1. Wonderful Wooden Reasons … quoting:

“I love this sort of vintage sci-fi soundworld that old tech just oozes so well and couple with some truly delightful and restrained musicianship this album is an absolute dream.”

The full review is here, near the bottom of the page.

2. Massimo Ricci’s Temporary Fault. This is actually a review of all three recent Viosac releases. I really appreciated his serious and considered approach. Quoting:

“Hey you, people who spent a fortune for NWW’s Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table: there’s more attractive substance herein.”

The review is here.

VioSac revealed with “Dawning Luminosity” an almost catchy release, the ambient & drone fetishists necessarily have to call their own, however VioSac followers of earlier days could be a little disappointed. Although the absolute change my recommendation, based on the high (almost overwhelming) expression of the plays, which invite to a beautiful mind movie that, under the motto “Understand, and be free!” Runs out!

VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED PERFORMING AS VIOSAC – DAWING LUMINOSITY (CD by VioSac)
Back in Vital Weekly 656 we were re-introduced to Violence And The Sacred performing as Viosac, the new name of what was once known as just Violence And The Sacred. Still I have no idea why they hold on to the addition ‘Performing As Viosac’, and not just simply return to the old name. ‘Rusty Pile’ wasn’t a convincing come-back album I thought. Perhaps a bit too much of an unedited jam-session. The CD after that ‘You Are PLanning To Enjoy The Apocalypse’ wasn’t received here. The new work ‘Dawing Luminosity’ is however a great work. Viosac move into a more ambient territory here, which not necessarily adds much to the world of ambient and drones, but the quality is great. Its one piece in three parts and I’m told its all analogue synthesizers and analogue processing. Very slow moves around here, this an almost perfect piece of surround sound, ambient in the very most true sense of the word. An excellent disc of some heavenly music. As said, it doesn’t add much, if anything at all, to what we already know about this kind of music, but its very rare that it unfolds into such a beauty. (FdW)

The original context will be here in a day or two. It is also here, near the middle of the page.

Under those circumstances an improbable and atypical CD has been released. I’ve been using the phrase Dawning Luminosity for a personal blog I keep, but is a very appropriate title for this new CD, describing as it does: death, rebirth, and the cycling and closing a very old ellipsis.

The music is best described as ambient drone, with an emphasis on stasis and insistence. A single 53 minute piece. Instrumentation is entirely a Moog Voyager OS, modified with a Vermona Retroverb and a Roland SBF-325. The mix was post-processed through two Tascam 32 half tracks: Frippertronicy as best I can. As with Rusty Pile and You are planning to enjoy the apocalypse, the sound remained in analogue form until mastering.

We have not done music quite like this before …

Excerpts are available here and here. Dawning Luminosity can be purchased here.

Though I work with computers, easily 12 hours a day, more or less, I strongly believe they will never be able to successfully parody human thinking.

“After the impressive return “Rusty Pile” (2008), which appear after 16th years in the sinking, VioSac with “You are planning to enjoy the apocalypse” offer its second work that gets threatening Apocalypse mood into domestic living rooms.

These emotionally loaded sound scenery persons, whom prefer the free-thinking variant of the music, which far away all “underground normality” moves, must themselves on “You are planning to enjoy the apocalypse” of VioSac “pure pull” to experience around the feeling of the total personality – my absolute recommendation if one would like to drop himself of the remainder of the scenery!”

Thanks to the kind folks at kulturterrorismus … and apologies for this translation.

“What must an art project such as VioSac (Violence and the Sacred performing ace VioSac) move after 16th years in the sinking in addition to produce new album with “Rusty Pile”? A question for what the answers keep a lookout follows how: “No Label! No motivation! etc. etc.,! why the return put on in own achievement “Rusty Pile” the more amazes, represents the one futuristic maximum performance.

Freaks, that the special seek appreciate how, should convince himself this gelungene such as futuristic return “Rusty Pile” of VioSac out of Noise, Industrial & field reception do not escape let, which through compactness, independence & Abgedrehtheit – my absolute recommendation!”

• Monsieur Délire (a nice little review)
• disagreement.net (very thoughtful)
• The Sound Projector (not particularly enthusiastic)

I particularly enjoyed Disagreement.net’s charming characterization of us as “elderly”. I suppose it’s true in a sense.

