NOVEL SERIALISATION
AUTHOR: RICK ACV
Following in the wake of his debut novel THE GREAT IMMUREMENT, which we serialised during the summer of 2020, Vukovar helmsman Rick ACV now follows up with the surreal, esoteric and challenging Astral Deaths & Astral Lights. Playing with format, language, font, with half-thoughts of waking hours and occult merge with dream-realism and a languid sense of discomfort: a sorry state of existence. William Blake and Austin Osman Spare meet Kōbō Abe in the hotel lobby portal of the never-world: personal and universal. Parts One & Two were debuted earlier this week. We continue with the next chapter, HOTEL NOTHING/III, below:
HOTEL NOTHING
I’m stooped and my joints don’t seem to want to acknowledge my directions for them.
I gather my thoughts. All there is, is nothing to me.
A phone rings and I answer it, but for a few moments the words spoken appear in vision as a series of symbols and guttural colours. Flashes from the language axis. The world has spun in a new direction without me and I’m left behind; in a strange place and a strange time, now I can reach towards something new.
Then I am comforted as everything falls into place. Those symbols I saw before me, as that mysterious voice spoke, shift into something I understand a little easier and then turn to vapour, finally vanishing as I reach out with a curious finger.
Almost suddenly, I fall back out of a comforting understanding into something terrifying as I actually listen to the voice. This is a panicked unknowing. I have never felt this way before.
In response to my ‘hello’ the voice says “Good afternoon. I hope you are well.” I see strange flashes of someone and something. “I hope you are well.” it repeats and continues “I assume I am speaking to Mr Hanshiro?”
“Yes.” I utter, in the almost-exact same voice as from the phone, only mine isn’t as deep.
The voice continues to tell me about an important letter I will receive and to make sure I deal with it immediately.
The someone and something I see without seeing is a man in a back room. I recognise the man as myself for some reason, though his features are obscured by bright light.
I am aware of this self as though I have lived it all my life. My stomach turns.
“May I ask to whom I am speaking?” I say with as little suspicion as I can muster. My opposing line responds with a polite ‘of course’ then on to “
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
My ears may bleed. My brain may catch fire. My limbs may collapse in on themselves.
The answer was drowned out by a bell sound so abrasive…. I briefly lost myself.
I come back to myself, This Self.
A letter drops to the floor in this neat, bare office-house. As I read it, the inner voice is one I don’t recognise and the disturbing biloquism only further serves to disrupt my adaptation to my new surroundings.
The letter:
Dear Mr Hanshiro,
I write to inform you of the regrettable and unfortunate death of your dear insert family name. In his her will, he she passed on to you the UNRESTRICTED ownership of the Hotel Nothing in the [REDACTED] district in [REDACTED].
Under his her instruction, the keys will be passed to you by ourselves, [REDACTED], on his her behalf. Please come to us at your earliest convenience in order to conclude this matter. We are situated on [REDACTED]. I look forward to meeting you.]
Yours Sincerely,
[REDACTED].
***
I arrive as a recipient of a substantial inheritance outside the vast building. There are swarms of people around the entrance. I make my way through the crush, passing hot flashes of hot fleshes. I come to a corridor full of people only occasionally moving forwards – I spot the door behind the reception. Only one sweating, stinking shape of human is permitted through at a time.
I need some water.
I am old and tired and hot. This airless hole will be the death of me, I begin to not-even-worry, and instead just accept the fact. The noise is deafening.
***
The receptionist and I shout to no avail as she allows me through the door.
There is only one chair in here and another door. I make to sit down but a young woman, drenched in sweat, angered and flustered points to the door.
“I’ve been sent this letter…”
My voice is weak and pathetic before it’s cut off by her simple, straight-to-the-soul statement:
“Yes, that’s why you’re here, you have no more relatives, go through the door.”
I do so and find inside a cavernous room an empty desk, atop of which is the keys to my new empire. I am so tired.
I am so tired of being close to death that I ignore my own hesitation, take the keys and make my exit. There is no-body and no-thing and I am back in the cool rain that has shifted here from another day.
X X X
I arrive at the place. It’s an imposing, pristine concrete thing, looking for all the world like a Las Vegas hotel stripped totally bare, picked up and left to just simply exist in some industrial wasteland purgatory. There are well-tended gardens that are clear boundaries between two worlds, from the Hotel Nothing to the wild and overgrown wasteland that surrounds and suffocates all else. The extreme and striking border forms a perfect square around the hotel, even taking in some woodland, and I can’t help but allow my mind to wander and wonder about halos… their meaning… what shapes they may take and any significance of any of this.
