"An Invitation To The Electric Seance" is a fun introduction to a strand of current music, mixing together electronika, occult interests, psychogeography, and the Gothic tradition. Lots of good haunted media work here, including projects and artists like Ghost Box, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, and Cyclobe.
Gothic writers (Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, HP Lovecraft) are referenced, along with classic film and video (Quatermass and the Pit, The Wicker Man, above all The Stone Tape). John Coulthart also recognizes the musical ancestry of Coil, Current 93 et al. Electronic voice phenomena should be added to the account, however.
The article notes a nice 2006 short film for Pram, "Electic Seance". Behold the YouTubery:
Web 2.0 angles:
- Pandora isn't much help, unfortunately, knowing about and streaming very few of these artists. I had to return to the 1990s and Coil to work on it.
- Has anyone done a Google Maps mashup for haunted sites and haunted music, psychogeographically?
(via BoingBoing)
EDITED TO ADD: Ragnarok is one of the entities mentioned in the article, and they have a good site. (thank you, Jim Barrett!)
"This article, to which I was alerted to by the brilliant Infocult, contains links to numerous fine sources of sound; Mount Vernon Arts Lab (also Mount Vernon Astral Temple and Black Noise), the Ghost Box family of groups, "Current 93, the late and much-lamented Coil and Cyclobe"......"
Posted by: Jim | December 22, 2007 at 02:42
Thank you for the Raagnarok link, Jim, and the link here. Just updated the post.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | December 22, 2007 at 09:23
Anyone interested in electronic occulture I can highly recommend David Keenan's _England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground_. Covering the lives and careers of the members of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound in exhaustive detail, I learned things about Coil that I didn't know after twenty years of listening to their work and having them as an admitted influence on my own music work.
Posted by: Steve B | December 22, 2007 at 10:04
Thank you for the recc., Steve. Added to my Amazon pile.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | December 23, 2007 at 07:47