Blood Fountains, FLOODS

There is no beginning, there is no end, only perpetual oscillation between experience, memory and gravity. Emotion propels our lives, connected to one another and all things through infinity. Floods reaches inward, to the icy depths of the heart to touch and to return with ancient elements unfolding in spectral bliss and horror. Reality of pain and agony is equally married with yearning, dreaming and joyous exaltation. Stephen Kasner evokes a fully-realized painting-to-music translation, with collaborations by David Beaver, Mat Woods, Cheryl Pyle and the vexing vocals of Yoshiko Ohara (Bloody Panda). Floods calls forth a remarkable section of time and feeling, simultaneously compressed and unfurling. A frozen monster of memories, hope and love, and a constant reminder of death's door. Seamless, endless, connected energy. These are fragments of hauntings within us all. We must always remember.



Now available at THEBLOODFOUNTAINS.com

On Utech Records

UR/SK Series09
Limited Edition of 750
Recorded and mixed by Stephen Kasner, 2008-2009.
Music: Stephen Kasner, David Beaver, Yoshiko Ohara, Mat Woods and Cheryl Pyle.

1.Cold Flood/In
2.Head Found in Aptos
3.Spiritless
4.White Wax Blood
5.Hemming
6.Picture of Time and Space/Out
.

Floods marks the final chapter of the URSK series, a sound/art collaboration marrying the dark aural palette of nine Utech Records releases with the supernal imagery of visionary painter Stephen Kasner. Kasner’s imagery has reacted to and synthesized each of the soundscapes it inhabited in the course of this collaboration — paired with Aluk Todolo’s opus Finsternis, it became a totem on charred ritual ground, a bleached human torso protruding through darkness as a memory of corporeal death; Kasner’s imagery helped Runhild Gammelsæter conjure the smallest of microorganisms from primordial space in her solo record Amplicon; it successfully evoked a blackened visage for the maniacal, buzzing guitar drones of Skullflower’s outstanding Desire for a Holy War; and it re-cast RST’s electric vibrations in a universe of contrasting contingencies. It is fitting that Kasner’s own Blood Fountains would bring fruition to the URSK project, which by now has become a vital part of the new dark-psych musical landscape as well as one of the best examples of creative symbiosis that I can remember.

Floods is a truly magnificent record, offering such a complete representation of Kasner’s cosmic vision that it could serve as a travel-guide through URSK’s entire spectral universe. Here, Kasner’s painting depicts a faintly glowing halo against an infinity of unfathomable blackness. The halo beckons as far-away galaxies might, luring us out from earthly existence and into the initial dread, eventual terror and ultimate apotheosis of the unknown. This image, more than any other image in the series, captures the sublime essence found at the limits of human consciousness, the transcendence we may attempt to experience through ritual, meditation, magickal or religious practice, rigorous self-discipline, etc. In a universe like URSK’s, the violence, darkness and apparent chaos of any challenging artwork is entirely consistent with our responsibility as sentient beings; here, such a work represents an attempt to utter the ineffable, to grasp at the unreachable, and to extend experience beyond that which is already known to man.

Sonic fibers are slowly unfurled into an ever-shifting canvas of textured drones. You may discern the sources of some of these sounds — a guitar quietly buzzes, a Rhodes churns, Bloody Panda’s Yoshiko Ohara utters a ritual incantation from a far-away place — but together the voices strike a profoundly unified and otherworldly tone. The pacing of these compositions is methodical and perfect, both organic and esoteric, like a slow accumulation of magickal power. There is a definite structure to every track, but it’s as if their formative elements have been blown apart by a breeze, gently torn into a silken skein that may momentarily vanish into ether, forever lost to our worldly souls.