vatican shadow

vatican shadow street team

is there any interview or other material justifying/explaining the ~war on terror~ paratext

it seemed a bit gauche before i actually heard his music but having done so, it seems quite apt, a gnostic half-world of sub rosa violence and all that muslimgauzy hauntology ish

He gets the most fuckawful sales patter on boomkat but yeah this guy was strong in 2012. The best tracks are weirdly still and peaceful, sort of uncomfortably relaxing.

this is super boomkat yeah

uncomfortably relaxing = unhomely

CAIRO IS A HAUNTED CITY

Ah yes I knew there was a proper word for it.

Surely it is not beyond the capabilities of today's noize memeists to make a Vatican shadow track titles generator to keep us entertained at Christmas.

half of them are just random snippets of aljazeera articles so i don't think that would be too hard

i was looking for a youtube of 'final victory -- christ became man and had truly assumed human nature' to post for seasonal effect

The sniper was wearing a knitted snowman jumper.

there it is

chechnya's ghosts loom large in death of former santa

Read a bit comparing his music/image to Muslimgauze, with the difference that the Vatican Shadow track titles/image are not really indicative of any actual stance, just a reappropriation of dark/militant image.

I can't tell if some of the things he's done/said as an artist are really po-faced or just meant to give that impression. Slippery slope, really.

http://boomkat.com/collections/dominick-fernow-vatican-shadow-2012-chart

DF is kinda like that. the military references are no different than the bondage/drug references in Prurient stuff really.

that is what is intriguing, the dispassionate agglomeration of middle east 'war' 'terror' signifiers but no obvious political stance

yeah agreed crut

this sort of abstract music can be laden quite heavily with extratextual associations to augment the desolate/unsettling atmospherics, which can come off as pretty cheap or glib but i don't really get that here

is there any prurient stuff that is worth hearing? i had an lp before but it didn't leave too great an impression, clearly

are you saying he isn't into bondage/drugs? my heart is broken.

if you can get past the ridiculous words in the yelling, I like the Prurient album

dude is probably into bondage/drugs. and violence and war.

(or at least he wants people to think that)

academically

what is his okcupid url

I quite liked the Prurient album from last year, but, this:

I can't tell if some of the things he's done/said as an artist are really po-faced or just meant to give that impression. Slippery slope, really.

This is SUCH a pet peeve of mine, and to me, it's rampant in his work. In general I really resent the tendency in noise/industrial/whatever that you have to have titles/concepts/whatever that match sonics in terms of darkness, to the point of becoming a dick measuring contest about how morbid you can come across. If the music is dark then it's dark; how insecure are you that you need to thrown in references to Chechnyan children for it to make sense?

xp actually there are pictures of his old okcupid page on noize board somewhere, along with color commentary about him being a pedo

save the babies

ha i hadnt heard that mh

Cairo is a haunted city is great but I do wonder what this guys deal is

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/56149197/Prurient+6676470438968806740.jpg

Prurient: C/D

:D

In general I really resent the tendency in noise/industrial/whatever that you have to have titles/concepts/whatever that match sonics in terms of darkness, to the point of becoming a dick measuring contest about how morbid you can come across.

haha I love this kinda shit tbrr

I vacillate between "really, are you fucking kidding me" and "yesssssss"

the former leads to the latter tbh

only vatican shadow does it to this extent though, right?

i've only heard two albums by him, the two released this year; i fell in love w/ghosts of chechnya immediately but didn't like ornamented walls at all - i think i might like him better in his techno guise

"snipers..." is so fucking gorgeous

Which of his releases are the most techno?

ghosts of chechnya as far as i know

Thanks

Read a bit comparing his music/image to Muslimgauze

he says he started making Vatican Shadow tracks because... he wanted more Muslimgauze albums to listen to.

what else sounds like vatican shadow

http://www.factmag.com/2012/04/01/prurient-and-still-wanting/

The tapes you released in 2009 as Vatican Shadow – Kneel Before Religious Icons and Byzantine Private CIA – sound to me like precursors to Bermuda Drain, in the sense that they’re rhythm-led, atmospheric and decisively electronic pieces. Is it fair to say that that what you’ve learned from that project has fed into the way you do things as Prurient?