Taking a slow and ambling walk around the grounds, stopping to smell the roses, it crosses my mind; an old creaky man such as this-myself is just as easily pleased by the gentle and pleasant as the ease of the confusion that comes to the limbs at the end of their use. There is a remarkable freshness inside the Lines and I could swear that it’s brighter than I have ever experienced, whereas as the whole of the sky, all within and without it, was pitch grey just a few metres and moments previous.
There is a pond and marsh which I cross over on an immaculate wooden walkway, feeling no effort in my movements and have to check I am not floating into the day. I haven’t felt this graceful for years. The path I am on takes me back towards the back of the hotel, but in my way is a maze.
There is no way around; all-ways seem to lead up to and then away from the building so I reluctantly enter this maze that has somehow bloomed from nowhere. I walk and walk and walk and I encounter no Dead Ends. I do-not and can-not understand. I am walking in circles, the length of which are undeterminable. I think as quickly as my slowing mind will allow: I put down my hat on the ground and walk on.
I carry on for several minutes, still gliding, effortless, and can feel panic rising from the very soul of me. Suddenly my joints ache, my breathing is hard and the Glory Of The Day becomes as a recurrence of a terrible memory. I go to lean upon the hedge-wall and find myself going through a door right to the centre of the maze. All centres. All things must have a centre or they are unthinkable. I have found this one. In this centre, a strange man is sitting at a small table with an empty chair facing him. Upon spotting me he pours us both a cup of tea and beckons me to join. I shuffle forwards. His face is powdered white. A brilliant white. Total white. I want to feel apprehensive but can’t. I feel nothing. I decide I will decline the tea, remain standing and simply ask for directions.
Now I am sat opposite him.
Now he stares. His features seem to change.
Now he speaks.
The Mystery Man greets me. I ask him for directions.
“In time. Why not take the tea? It’s hot and delicious.” He smiles. “I insist you join me.”
I ask about the maze and its impenetrable nature. Or actually, the ease in which it is penetrated but the difficulty of getting out.
“Surely the new owner is not in a rush? The place and employees take care of themselves.”
His smirk bothers me now. Feelings, all feelings, are slowly returning.
I agree in supposition and ask how he knows who I am, careful to mask my un-nerve.
“May I ask how it is that you already had the keys? Or how it is that two versions of you held a coherent telephone conversation; both in the present but one in the past and one still in the future?”
I take notice of his voice. Something about the thick-lightness makes my stomach knot in almost-nausea.
I can no longer mask anything and I make my confessions to Him, of how bizarre I found his question and how confused – to the point of fear – I am. All of this without saying a word.
“I may not. Drink your tea, Mr Hanshiro.”
I do so and it’s delicious and warming. Just as he said. I tell him.
“It’s a recipe I’ve had for hundreds of years.”
I suggest he misspoke and assume he means his family have had it for hundreds of years.
“If you would prefer, sir.”
I wish he would not speak. That voice. That voice of all-substance and no-substance.
I put all thought out of my mind ask how to get to the Hotel Nothing from here once again.
“Look to your right.”
I open my mouth to speak but the mystery man so forcefully stares into my eyes and it feels he is controlling them, directing them to where he instructed.
The maze is no longer there. Well, it is, but it’s nothing more than a painting upon the ground. An optical illusion. I turn back to the Mystery Man, dumbfounded, but find nobody there. I sit in silence. I do not care for how long. I go to put the cup on the table. There is no table.
The table is not a table. That, too, is a painting on the ground.
Along with both chairs.
I’m squatting mid air and at this realization I recognise the agony most of my body is in.
I slowly make my way to the hotel.
A SHIFT.
Huge, open hotel lobby. There isn’t anybody. Any-Body at all.
A pressed bell.
A deafening noise.
The noise down dark corridors. The noise in the hidden staff spaces. The noise everywhere.
Abandon hotel lobby.
A story of an old, disfigured ex-prostitute on a radio.
Sleep.
A RETURNING AND RECURRING SHIFT.
I enter my hotel and find a row of people all in a line awaiting my arrival. All are hotel staff it seems and all are ignoring the growing, silent queue behind and beyond them.
A man with a young face and an old body approaches me.
“Welcome back Mr Hanshiro! Glad to see you’re better.”
His eyes widen with horror.
Everything but his face is old, decrepit almost, in ways that are obvious yet these ways I cannot process.
I have to ask what he means. I have to. So I do.
Please forgive my ignorance, sir, I meant to simply say ‘welcome’. I am the manager of your Hotel Nothing, my name is Mr John; you may call me Mr Manager if you find it difficult to recall names.”
I do not like these people.
I assure him I can recall names perfectly well. I ask Mr John to show me to my quarters.
