Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion

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His discography is by some distance the least travelled of the wider Velvets oeuvre, but seriously magical. The Master Musicians of Joujouka strongly contest the notion that drone-based music is calming: theirs is an energetic, frenetic sound.

The drone requires neither chord nor band, representing - via its infinite pliability and accessibility - the ultimate folk music: a potent audio tool of personal liberation.In Monolithic Undertow, I trace the drone from those ancient beginnings through the 20th century, where it underpinned sounds of many divergent persuasions – not limited to the New York minimalist ley line that linked the Theatre of Eternal Music to the Velvet Underground; the vital influence of Ravi Shankar’s sitar drone on the ecstatic jazz of Alice Coltrane and the Beatles nascent psychedelic experiments; the punk axis that leads from the Stooges to Sonic Youth; and the physical metallic bass weight of Earth and Sunn O))). Has anybody ever produced music of such beauty, emotional depth and sheer mesmeric density from such sparse elements? Fusing the tortoise-slow crawlspace of La Monte Young-era minimalism with metallic textures, their debut album Earth 2 (1993) was released on Sub Pop during the heyday of grunge but, focusing as it did on slowly unfurling, percussion-less drones, was a million miles from the frenetic angst of labelmates Nirvana and Mudhoney. Operating within the underground of the New York underground, MacLise produced obscure soundtracks, narcotised sonic sketches and lo-fi field recording tapestries between the mid-60s and late-70s, the vast majority unreleased until his soundtrack to Ira Cohen’s 1968 underground art film Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda saw the light of day in 1999, followed by a sprawling compilation, The Cloud Doctrine, in 2002.

I love it, this is the music book of the year and the ultimate book on the sound of the eternal now. Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Third Man Books is dedicated to publishing the best in poetry, fiction, speculative fiction, SF/F, and non-fiction with the same diversity and award-winning design that are hallmarks of our partner company, Third Man Records. The soundtrack to Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda features all the beguiling hallmarks of MacLise’s sound: handheld drums, disembodied voices, field recordings of unknown provenance. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. Yet her solo electronic works (starting with her hypnotic feedback works of the late 60s) were a world away from the busy field recording collages of her musique concrète apprenticeship.Many ancient instruments – didgeridoo, bullroarer, carnyx – produced sustained tones, while the ancient Greeks evoked the delirium of Dionysus with the drone of the Aulos pipes. The original drummer in the Velvet Underground, Angus MacLise was a true bohemian who led a life straight out of a Kerouac novel. Venturing to the very furthest reaches of the drone continuum, Harry uncovers the vibrations uniting a far greater range of sounds and experience than I’d anticipated.

He later employed the Masters as house band in the 1001 Nights restaurant that he ran in Tangier with Hamri. Inspired by sacred spaces, the minimalist aesthetics of La Monte Young and Éliane Radigue – and her early access to an enviable selection of instruments and synths while working at the National Music Centre in Calgary – Davachi works in the electroacoustic sphere, augmenting rich organ drones with subtle electronic post production. Gysin, in particular, was captivated by the music, stating that it was the sound that he wanted to hear for the rest of his life. Jones’s sensitive post-production dub effects (mainly echo and reverb) were subtle, but add to the head-twisting psychedelic density of the music.Every now and then a book comes out that redefines a form, creates the narrative and is a startling jolt to the culture fabric . Down-tuning to oblivion, each ringing chord drawn out for as long as possible, he obsessed over vintage valve amps and obscure pedals, the grain of the sound taking precedence over melodic progression.