“Well, in some ways it has and in some ways it hasn’t. Quite simply, Vatican Shadow was the first time that I was experimenting with making beats, and in that sense it did lay some groundwork for Bermuda Drain. I love certain sides of Muslimgauze records, and I kind of ran out of that sort of music to listen to, so that’s partly why Vatican came about…I mean, a lot of what motivates me in general is that when I can’t find something I want, I try to create it, to satisfy that need. And in many ways that’s what Bermuda Drain is too – I’m looking for this thing and I can’t quite find it so I think, ok, so I’ll make it myself.

“You could also say that Vatican is the total opposite and antithesis of Bermuda Drain, because it doesn’t address the personal world thematically. It’s really more about headlines…I like to describe it as being like a spy game, an espionage board game where you don’t know who’s winning or what side you’re on. I think that’s fair. I like the idea that there are multiple events happening simultaneously, and they may be unrelated, but somehow they’re creating a larger picture. I like the idea of things working behind the scenes, particularly in a sinister way. Even the name Vatican Shadow, and all the song titles, are based around this idea of fear and mistrust and…”

Conspiracy?

“I mean, it’s linked to conspiracy, but I actually have no real interest in that and am not advocating any of those theories. I find [conspiracy] interesting as a symbol for collapse, a total lack of trust, a total global failure – I think that’s what’s interesting. I have no agenda. I like the atmosphere of degeneration and fear that Vatican conjures. It’s very poetic. When you read the news and see these headlines sometimes you just think you’re reading poetry. They’re so absurd.” [laughs]

There was an error parsing the BBcode in your post:
Unknown BBcode tag: [conspiracy]

he is a pedophile
― JW (ex machina), Thursday, May 25, 2006 3:17 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's prurient amirite

So many Vatican Shadow options this year but this one was my favorite:

River of Ectoplasm (Cass, Ltd, C120)
A1 Had 'Em Throwin' a Party for a Bunch of Children
A2 While All of the While the Slime Was Under the Building
A3 Grabbed the Proton packs off the Back and They Split
B1 The Bones Over the Door Rattled as Venkman Entered the Shop
B2 Dana Walked Down the Street with Venkman Retracing the Path of the Runaway Buggy
B3 The Improved Ectomobile Roared Out onto the Street
B4 Its Ghostly Siren Moaning and Wailing

― Andy K, Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:55 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some of the Christian Cosmos stuff is really dope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUXD6BUqNNk

i want to post one of this dude's press shots in lonely guys thinking baout things

i'm certain that most of the people depicted in that thread are thinking 'would it matter if vatican shadow just released untitled albums in plain covers'

Beats aside there isn't actually that much difference between Vatican Shadow and someone like Burial, except there's a chasm of difference between calling your track 'In McDonalds' and calling it 'Chechnya's Ghosts Loom Large In Death Of Former Spy' when the musical differences are microscopic.

Of course Vatican Shadow himself knows this and he knows full well that this extremely broadsheet-friendly music is going to listened to by people who are at the same time reading accounts of all manner of atrocities. It's an album that's good to read to, it's an album that works strangely well on a Sunday afternoon. It's excellent background music, there's not much going on after a couple of bars.

The music SOUNDS fucking amazing, by the way.

i don't think it is narcissism of small differences to suggest that burial does not sound that much like vatican shadow

Vatican Shadow (dark techno / broadsheet techno)

Burial (dubstep / blood and soil electro)

Objective NON correlation, granular analysis PROVES differentiated soundtype arrays

I dunno, the beats are totally different but the sonically they're not very far apart - it doesn't have to be Burial though, the basic point can apply to any producer of grim-sounding abstract music.

Like I get the sense that this is record (not listened to the others) is actually meant to represent the unease of reading about atrocities rather than the experience of them. And he knows his audience and he's well aware of all this.