He seems affronted.
He pleads.
“Well, that really isn’t part of my job… besides, there are things we must see-to before anything else.”
His suit is sharp and expensive looking. It appears to me as funeral attire. I understand nothing of business. For now, I’ll agree to whatever I’m told. I just want to rest.
His countenance is changed and becomes abrupt and impatient. He storms to the employees and angrily urges me to follow.
One at a time the employees bow to me and walk away without saying a word and without looking back. This takes a long time and then all is finished.
I ask Mr John how useful this time was spent without learning their names.
“Mr Hanshiro, please, that introduction was just fine. You will learn the names over time, and even if not, you probably won’t need to anyway.
I nod.
I have no energy, none to waste on further questioning.
I’m taken into the office behind the front desk. Here, there is a familiar looking young woman; she seems shy and speaks to me in a language My-Self in This-Self understands. She tells me her name – Catherine – and that she is the junior manager. This exchange is easy and welcome.
“I will show you around and to your room if it pleases you, sir.”
I would be pleased to go straight to my room and gather in my rapidly fracturing being.
She looks unsure and explains they aren’t the orders she has received, but will make an exception.
I should think so.
We make our own way without Mr John and come upon a lift, into which I happily step, thinking of a time in the coming futures where I will be well-rested. Catherine tells me of how she rose to her position through merit and excellency, whereas…
“Mr John took advantage of your absence to seize control of the running of this place…”
There is a blackout for less than negligible amount of time. Or maybe it was just me. Or maybe nothing at all.
“Mr John took advantage of The Owner’s absence to seize control of the running of this place.”
I do not feel this is appropriate.
“I hasten to speak ill of my colleagues – or indeed anybody at all – especially if they are not present, sir. But this may be my only chance.”
This is too much stress for today. I try to tell her she may see me first thing tomorrow and tell all so I may sort all.
“Please! Mr John is a degenerate and a deviant. He claims to love me, that he can’t be without me. He is probably watching and listening in to us. Right now. He just wants to control me. He spies on my everywhere I go. There are cameras everywhere. Everywhere!”
I’m aware of Catherine adjusting her breasts but I ignore it and tell her I will sack the disgusting pig.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“He is… irreplaceable… it isn’t possible.” She says this with a disarming nonchalance. Just a few seconds ago she was begging for my sympathetic ear and now she is completely and totally resigned to her treatment. “A necessary evil.”
I start to press her further on this but notice she has now bared her breasts and I become enraged. I express my contempt.
“He’s watching even now. My flesh will blind him to our discussion, blind him to his own fury. I think he’s gone. Would you like to touch?”
She turns to me with sparkling eyes.
I am filled with horror.
No…
Please no…
She approaches and presses up against me. I weaken. I try to push her away and in doing so I touch her naked skin. It burns me. I retch and cower in the corner. Catherine is concerned and strokes my hair, unknowing of the panic I am stricken with. Her breasts are in my face. The air is unbreathable and I can no longer cope.
The lift doors open.
I run.
I am in a room with only one door. Catherine is looking on, uncomprehending.
I force my way into the darkened space. Harsh pulsating lights begin to flash on and off, strobe-like, as a gently throbbing music plays, quietened, as though through water. The room is covered from floor to ceiling with breasts. I vomit uncontrollably. It lands on the ceiling. It stays there. I see a door and crawl towards it, pulling myself along, wishing for nothing but the retching and heaving to subside. The door is a towering vagina and I have no choice but to have to go through it.
I am birthed into a blinding whiteness.
My senses come to me intermittently.
A crowd of women.
They fuss over me.
They clean me.
They cut the newly attached umbilical cord from me and I scream in agony.
I am put onto a moving surface and am carried away into The White.
I drift.
I am moved.
My existence is vapour-light.
I am in yet another room. Everything is monochrome. Empty but for two small tables, each with a telephone atop. An old man. I think of him as Il Duce. He is at the furthest one. He faces me.
Il Duce indicates towards the phone on my table.
Pick it up.
His lips do not move but his voice comes to me down the phone.
He stares into the whites of my eyes. He stares into the total depths of me as he un-talks.
“Do no fear me.”
Who are you?
“I will not answer.”
Why not?
“There could be any number of reasons, but I am not here to discuss them.”
How come you have appeared to me?
“I am to recite to you a warning, from a different story, from a different time, but it applies to all human life at some point in different ways and the point has now come in yours. Will you listen?”
I will.
I awake in my room.
I think about what he said.
There was a story of a gatekeeper and a man seeking passage through the gate. The gatekeeper denied the man entry on unknowable and unchangeable grounds.
I recognised this as a story from deep within another story.
