the world's leading and most succesful death metal acts chose Egyptian culture as the guiding idea behind their music. Their name was taken after one of the most central and determining elements of ancient Egypt's life, their mighty river, the Nile. The band's lyrics and artwork is mainly built up of themes from the culture's history and mythology, often dealing with the gruesome aspects and events of (after)life. Their song titles are peculiar in that some of them are unusually long and most contain some Arabic or ancient Egyptian words. Just to mention a few: Kem Khefa Kheshef, User-Maat-Re, Yezd Desert Ghul Ritual in the Abandoned Towers of Silence or the longest one, Chapter of Obeisance before Giving Breath to the Inert One in the Presence of the Crescent Shaped Horns. The legends of this ill-fated civilization however, are not only represented in the band's imagery and textuality, but also in the music itself. Although most of the music is pure death metal of extreme skill, lightning speed and unusual brutality, intros and intermezzos of traditional Egyptian instruments like the baglama-saz help create a sinister atmosphere of North African folklore.

The source of this deep affection towards Egypt is the singer-songwriter-guitarist and amateur egyptologist, Karl Sanders. His love for this mythology and history is so obsessive that he eventually decided to create a creative outlet solely for traditional Egyptian meditative folk music. He has already released his second solo album under his own name, the first entitled Saurian Meditation, the second Saurian Exorcisms.

On these two albums, droning ambient sounds draw up the background, either of instrumental or digital source and even special low-tone throat-singing techniques are used to set the atmosphere. Onto these, the guitars conjure an Arabic world of melodies, mostly being acoustic but sometimes distorted. Electronic distortion might sound out of place in case of music trying to visualize an ancient world, but Sanders' highly professional skills create short solos and droning that perfectly blend into their grim surroundings. Unlike in Nile, there are no vocals on the solo albums of Sanders, hence there are no lyrics at all. Most songs contain some drums or other traditional percussion.

The title of Saurian Meditation suggests a calm, relaxed and comforting atmosphere that can form the base for meditation, but there are some songs on the disc that are far from comforting. The song The Elder God Shrine for example creates an emotion of excitement like that before a battle. Its choirs resemble soldiers taunting each other to get into the state of mind required for war. The second album, Saurian Exorcisms is even further from pleasant moods and relaxation. Songs like A Most Effective Exorcism Against Azagthoth and His Emissaries wield guitars and percussion in a fearful and unsettling way. Shira Gula Pazu is similar to a forbidden, primitive, and pre-human desert ritual for the summoning of a nameless god.

If you, by some perverse reason, happen to enjoy the burning heat of sun-scorched sand, the cold touch of reptilian skin, the color of ageless, dry stone and the sight of the endless, unknown desert, Karl Sanders is the choice for the soundtrack to your dreams.

wolves in the concert hall

Posted by Attila Korsós On 9:18 AM 0 comments

All you dark-hearted and open-minded lovers of the colder aspects and infrequently treaded paths of Mother Nature must be quite excited by now, for next Monday, a trio from over the seas will grace our humble city with a celebration of the womb we all came from and of the darker and more twisted creatures originating from the same source. This undoubtedly underground, but unquestionably prominent band hails from the Cascade Mountains in Washington state and is known by the name Wolves in the Throne Room. Their latest release, Black Cascade has been unleashed upon the civilized world in 2009, but the tour celebrating that recording has eluded the interest of Hungarian fans. This year brings the compensation for our grim-loving hearts.

On the 10th of May, those who will be in Dürer-kert should prepare to step on a path leading to the darkest and most foreboding wildernesses of nature. The cold home of moonlight and mist sifting through dead branches of pine trees awaits. We will tread on the way of dry, dead ground and wet, cold air, twigs cracking under our feet, wind combing our hair. We will enter the nest of cawing crows and the lair of howling wolves. Mother Nature will embrace us with skeletal fingers and breathe freezing air into our lungs. She will comfort us with solitude, she will cover us with dry bark. We will be wanderers above the sea of fog. We will stand on mountain tops, screaming our anger toward civilization into the endless aether and we will curl up in mossy caves, whispering our anguish to the flocks of mushrooms.

All this will be conjured by veil-thin and fragile guitars, atmospheric and eerie synthesizers, monotonous drums teeming with ancient, primitive power, and timeless and instinctive harsh vocals. These wolves surely won't leave anyone untouched. Their unique blend of the original Norwegian black metal atmosphere (á la Burzum) and the ancient American way of life yields a most outstanding and lasting experience for all listeners.