Then again it is late on Christmas Day and I am drunk but I still think this is one of the best records of this year.

i think it's cyberpunk adorno music

how could we rebrand vatican shadow

there are about a trillion releases so if one were so inclined to carefully repackage one of them and send press releases etc, how could it be presented

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH9-d2YQqHU

an NRO contributor greatly concerned w/rise of Islamism plays techno

like even though it only sounds like burial to drunk people, what if we use the burial concept but alter the signifiers from grotty suburban london to some industrial city in china, press releases would focus heavily on the anomie of living in a smog cloaked exurban wasteland

all of the lp covers would be photos of shopping trolleys in canals, track names would be broken english with random chinese characters, it would be the work of a producer born in harbin in 1983 who spent a year studying industrial design in kiev and is now living a shadowy existence hiding from the CCP, emailing flacs surreptitiously from internet cafes

If he wants to rebrand he has to change names. Vatican Shadow is DF's war-themed bedroom techno project, just like Exploring Jezebel is his femdom/male-humiliation fetish-themed noise project and Christian Cosmos is his Christian-themed ambient-industrial project.

Is that Exploring Jezebel thing any good? It looks like every track is 45 minutes (!)

I haven't heard that one. 8 x C90 sounds like a great way to release music! Also, lol @ each side being called a "Dildo": http://www.discogs.com/Exploring-Jezebel-Penis-Torture-Chamber/release/2384418

It's on digital release, too, looks like.

is there any ilm thread about the arbitrariness of paratext in electronic music

like what if drexciya instead of black science fiction had been about a counterfactual reality where the british empire never finished

roman empire never ended iirc

what else sounds like vatican shadow

Vatican Shadow I've heard was pretty close to Sandwell District and their off-shoots (go and listen to the Silent Servant album if you haven't heard that yet). Also maybe Morphosis too.

it sounds like early 80's SPK

Fernow put out Silent Servant's album this year (Hospital Productions is his label). It's a bit like VS but better and without the war on terror titles

He's also in a black metal band, which I'm guessing won't come as a massive shock to anyone - http://www.last.fm/music/Ash+Pool

Also merry christmas everybody

i have the silent servant album which is my kinda thing, but apart from one or two tracks it hasn't quite clicked (yet, maybe)

the christian cosmos youtube crut posted is great

thanks to whoever mentioned morphosis and reminded me to listen to that album

andy stott and actress are much better ref pts than burial imo

Andy Stott definitely, Actress doesn't have quite the right kind of echoey dank sonic murk going on (it's about tone, not beats or whether one is dubstep or industrial or techno). But Andy Stott's titles are pretty innocuous so he doesn't fit the point I was making like Burial does - as far as I know there's no discourse or mythology around Andy Stott that stems almost entirely from track titles. People hear associations in the music because the producer has led them there largely through extra-musical means (although the music is certainly sombre enough to fit). As far as I know VS isn't actually sampling music from war zones, although I'd guess he uses some heavy imagery in the live show.

Other stuff from this year that you could probably link somehow to VatShad:

Cut Hands - power electronics mainstay goes techno while roping in themes of fear, violence and imperialism from other people's woeful histories
Shackleton - labyrinthine Fourth World post-dubsteppe haunted with the ghosts of lost tribes, murdered monks and dead intelligence operatives
Shifted - interminable grey slog across a shell-pocked landscape all to the deadened thump of a post-Gas kick drum as heard from the shitty confines of a cold, dark car boot
Shed - combat zone techno with big blocks of sound rumbling into position on the backs of scud transporters under sporadic but futile small arms fire from renegade snares
Raime - bleak but pouty post-goth electro played at doom metal slug speed, something tells me these guys tuck their jeans into their lace-up boots, but probably more out of sartorial pride rather than agricultural necessity

darkwave darkwave darkwave, i feel like i've come over all martian

There's a Prurient album coming out on BEB next year, and the last track was on some BEB radio show recently (it's on Doufcloud somewhere) - I only listened once a few weeks ago, but it sounded pretty awesome - going further in a techno direction, I guess.

