Sean Cusick

[revaluation]

kinda long...but worth it..

http://www.xpander.nl/xpndr/column_main.cfm?owner=Sean%20Cusick

24-01-2003

Spirit of Eden

It was my intention to do an interview for this month’s column but the questions I sent haven’t come back yet. There was to be another series of questions based on the answers I got back from the first set, so.... There really is no column this month. I thought it would be a good idea to interview a couple of artists that I really respect and admire. I found the perfect producers for this but it just didn’t work out in time. Maybe they read my column and decided that I was a serious threat to their credibility and should be avoided at all costs. They’ve probably made the right decision. It’s beyond me why anybody deals with me, I wouldn’t. I made a few notes to try to provide further clarification on a few points from the last two months. When I read through it I realized that it was pointless and I’ve already made my point as poorly as was necessary for now. So almost everything got deleted for this month and now the struggle is with a nearly blank computer screen (I dropped my laptop on the pavement yesterday, fucking up my life in ways I hadn’t really expected).

There were quite a few emails saying that they were disappointed with my second column because it seemed like I was apologizing or backing down from what was said in the first. There was neither an apologizing nor a backing off from anything. I was simply trying to be as fair and honest as possible. This might anger some of you but all I can do is encourage you to get your own column and denounce me as a fake and a phony. Tell everyone I used to be “realâ€. This usually seems to work. If you can’t get a column or you’re too lazy then just do it on any chat board. That seems to fit in perfectly with the spirit of the times. Do it under a fake name and pretend that you’re not really that stupid, that it’s all just an act.

But as for the last two columns: I think some people didn’t want to know that I actually had and perhaps still have some “respect†for the people I’ve disemboweled. It’s not about just bashing all the people that everyone else is too timid or bored to. Again, this is not an apology. I have other interests from time to time and I go wherever those interests might drag me. If I had less taste I would use some of your emails in my column as evidence against you, but the world doesn’t really need any more evidence. Desperate and angry people encouraging me to carry their torches, to scream out against perceived injustices and their petty gripes and grievances. Can’t you all see I have my own petty gripes to whine about?

They would prefer that I just go on battering the world of music like an indiscriminate brute because that’s mostly what they do or want to do under false and assumed names and email addresses. Even some of the people who have emailed me about my column have done so under hidden names. Weird. I’ve never understood that aspect of the internet and I believe that I harbor a pretty strong desire to live anonymously at times, with the freedom to explore whatever devious perversions I can dream up. But to be afraid that people may find out what I think has never been that much of an issue for me. I’m usually afraid that people will find out what I’ve done. A friend of mine asked me if I really craved anonymity in club culture so much then why did I bother signing my columns. Good question. But the anonymity I sometimes crave is usually in a nightclub or during neurotic drug fueled fits of sexual depravity, but not in the realm of opinions and words. Just as I would never sneak off to a dark corner of a club with some lame-brained record geek to discuss records and labels I would never hide behind a false name when expressing what I think and believe. Using a fake name or email address is worse than wearing a rubber, it’s a form of giggling fear and bland paranoia. Some live and some dream about living; some don’t even bother to dream.

Well, without an interview to give you I have something else that might work: a record review of sorts. There is an album that embodies what I believe are some of the most important and seductive elements in music. I wish I had a fraction of the talent and verve that it took to have made this album: Talk Talk, “Spirit of Edenâ€. Talk Talk was never as well known in America as they were in England. It was mostly the more pop songs of theirs that made it onto college radio in The States. The more obscure and (in my opinion) better music they did on their albums escaped me and most of my friends at the time. My important experiences with their music came about much later and after they were no longer performing together as a band. (I think. I’m not really sure when they broke up or even if they have. This column will very likely be riddled with assumptions and errors because the facts aren’t what matter here and I’m far too lazy to do any research).

The first time I heard “Spirit of Eden†was two years ago with a friend. We were both amazed that we hadn’t heard it or recognized it for what it was before. He owned the album when he was younger but didn’t fully recognize what it was doing or why it was so important at the time. He sat me down and made me listen to the album. Without exaggeration or dramatics it really changed my life, gradually but surely. The music and the title reminded me that the worst part about Man having been kicked out of the Garden of Eden was that we had learned to accept it and worse, we had even gotten used to it. This is the real fall of man and this album is a perennial cry from the outside, from the outcast. I don’t number myself among the Christians but this is a very potent part of the Christian mythology. That the album addresses these issues is what really matters here.