I keep thinking about where to go next with this and am torn between pushing the music toward greater formal experimentation or producing something more gentle and beautiful. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. It feels like a conscious choice. I don’t really follow an intense inspiration. Much of the music stems from emotional states, but is tempered by deliberate extra-musical decisions about how it should sound. We’ll see …

A friend recently said that the couple of months after a CD is released are always hard because of the lag between the completion of your creative output and any reaction that might arise to it. It kind of goes out into a non-responsive vacuum. Given that, these two months have treated me well.

I will write in more detail about this release in the next few weeks, as well as try to document my, and others, changing feelings towards it.  YAPTETA is now out there, alone, hopefully not too cold and hungry.

Many thanks are due to all those wonderful people who helped me along the way with advice and commentary of all types.  Particular thanks is due to John Whyte, without whose strategic vision and expert design, this project would not exist.

The fifth full moon

But this fifth full moon presses upon me with an urgency reminiscent of the feelings that accompanied breathing life into the Viosac corpse two years ago: what am I doing?, where am I going?, what do I have to show, to account for myself, to return as a gift in thanks for the honour of still being alive, for being allowed to live?, how do I come to terms with the frightening and terrible gears of aging which I resist and embrace in equal measure?, and, of course, the unanswerable why?

By restarting Viosac two years ago I moved from standing still, looking backwards to moving forward, looking backward. Now it’s time to move forward and look forward.

In the first week of June I expect to receive the 2nd new Viosac CD, You Are Planning to Enjoy the Apocalypse (YAPTETA), from the production house in Quebec. The CD master and artwork were shipped out last week. I find the artwork beautiful, rich, and mysterious. The inside panels are collages by Toronto/Hamilton artist Maureen Paxton made specifically for the CD. John Whyte has done a excellent job on the overall visual strategy and has chosen images which complement each other perfectly for the front and back covers. Combined with Maureen’s work and the CD image (a photo I took of some wood and a window though a bottle of scotch), the total effect, to quote John, is “a rich amber brooding”.

The music is more controlled, expressive, and disciplined than Rusty Pile. Although 7 of 8 tracks contain defined rhythms, even if merely a repeating pulse, I feel the overall effect of the album to be a more dedicated experimentation.

YAPTETA also involves more Viosac participants than Rusty Pile: Ted Wheeler performs on two tracks (as well as providing invaluable editorial advice on several others) and St. Deborah returns with a reading of the 38th Psalm. Scott Kerr, long-departed from Viosac, but still very active musically, makes a guest appearance via tapes recorded in 1987.

As with Rusty Pile I suspect that promotion will be my weak point. The approach has been to send out as many copies as possible to radio stations, distributors, reviewers, and, somewhat less so, labels. Radio station response has been pretty enthusiastic: Rusty Pile received airplay on at least 30 radio stations worldwide, including reaching number 6 on CKUT, McGill University Radio (!). On the other hand distributor and label response has been either negative or not at all. This should not be a surprise, however as Viosac is coming out of nowhere somewhat. Having been outside of things for so long, getting any response is a good sign, but I’ve always had high expectations of my work, so in some ways it is disappointing.

For now, the YAPTETA promotion will be similar. My hope is that after a number these self-released CDs, some offers from little labels may show up. It is fun doing it all myself/ourselves though …

Just two nights later and the moon is already waning. A thought of sadness passes, pondering a small flock of birds flying away, somewhere else. They say there might be some frost tonight. Small plants, just starting, will mostly pull through, I suspect.

Yapteta Cover

Hopefully this will take 3 or 4 days, but getting those days might be a challenge with all the other non-musical requirements that seem to exist. Yesterday when driving home, I saw a large flock of Canada geese flying north, a common site this time of year. Beautiful, but it reminded me that they will be here, still flying north long after I am gone … I should find the continuation of the natural world to be encouraging, trying as best it can to ignore us pained humans. But it was my irrelevance to the geese that bothered me. Twenty years ago I revelled in our irrelevance and randomness; now it bothers me.

On the bright side, work on a video release is days away from completion. My colleague, Gordon Belray has done a wonderful job in preparing a DVD of a Violence and the Sacred concert at the Music Gallery in Toronto from March 1991. I’ll make about 20 copies to mail around and try to sell. The concert was a particularly abrasive outing and would likely only interest fanatics, if such exist, but the video of it looks very nice. More such concerts will follow.

VATS at the Music gallery