Greedily checking out anything I haven't heard of on this thread in the hope of finding something I love as much as the Silent Servant album (the VatShad is p. good too, since I'm on his thread)

No one's mentioned Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement yet (at least according to a quick check a moment ago), and they deserve to be mentioned, esp. since it's on Hospital Productions, is already another really prolific project, and is most likely D. Fernow yet again (either solo or maybe with Kris Lapke as on the Christian Cosmos material).

Ltd. cassette releases from the last year or maybe two have been made digitally available throughout 2012, to the extent that this catalog of downloads collectively made #9 on Boomkat's staff year-end list:

http://boomkat.com/search?q=Artist%3A%20RAINFOREST%20SPIRITUAL%20ENSLAVEMENT&fields[]=artist,track_artists

(Everything I've heard has at least been very good IMO, but FWIW, I'd recommend checking out either "Fallen Leaves Camouflaged Behind Tropical Flowers" or "Papua Land Where Spirits Still Rule" to start)

(In other words: Antipodean death-ambient eco-justice OSTs FTW?)

if you're looking for some dark industrial techno, this is outstanding : http://opaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/basic-house-im-not-a-heaven-man

this year's best stuff best stuff in the genre with carter tutti void & silent servent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Keap3YKrcAk

this is more like it

"interminable grey slog"

lol

dl'd immediately from the descrip tbh

Prurient track I mentioned upthread is at 1hr 39m here:

http://soundcloud.com/n_u_t_s/2012-11-02-14-00-00-open-deck

feel like vatican shadow ppl would also like fatima al qadiri's GSX

Prurient album now streaming here:

http://pitchfork.com/advance/31-through-the-window/

Really can't get enough of this, esp. the title track (the one I linked above).

this is really great, title track is amazing. first prurient album i've heard - much more technoey than i was expecting

technoey deschanel

it almost makes me want to check out the other prurient albums, but I suspect they don't sound much like this?

most of them don't. it really depends, but most of them tend towards the harsh noise end of the spectrum.

bermuda drain has some similar moments, but a lot more yelling over the top

this is the sort of thing I think of when I think of Prurient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kIMhSD5r8

Seriously this is the best Prurient album since '08 or '09, before he went off the deep end

I ordered this from Barnes and Noble, was totally expensive but I think it'll be worth it

Tiger Smells A Corpse is incredible

is there something up w/the spotify versh

this is how i remember prurient back in the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLlSnjs-rl0

I really like the minimal synths he does on Bermuda Drain. I can just about put up with the screaming. On the Palm Tree Corpse tune it's fucking incredibly awesome.

so many future vatican shadow track titles floating around right now

i cant read an article about the boston bombers without picking out phrases for vs tapes

chechnya's ghosts loom large in death of former santa

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 25 December 2012 08:07 (3 months ago)

i checked out the new prurient project but it just wasn't as enjoyable as vs

can't get into prurient

more like purr-ient

new prurient great ebm

Caught this guy's live show last night, it was sonically amazing but really uncomfortable to view, particularly when he was raving and gurning in front of a projection of images of dead soldiers and 9/11 headlines - it felt exploitative. Do I just not get this guy's politics? It was provocative and stirring but it felt a bit cheap and ruined any pleasure from the music itself.

I saw him live at Sonar and he actually got a bit of dancefloor action going. There weren't any visuals. I don't know if he was doing something a bit different because it was a dance music festival

There was lots of dancing when I saw him! It kinda added to the discomfort I was feeling. Like, the point he was making about de-sensitisation to war imagery and violence fell flat when people were bouncing about and fist-pumping and generally being... de-sensitised. And when it doesn't work all that's left is folk partying alongside images of war casualties and 9/11 headlines.

I'm sure it's just something I don't understand rather than anything intentionally exploitative.

i think his politics involve the intentional exploitation (or at least decontextualization) of sensational politics - in some sense i think he's fascistic (tho w/ more of a nihilistic ends than a political one): 'Mankind, which was in the age of Homer an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is how it stands with the aestheticization of politics that Fascism pursues. Communism responds by politicizing art.' -- he's aestheticizing politics, not politicizing art imho.