It had been some time since I had such a powerful and moving musical experience so I spent months talking about it to anybody who would suffer my hyperactive (and almost “born againâ€) musical enthusiasm. That night I copied the album as soon as it was done playing so that I could listen to it again about 3 or 4 times. Then I went to a record store the next day and bought two copies of it so that if anything ever happened to one of them I’d still have a copy sealed. I would never have to go a single day without having this album. Now I have it on my ipod and have forced about a hundred people to listen to it when they are “in a Sunday way†and would probably rather hear a live dj or a dj mix cd. Trucking recklessly along through the gardens and foothills of Eden at about 140 beats per minute: “Faster, faster, faster. I think I see the tree of knowledge...†There will always be some people you just can’t reach. I can never understand anybody. I hear that beating off while hanging yourself is a great high if you can get somebody to hold and light the crack pipe for you... for heaven’s sake. On the computer screen the word “sake†looks like the Japanese rice alcohol sake’. If I ever do an album I should call it, “For heaven’s sake’...†or ‘For heathen’s sake’…â€, either one.

I’m not sure how much of what I have been told about the conditions under which this album was made and the state of the main singer and songwriter (Mark Hollis) is apocryphal but it makes sense for me to believe that what I’ve heard is true so I’ll pass it along here. If I’m wrong then I’ll try to correct it in a later column. It was done around 1988 and came just after one and before another fantastic album (“Colour of Spring†1986 and ‘Laughing Stock†1991), but this is the one for me. Mark Hollis apparently had a heroin problem, a really bad heroin problem and the album was his musical sublimation and acceptance that the heroin he so loved and hated had to go. I know that heroin is often misguidedly glamorized by scores of people who’ve never done it (along with some who have) and I’m going to try to avoid all of that in this article, but some of the greatest music ever made has come from artists who were spiraling down into addiction with this one particular drug. The examples are too many to list here but Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Lou Reed, Shaun Ryder, Kurt Cobain and Keith Richards spring to mind without even blinking. I’m not saying that everybody who lazily considers themselves to be a musician should run out and try heroin, that’s something that everyone has to answer for themselves, but mathematically speaking there have been far more disasters than successes on the continued or isolated use of this drug. One need only briefly glance at the leathered face of Keith Richards for strong visual evidence supporting an argument against heroin use. I’m allergic to most heroin so it doesn’t pose the same type dilemma for me that it may for others, I’m forced to do it in very small doses or not at all, thankfully.

With that said, “Spirit of Eden†sounds much like heroin feels, both the arc of the “high†and the frustrating discomfort and raw itching urgency that comes just after, then the return down to dark yearning and longing, the disbelief and painful doubt. The full sweet nadir and the inevitable zenith back up towards the always too intense life you were living. Then once again, there comes that ever returning and slowed thrill of languid desire and sweeping satiation, the softened world of kinder colors and lost lights that await you, the gentle whispers of winds and the silences that follow them. Begging you into the warm arms of the lover softened by what should be the kindness of time. It’s one of the most delicate and menacingly soulful pieces of music ever put to tape. An extended harmonic cry from the every and all ways inviting darkness, a pleading into the emptiness for the hope that an illusion can be renewed, the sound of a soul sinking into and through the weariness of lost shadows, a sweet and sinister swans song and likely one of the most life affirming and tender albums of the late eighties.

There should be some way to get this record in the hands of everybody reading this article. It is a record that every person who has ever cared about the relationship between drugs and music should own. Actually that’s a bunch of bull-shit, it’s a record that every music fan should own. If you search this album out and buy it and decide that you don’t like the sound of Mark Hollis’s fragile and nasally voice or anything else about the album please don’t email me to tell me about it with some half thought “rebuttal†or limp-along record review. I reserve a special form of intolerance for people completely bereft of charm, grace or soul. We should all be more intolerant of intolerance I suppose, but I think this album is magical and will gladly bludgeon the brute who says otherwise…

The only complaint I have about this album is that it ends.

Side note: the editors of Xpander do not support my very strong and historically maintained belief that drugs are a very necessary and integral part of the music experience. I believe they are partially wrong and in time with prayers and penance they will eventually see the error and misguided waywardness of their sinfidel beliefs...I have been meditating at night for the deliverance of their sobered souls and have knelt twice this week begging the earth and the stars to show them hope, mercy, kindness and understanding...bang the drum slowly... But, I am in no way suggesting that anyone should try heroin, now or any time in the future and my opinions in no way reflect the opinions of Xpander or any of their affiliates, in fact I suspect that they strongly disagree with some of what I have to say. However, being a fan of good music without doing drugs from time to time is like being an illiterate film critic with a glass eye..... I’m going to buy a copy of the album for the Xpander office and demand that they each take it home for several nights and listen to it. If that doesn’t work then they are beyond hope and I leave them to suffer their own destinies.