However, there is more to this band than screaming and noise. They are well-known for the serious ideology behind their art. They support ideas most collectively referred to as radical environmentalism, but more precisely defined as eco-spiritual and eco-anarchist vision. They respect nature above all, and do so in a most spiritual way. Not many people would expect serious affection towards our planet and environment from a black metal band, but those few, who know where to look for values, know that beauty sometimes stands right by the side of horror.

The American priests of our planet will be supported by a Hungarian band of no smaller spiritual attitude, The Moon and the Nightspirit. The core of the band is the duo of Mihály and Ágnes, who write and play shamanistic folk music on traditional Hungarian folk instruments. Each of their performances is like a trance the old tribes of Europe experienced around the fire on obscure nights of spiritual activity. They conjure the deepest and most primeval feelings and instincts up in the listener, comforting him or her to the point where he or she almost feels as if becoming one with the greatest spirit of them all, that of the Earth. Fragile, melodious, ancient and powerful are these songs, touching every being with a sensitive soul.

So, to all of humanity, you who have the possibility and the affinity, be there on Monday at Dürer-kert. The music will take you closest to Mother Earth's closed spiritual eye and cradle you in Her loving flames. But beware, for when Her eye opens, you might see things that your feeble human mind will deny to accept. She might have created the beauties and wonders of life, but she also did call into existence some creatures of horror lurking behind the human threshold.

monochrome birds on a desolate sky

Posted by Attila Korsós On 3:19 PM 0 comments

Time is of the essence. People rushing through the street, their steps knocking faster and faster against the plaster. Always faster. Do you ever have time to stop to think? I've heard these lines a couple of times before. Everybody complains about the pace of our age, but I didn't believe it. And now, as I'm starting to turn into an adult, I feel it. I'm "out" all day, coming here, going there, university, driving license, family, friends, loved ones. I never have time for things that really deserve it. I feel lonely. I feel homeless. In the greatest home of us all, the world.

Have you ever stopped to set aside everything and think?

The essential need of a thinking man is to question. Question anything and everything: theories, dogmas, propaganda, commercials, teachers, fathers and so on. What was the greatest thing you've ever questioned? Your parents? Your teachers? Your friends? Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Your government? Your nation?

Red sparowes questions possibly the greatest thing: the driving force of humanity

We are talking about an instrumental quintet from the US and actuality is provided by the recent release of their third album, entitled The Fear is Excruciating, but Therein Lies the Answer. The genre of their music is post rock, which is usually unkown to the greater public. As the name suggests, it is an "evolved" subgenre of rock, thus it mostly consists of guitars. Its uniqueness lies firstly in its high level of serious emotional and intellectual charge, secondly in the unusual length of songs ranging from a minimum of 6 minutes to an unlimited maximum, but rarely exceeding the 30 minutes marker. As it has been mentioned before, Red Sparowes plays instrumental music without lyrics, but the song titles themselves accurately convey the message of the band. Their previous two albums At the Soundless Dawn and Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun had the "story" told by their overly verbous song titles like A Brief Moment of Clarity Broke through the Deafening Hum but It was Already Too Late or The Great Leap Forward Poured Down upon Us One Day like a Mighty Storm, Suddenly and Furiously Blinding Our Senses. The new album, released on April 6th, has short titles like In Illusions of Order or A Mutiny, so the idea behind it had to be told some other way. The band included a short piece of writing in the booklet of the disc with thoughts that hit hard in the readers' mind like a stone thrown into water. It is basically a strong critique of the general human mental attitude that demands answers before understanding the questions themselves or before making sure that there is a question at all. It brings up examples of cases where the human mind sought order and system so eagerly that it created one where there was nothing but random chance.

An overwhelming majority of mankind is driven by the urge to find answers and apply logic and reason to a world in which none exists. Red Sparowes questions this quest for order and the way it does brings immense spiritual uncertainty to the open-minded reader. Is there truly no system in the happenings of nature and life? Are we truly chasing illusions created by ourselves? If yes, what would be the appropriate behavior? Accepting whatever comes our way and try to get the best out of it? According to Red Sparowes, yes. We should lay all our belief and trust in ourselves and only ourselves. Humanity is the only factor that always has reasons and logic, no matter how twisted they might be. Everything else is just an endless flow of randomized events. This is utterly fearful, I admit. Allow me to quote the final paragraph of the Red Sparowes text as a closing thought:

"It is all too easy to imagine a swarm of malevolent demons scheming our demise - it's in our nature. In every mind, a mutiny purported as an enemy greater than ourselves scheming and devising outcomes as each end looms and subsides. Throughout human history, logic and reason has grown and developed as a resource for survival, based upon a premise: everything means something. The fear is excruciating, but therein lies the answer."