There was lots of dancing when I saw him! It kinda added to the discomfort I was feeling. Like, the point he was making about de-sensitisation to war imagery and violence fell flat when people were bouncing about and fist-pumping and generally being... de-sensitised. And when it doesn't work all that's left is folk partying alongside images of war casualties and 9/11 headlines.

― boxedjoy, Friday, 5 July 2013 09:58 (4 hours ago)

lol

well sick drop on emir of checjnya despatches emissaries to the caliph there m8s

Anybody listening to Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement? I got the new one on Bed of Nails since VS's Bed of Nails release was my favourite of theirs. Boomkat described it as sounding like Porter Ricks which is a bit of an exaggeration. Pleasant enough background music but I was hoping for more.

01. Circumstances Quickly Became Questioned
02. Tonight Saddam Walks Amidst Ruins
03. Muscle Hijacker Tribal Affiliation
04. Contractor Corpses Hung Over The Euphrates River
05. Enter Paradise
06. Remember Your Black Day
07. Not The Son Of Desert Storm, But The Child Of Chechnya
08. Jet Fumes Above The Reflecting Pool

it's on spotify - i like it a lot

esp liked the prayer/chanting on track #7

i like how the only leftfield electronic shit you seem to like is the dude with the middle east geopolitics fetish

i like basinski too

ur not wrong tho

i love how william basinski looks complete unlike you would expect a producer of maudlin ambient music to look

http://www.villavillanola.com/suoni/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/william_basinski-par-Thimothy-White-290x300.jpg

Might as well have called it "A Tribute to Muslimgauze" with those titles.

he is nothing like muslimgauze politically

Thankfully, I think nobody is or was.

this digression reminds of the mille plateaux record from 2002 called 'walking in jerusalem' by random inc which consists of samples recorded in.....well you can write the rest

does Fernow have an actual politics beyond transgressive bro being transgressive?

I'm a big fan of Basinkski's 'third place in a Limahl lookalike contest' thing too.

i tried to get into muslimgauze but it was too hezbollahgauze for me

his whole thing is paratext abstracted from the context that begot it, see the 'exploring jezebel' discogs page

i applaud him

a more recent picture of basinski:

http://www.artnet.com/Images/magazine/reviews/yablonsky/manchester-international-festival-7-18-11-14.jpg

backstage at the manchester evening news arena with william basinski

he's turning into this guy:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/62381921/Nightcrawlers+Push+The+Feeling+On.png

is the exploring jezebel stuff intentionally silly?

it's a paratext of the noise music abstracted from its context

read "hezbollahgauze" as "hezbollahgaze" and was like, nicely done.

plz give me credit for whatever seems better thx

i'd be down for some hezbollahgaze

idk if bryn jones supported terrorism outright

anyway "contractor corpses" sounds like 1994-era autechre

personally i think this music sounds like shit, but what makes it good is the paratext abstracted from its context. that's some pretty good stuff.

nothing stanton in the way of you making your own cool paratext abstracted from context islamodrone records, burt i guess you have better things to do

fyi my ouvre on ilx is a similarly themed middle east fetishism paratextual art project but in the medium of 'message board textual aesthetics' as opposed to leftfield electronica.

true

http://soundinjections.tumblr.com/post/35349961955/vatican-shadow

^^that's v good, i need to hear more tbh

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-5759187-1401885690-2892.jpeg

Vatican Shadow ‎– Death Is Unity With God

Tracklist
Fireball
A1 Al Qaeda (Branch Davidian)
B1 Desert Storm (Waco)
B2 It's To Come
Enduring Mysteries
C1 ATF Sinful Messiah
D1 FBI God
D2 Koresh Babylon
Easing Of Our Task
E1 Fort Hood Again
E2 Koresh Lamb
E3 Machine-Gunning Of The Davidians
F1 Texarkana Resistance
Oklahoma Military Academy
G1 Theology Is Life And Death (Pakistan)
G2 Descended On Guayanilla (CNN)
H1 Arms Of Yahweh
H2 Manufactured Silencers Under Direct Orders
Elohim City
I1 Living On And Off At The Shadow Motel
I2 Small Explosives And Blasting Caps
I3 Inside The Pages Of A Phonebook
J McVeigh Figures
April Silencer
K1 Shadows On The Courthouse Wall
L1 Waco Postmortem (Murrah)

Notes
Edition of 100.
Comes with seven 8" x 8" collages

Elohim City

sampling what's available on youtube. seems like everything i've heard so far barely rises above a (menacing) whisper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmRF5eF85U

My first thought was that's an old Danse Society logo. I am an old goth.

free show @ urban outfitters!