The first song on the album is in three parts (“The Rainbowâ€, “Eden†and “Desireâ€) and totals out around 23 minutes or so. It keeps coming back to a couple of musical and lyrical themes that are introduced gently throughout and at times even seem referential to Lou Reed’s, “Heroin†as performed by the Velvet Underground on their self-titled first album. There are intermittent moments of soft atonality that whisper far more than most other albums scream. I’m reasonably sure that their musicianship is such that they recorded it in the traditional manner of the times with “reel to reel†tape but it is arranged almost as if they knew what lay ahead in terms of non-linear audio editing and the power of sequenced arrangement. The best of dj’s couldn’t have mixed this album with more unexpected grace, charm and patience. This album makes me whisper the word “yes†over and over without ever having been asked a question. It should be listened to in the dark in stereo (preferably with headphones on), but as loudly as you can stand it without hurting yourself. Be warned: there are some very loud and sudden guitar/drum crescendos on this album so be careful, the ears are the tunnel to the soul and should be guarded with common sense. This is the only time I hope you hear me use the phrase “common senseâ€, it is a vastly overrated concept and will lead you into ignorance faster than just about any other phrase. “Common sense†will tell you that the earth is flat, just look around… etc., etc.

Don’t let anybody talk to you while listening to it and try as much as possible to avoid any environment that is distracting. Unplug all of your phones and warn your neighbors and landlord to “shut that fucking dog up!â€. It’s a powerful personal testament filled with frustration and beauty and demands to be taken seriously, but stops just short of pretentiousness; it makes no illegitimate claims to its own greatness. I think the album great but don’t get the feeling while listening to it that the band went out of their way to remind me of that. The band probably spent a good amount of time working out the arrangements of the songs but they sound as if they arose naturally out of emotions as they were happening. Most great music emulates emotions and their movement through the empty or confused spaces and sharp crevices of the heart, but this album inhabits a space in me that I hardly even knew existed. It’s the empty spaces between the sounds that seem to speak, know and linger.

I have so much more to say about “Spirit of Eden†but can’t take all of this flowery smackhead bullshit poetry any more tonight. I’m getting tired and running out of red wine. If this album doesn’t challenge you then you’re a refugee from hope and style. It’s a truly great album and one worth checking out. It’s not electronic, be warned. If you have no tolerance for guitars, organs, violins, harmonicas, trumpets, oboes, clarinets and a few other wind instruments then pass this album up.

So, onto other news:

As for the passing of Joe Strummer, I wish that hadn’t happened. There’s no reason to go on about it but he was a truly great and vital part of my youth and he forever changed a very important part of my world. Had he not created the music he did with The Clash and had the courage to take the stance that he did then my conscience might be a different shape altogether.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I wanted to change what I believe about the bootlegging of cd’s, mp3’s and music in general. I was wrongheaded in a question that I responded to in the interview I did for Xpander. Copying music that is available for purchase to either give away or trade is a form of stealing and directly affects the artists whose work you seem to admire. If you truly respect the music you claim to love then you would be more willing to contribute to the artists who made it. If you can’t do this then stop using words like respect because you’re apparently unsure of the word’s meaning. Music actually being purchased is the only thing that can keep some people making music. That might surprise and frighten some of you. You’re not “fucking the industry†or “stickin’ it to the man†as you might want to believe, you’re fucking everybody. I’m not saying that all copying is wrong. I believe everybody should be entitled to copy music for themselves and for their friends to hear. That’s what music is about and from what I understand there are provisions for this under most copyright laws (not that I look to these or any other laws for guidance in matters, but they sometimes tend to support some of what I believe). But if you’re copying a cd that would otherwise be purchased and contribute to an artist’s continuance then don’t simultaneously act like you’re doing them some sort of favor by “spreading the word about them...†especially if you’re “trading†their music with someone. You water-headed imbeciles should take your debt to society more seriously and learn a viable trade: shoplifting. If you’re going to steal then do it from somebody that’s already bought the cd (Virgin, HMV, etc.). This helps keep the artists making music and the burden of your stupidity and short-sightedness can be spread out more evenly across all of society rather than falling unfairly on the shoulders of the producers and the relatively small labels and market that support them. This is why shoplifting still matters and should be taught in primary and secondary schools. Stand up and learn to live. Scrape the dried cum of your t-shirt and march down to your local Virgin and take a chance. Jump back into the life you pretend to be living. If you’re not busy making music then at least learn how to steal it properly. Why do you think Virgins are expensive...