I'm option paralyzed

Posted by Attila Korsós On 9:14 AM 0 comments

As you have probably guessed from the stepping stones of our common path here at aRternative, your humble guide is a huge collector of less-known musical delicacies usually from the darker side. I am also one of the very few remaining specimens of a species that is threatened by extinction: the music buyer. In our Internet and download dominated world, some might find it weird or at least unusual that the words 'buy' and 'music' are placed side by side in the same expression, but I can assure you that there are creatures out there that are ready to give money for their beloved audiodreams. Most of today's human population would regard me insane upon knowledge of the ridiculous amounts of money I "occasionally" spend upon certain musical outbursts, but all of us have our very own insanities, don't we?

I am obsessed with the packaging of cds and words like digipak, digibook or box set. I can sit and hold a new release in my hand examining it thoroughly for 20 or 30 minutes before even opening it. If I have something new, I usually carry it in my bag for a week, just to be able to touch it or take a look at it every then and now. I know, I'm obsessed.

My latest object of obsession is the new full-length of a highly influential and unique band: The Dillinger Escape Plan. Their previous album, Ire Works, released in 2007, is one of the most musically and technically complex pieces of art I've ever encountered, yet it carries surprisingly deep emotions of the truest kind. Thus, I was anticipating the release of their new opus and have been hunting for any information about it as early as last December. "Obviously", I preordered it as soon as the title, Option Paralysis, was announced. Even more obviously, I preordered a very special and limited box set edition, containing a surprising amount of creative and cool but totally useless paraphernalia.

When it landed in my mailbox one day after the official release date, I couldn't wait to get home and lay my hands on it. The unwrapping and opening of the box is always a ritual, so it has been now. (If you go to youtube, you can find lots of videos of uncoverings of various expensive devices like iPhones, BlackBerrys, cameras and whatsoever. I'm not that crazy, I just took a photo of the box before opening.) I marvelled at every little detail of this massive and uniquely designed, innovatively built box. It is divided into four rectangular canister-like partitions and two flat ones. The four small partitions each encase pieces of the aforementioned paraphernalia: a huge flag, a beanie hat, a luggage tag, five pins and a TV-B-Gone, each having the The Dillinger Escape Plan logo.

Perhaps this final one needs some explanation. A TV-B-Gone is a small keychain remote control with one button that is capable of switching almost any annoying TV anywhere on or off. One of the two flat partitions contain the actual album on a disc that is special in itself, one side of it being a regular compact disc, the other being a traditional vinyl containing a bonus track titled Heat Deaf. The other flat part of the box contains a picture book, which was very confusing at first. Each and every page has almost the same images on it, and I was beginning to wonder whether it was misprinted, when I noticed the word 'flip' on the first page. As it turned out, the book is a flipbook, like the images we used to draw on the corners of our notebooks in secondary school and which yield a primitive motion picture if flipped through fast enough. This flipbook gives a fragment of the music video for the first track, Farewell, Mona Lisa. (Those, who can't endure the first 10 seconds of the actual song should jump to 1:53.)

You must be really curious about what sort of music is inside such a luxurious, creative and complex packaging, and I can assure you that the music itself possesses each of these features. It is usually labelled mathcore orr jazzcore but probably these genres don't mean a lot to you. Well, it is a rather challenging task to descirbe the band's music for lay people, but I'll try my best. Upon first listening, it sounds chaotic and meaningless to the extremes, but that is what yields it attractive power. You have to listen to it over and over again to get to know it. It is mostly built up of elements of extreme metal, classic hardcore and jazz, but traces of electronic or acoustic music can be found in it as well. It paints a very diverse and aggressive picture if you don't delve deep enough into it. After 8-10 listenings, it starts to open up and give out its real emotional values. The singer, Greg Puciato's voice is unusually versatile, ranging from totally insane and throat-killing screaming to incredibly high-pitched and soft clean vocals. One of the best songs to represent this diversity is Widower. The lyrics of songs like Endless Endings, Widower, I wouldn't If You didn't, or Parasitic Twins are painfully true and sung by Puciato... I sometimes find tears slowly running down my face. But yeah, it's just the wind.

I warmly recommend Option Paralysis (or at least Widower and Parasitic Twins) to anyone who seeks emotional journeys and is willing to take the time to tame this insane beast built around fragile bones.

combi.f*ckin.christ

Posted by Attila Korsós On 3:55 PM 0 comments

Well, this is already the third episode of this so far not quite terrifying wormhole ride, and I haven't yet shown you anything really weird or twisted so it's high time I opened up some darker doors.