Ahhh this one’s a real peach. Veering far from what we expected, ‘Games Have Rules’ is a brilliant late night excursion made in the spirit of classic Artificial Intelligence albums, instantly reminding us of that killer first Reaganz (Move D & Jonah Sharp) album from ’94 with it’s atmospheric soundscaping and nods to John Carpenter.

i like this more than i thought i would going on that description

lol yes, this sounds amazing so far

this guy has somehow turned into one of my favorite artists. this is elegiac + beautiful.

fyi my ouvre on ilx is a similarly themed middle east fetishism paratextual art project but in the medium of 'message board textual aesthetics' as opposed to leftfield electronica.

― Mordy , Tuesday, 22 October 2013 16:53 (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

CD Version of Death Is Unity With God (3 discs) for under $20

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/Article_Width/1606/vatican-shadow-media.jpg

"Take Vows" is a total jam.

New double 10" Luxor Necropolitics with Joshua Eustis from Telefon Tel Aviv

oh shit that sounds like something i'd like to hear

the remix at the end of it is pretty good

True story: I was interviewing Ty Dolla Sign in late 2012 and he asked what I'd been listening to (he's very musically curious) and I pt him on to Vatican Shadow. No collab as of yet but there's still hope imo

Thanks due to this thread, obv

Based on the dates here it must have been early 2013, actually

interested to hear this

https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23662

it's interesting! not sure how I felt about all the Genesis Breyer P-Orridge vocal clips used as a connecting thread although it was an interesting choice

the genesis stuff makes it a nope for me, which sucks cause i'd prob be into it otherwise

definitely seems like a very odd time to be making that particular decision

I guess I might have undersold the types of "interesting" there

I'm not sure "tone-deafness" is quite the right phrase in that RA review, it implies a kind of thoughtlessness. There's no way an artist as conscious of media narrative and violent imagery as Fernow didn't know exactly what he was doing.

maybe that consciousness isn't the same type people like to think it is

New LP out tomorrow, Persian Pillars of the Gasoline Era.

His approach to titles is unsettlingly formulaic.

I'm surprised Persian Pillars has been ignored for EOY lists or at all. It's great.

Got Vatican Shadow on this evening, almost certainly as a consequence of that recent amazing post in the politics thread. I’ve got to give DF props for calling a track “more of the same” which is the most ridiculously on the nose title ever

New one features a track titled 'The Other Blackbirds Required Shipping to Their Final Resting Places Which Necessitated Their Wings Being Sawed Off by Worldwide Aircraft Recovery'.

Pretty good article going deep on Fernow's connections to the far-right:

https://jeanhugueskabuiku.substack.com/p/about-vatican-shadow-link-with-the

Didn't expect the side swipes at St0suy. They were fair, from the context of the article, but I thought everyone loved that guy. Anyway, saw St0suy posted something on his Twitter about it this morning, but I haven't had a chance to read that yet.

It is worth reading:

A piece on Dominick Fernow and his links to artists with right wing ideologies was published Friday. I spent the weekend thinking of my laziness and complacency re: these connections and wanted to post the below. It's from a letter I wrote to the piece's author, @amazinggaijin pic.twitter.com/CfyiNYMTfP

— brandonstosuy (@brandonstosuy) July 12, 2021

Disappointing, but not all that surprising. Every time someone who produces negative art that I connect with turns out to be a creep, I wonder what about it hooked me in the first place. It's a concern. I guess it's a thing where we're both angry about things - just turns out they were coming at that shit from the opposite side of the spectrum. I loved DSO before I found out about that dude, too.