Somehow I received an email flyer for a Gatecrasher party that was advertising a live act by the name of ‘NU-NRG†(From Paul Van Dyk’s label). What a clever name. I’m assuming they’ve never heard of the first law of thermodynamics which asserts that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change forms. The second law asserts that whenever energy changes forms it is degraded irreversibly. So there really is no such thing as “NU-NRGâ€, this energy is very likely an older form of energy that has degraded itself, giving off a little heat in the process. They seem to be a Van Dyk physics farce of some sort…I’m sure they rock though and are willing to give off quite a bit more heat when they find out about these apparently implacable laws…

Well, one of the other questions that somebody emailed to me was, “What is your opinion of Sasha and John Digweed? â€. This is a fantastic question and one that I spent a good hour trying to answer in my head. I thought I had it all sorted out but when I sat down to try to write it out it came out as just a bunch of convoluted dog-shit nonsense. Real crap. I want to answer this question and I want to do it honestly but I don’t think I can do it both honestly and quickly. I will keep trying and when I come up with something that doesn’t sound like a hallmark “secretary’s day†card signed with a blowtorch then it will get posted to Xpander, if they haven’t washed their hands of me for good by then... The one thing I can say about Digweed and Sasha is this: I do find that there is a distinction between what they do and what many others like them do. Of course there are similarities sometimes between them and somebody like Oakenfold. To deny this would be dishonest. But for me the important thing to distinguish in life are the differences and the apparent impulses behind those differences. What are an artist’s intentions? It’s important to separate the world of art into two categories, this may be an oversimplification and a form of conceptual violence but it helps me determine what is important to me and what I should either completely disregard or possibly rail out against when the mood takes me. Either an artist contributes to the world of art or they detract from it. Meaning they are making contributions for the sake of the contribution and in the spirit of expression or they are opportunists riding a wave of acceptance, sometimes they are both. If an artist’s success is well deserved and they are not actively blocking or preventing the growth of the art form then I applaud their efforts, but if they are posing as artists for capital gain alone then I have to place them among the detractors. I believe that John Digweed and Sasha both belong to the first group but for very different reasons and I hope to establish that as soon as I can find the most appropriate and honest words to do so.

Speaking of appropriate words: I’m sleepy on wine...

Vaya Con Dios,

Juan Q6

(I don’t actually advocate stealing from any record store, especially on heroin.)

Summer bled of Eden

Easter's heir uncrowns

Another destiny lies leeched upon the ground

A gilded wreath on reason

The flower crushed conceives

A child of fragrance so much clearer

In legacy

Everybody needs someone to live by

Rage on omnipotent "Eden", Mark Hollis and Tm Friese-Green

[Kuro]

I love his articles.

[vicman]

some parts are interesting other parts he just writes crap.

[cookiegirl]

Speaking of Digweed. . . I had to share this.

represented in smilies -->

[spinsaikel]

omg, that was fuggin long! It's longer then ray kangs flyer-posts for kneep deep prod. nights. but i like his articles. They are always amusing to read.

[whadupg]

Originally posted by revaluation

Well, one of the other questions that somebody emailed to me was, “What is your opinion of Sasha and John Digweed? ”. This is a fantastic question and one that I spent a good hour trying to answer in my head. I thought I had it all sorted out but when I sat down to try to write it out it came out as just a bunch of convoluted dog-shit nonsense. Real crap. I want to answer this question and I want to do it honestly but I don’t think I can do it both honestly and quickly. I will keep trying and when I come up with something that doesn’t sound like a hallmark “secretary’s day” card signed with a blowtorch then it will get posted to Xpander, if they haven’t washed their hands of me for good by then... The one thing I can say about Digweed and Sasha is this: I do find that there is a distinction between what they do and what many others like them do. Of course there are similarities sometimes between them and somebody like Oakenfold. To deny this would be dishonest. But for me the important thing to distinguish in life are the differences and the apparent impulses behind those differences. What are an artist’s intentions? It’s important to separate the world of art into two categories, this may be an oversimplification and a form of conceptual violence but it helps me determine what is important to me and what I should either completely disregard or possibly rail out against when the mood takes me. Either an artist contributes to the world of art or they detract from it. Meaning they are making contributions for the sake of the contribution and in the spirit of expression or they are opportunists riding a wave of acceptance, sometimes they are both. If an artist’s success is well deserved and they are not actively blocking or preventing the growth of the art form then I applaud their efforts, but if they are posing as artists for capital gain alone then I have to place them among the detractors. I believe that John Digweed and Sasha both belong to the first group but for very different reasons and I hope to establish that as soon as I can find the most appropriate and honest words to do so.

I love that this his "quick" answer.

[spinsaikel]

Originally posted by cookiegirl

Speaking of Digweed. . . I had to share this.

represented in smilies -->

Those kids look like "crasher," idiots.

[tinybutterfli]

Originally posted by cookiegirl

Speaking of Digweed. . . I had to share this.

represented in smilies -->

haha, that's awesome