This time, I would like to guide you back to a wednesday night, the 17th of March into the belly of one of the most professional party and concert places in Budapest, the A38 ship. One of the coolest, hardest and most insane groups performed an underground (or underwater?) black mass on that day there: Combichrist.

I can't remember how I got to know this most hellish of mainstream bands, but I do remember that a few weeks before I first heard about them, they were playing in Budapest. When I realised who they really are and that just a few weeks prevented me from being part of a thought-to-be-rare event, I was devastated. Since then, fate has compensated me well: last wednesday was the second time I saw them live, and I can assure you it's never ever enough of them.

Imagine a titanic factory filled with industrialised machine-monsters clanking, beating, whirring and shrieking in a predefined rhythm, moulding into a cacophony of rhythmic noise. They are huge, dangerous and frightening, but they can't hurt you if you know what to do. And that is exactly the key to success of Combichrist. They are harsh, aggressive and dark, but they are "safe" as far as the general public is concerned. Or at least that's what they think until they come to a concert.

Never have you seen anything so full of energy, so musically aggressive, yet so... "friendly". The band, under the leadership of the amazing and terrifying character of the singer Andy LaPlegua, explodes everytime on stage like a thousand nuclear warheads, never stopping for a second through the 90 minutes of a gig. Half-naked and tattooed, painted half black and drenched in sweat and water, shouting and smiling like an insane, picking apart the stage and throwing instruments at each other, these guys are zero percent normal. Their songs smash down upon the listener with a hundred tons of weight, crushing all resistance and making you dance like you never did before. Their lyrics and song titles are shocking, but within the boundaries of public taste, except for all the swearings in them. After 90 minutes of us dancing, jumping and shouting, the band decide to leave us. And there we stood, drenched in sweat and with an undeletable insane smile on our faces, wandering around like zombies, unable to recover from the shock of so gigantic an amount of energy. Everybody could use a Combichrist gig once a week.

This is my gallery of last year's Combichrist gig in Dürer-kert. And this and this and this are three of their best songs.

audiobalm

Posted by Attila Korsós On 11:57 AM 0 comments

Everything that is broken needs remedy. A vase has to be glued together. A cloth has to be sewn. Broken skin has to be bandaged. And broken hearts also need repair. With hearts however, restoration is not that easy. It differs from person to person. Some of them drink, some of them hide, some of them weep, some of them write. And some of them listen to music.

I wouldn't like to bore you to sleep by recounting the story of my past week (or rather past two months or even past one and a half year), may it be enough that my inner core has been shattered and needed repair. As in all times of need, I turned to music first, looking for concerts that would steer the ship of my mind away from the angry waters. By doing so, I transformed this week into a seemingly endless row of nights spent awake in smoke-laden places filled with people and music. The one I wish to tell you about right now was held on the 18. of March and had managed to calm the raging and self-destructive beast of my soul for an hour or two.

I learned about the event through a girl, one of the members of the band called Slamballet, who was a schoolmate of mine back in the times of splendor I spent in my high school. I was sort of stalking her band for a long while, but never ever managed to get to one of their gigs and this proved to be a perfect occasion. The venue was Treehugger Dan's Bookstore & Café at Lázár u. 16., owned and run along with its two brothershops by a very friendly and welcoming expat from Massachusetts, who's been living in Budapest for 19 years now.

Slamballet consisted of a guitarist-singer guy, a violinist-singer girl (my acquaintance), a singer girl, a bassist guy and a drummer guy. Their beginning of the music acted like a switch for me, disconnecting me from the outside world. As I was sitting on the soft sofa, the hands of music took me away to a place where only me and the stage existed. Organic soundscapes composed of the girls' voices, soft and natural sounds of the drums and cymbals hit by bare hands and the dynamic and energetic yet soft strokes of the guitar built up our surroundings. The smile could not be deleted from my face, the music was so carefree, independent and sincere, like a perfect world we all would like to live in. It was like an old friend, who you haven't seen for a long time and then suddenly you meet. You go to an old-fashioned café with wooden walls, and talk and talk and talk like there's no time. You tell all your worries, happy moments, highs and lows and she listens. You pour yourself out and she always replies. Her responses fill your soul's wounds and fractures one by one, till you are ready to live on and step into another day.

The music left me after an hour of thoughtless drifting with a final, warm hug, and I set out on the streets of my beloved city, my feet not touching the ground.

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aRternative

Reflections of our world in the broken mirror of music

plunging into The Ocean

dry sand, cold scales

wolves in the concert hall

monochrome birds on a desolate sky

I'm option paralyzed

combi.f*ckin.christ

audiobalm

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