X X X
I arise, I dress, I stop; I feel eyes upon me. I allow them to continue for a few moments and I begin to hear a rising, heavy breathing which digs its way just so into the centre of me, forcing itself through ears, through mind, as though this is all I have ever heard. It becomes piercing as I search for the source and I in turn become manic as it turns to pain. This is unbecoming of me. I burst out of my room and with this expense of my energies I fall to my face in a silent living area in a confused St Vitus dance. Catherine is sitting on a couch, looking me over.
“Come here Mr Hanshiro.”
I respond with a blank look.
“Come on, it’s okay.” She is insistent and I lose myself to her maternal authority. I go over to her, childlike and pathetic.
“Rest your head upon my lap. Shh. I’ll make it all better for you.”
Catherine starts to sing softly a lullaby as I comply and, soon, she is stroking my hair.
I tell her I think I am getting a cold.
She leans down and starts to kiss me sensually. Paralysis and transfixion.
“Poor baby. Do you want a feed?”
…
“Do you want a feed from mummy?”
This is not what I want. She begins to take out her breasts. Again. What does this life, this myself mean? Why is she starting with this indecent nonsense again?
The shift.
“Mr Hanshiro?”
…
“Mr Hanshiro?”
We are sitting on the couch, together but apart, still in this silent living area that is nowhere.
“Do you want to get some food? From the bar?”
Confused and erring to begin with, I respond in agreement. I want to get out of this dark room.
Catherine smiles.
“I’ll organise some company for us.”
I’d much rather you didnt, Catherine.
“I’ll organise some company for us.”
I am so taken aback by the strength in her will in just those six simple words that I don’t argue.
These people have total control over me.
This place has total control over me.
And every-thing and every-one else.
Total Body Control, whether in-body or out-body.
Hotel Restaurant:
This is viewed from outside this myself, at times.
Catherine and myself sit at a table with a couple that look exactly the same as us. The setting changes from time to time between two places. It starts as normal, smoky restaurant and bar, high-ceilinged and large with constant chatter, waiters milling about busily and there is a band playing some unintrusive music on a stage. The other place is a tiny, perfectly square room that contains only our table and a bar that isn’t quite right. On the wall in front of us is a projection showing the ‘rest’ of the restaurant and all its inhabitants.
Catherine: I’ll do the introductions then shall I, darling? (I see myself begin to stir as though woken from daydreams long and old) I’m Catherine and this is my husband Mr Hanshiro. Nice to finally meet you.
Mirror Catherine: It’s lovely to meet you, too. I’m Catherine and this is my husband, Mr Hanshiro.
Catherine: (Turning to me) Catherine and dear Mr Hanshiro live in the hotel. They’re high up in a sub chain of command here.
The constant state of confusion I am mired in within my hotel is starting to become tedious.
I view ourselves and theirselves through tired eyes slowly burning as they discuss how it is that both sets own and run the place in parallels without any knowledge of each other’s domain. This goes on for a while until Mirror Catherine suggests and hints at things of a sexual nature, before Catherine confirms it without me understanding the real meaning. We are all turned towards the idea of going to our room under the pretence, in my unaware understanding, of continuing our meal there.
Catherine violently rides me in a rape that I cannot and do not fight against. I watch this and can do nothing.
X X X
This is now the next day or the next time or the next whenever it is. I seek out Mr John and try to make a complaint about Catherine. He calls me a liar and we argue until he tells me she has already been removed and hidden away somewhere. I am ill and I am tired and I care little for any of this. I dismiss him. The room behind the office simply marked ‘Manager’s Bedroom’ appeals to me.
Inside the tiny room is a human sized nest on the floor. There is little to describe about the rest. It feels so empty and so bare that I cannot help but question its existence and quantum lack-of-presence.
There is a phone. I am drawn to it. I pick it up. The voice on the other end sounds familiar.
“Hello?”
Good afternoon. I hope you are well. I assume I am talking to Mr Hanshiro?
“Yes that’s correct. What is the nature of the call?”
Information. You will receive a letter in the post today that carries with it some weight of importance. Please pay it with your upmost attention.
“May I ask who I am speaking to?”
I do not know. This Self is no longer My Self. I watch myself disappear from my own view as I slip away.
III
The partner sits upon a step.
The partner is upset.
The partner weeps and lets the realism that THEIR partner is less and less present become the biggest prescience.
I am further and far removed from the usual world and it has its effects and affects. I understand that there are consequences to every action as I am not a moron.
However, which place is it whereby the actions count for anything? Even something… It feels less and less like the usual world.
I must try and make it up to the partner in this world. Just in case.
Our Daily Bread 440: Vukovar ‘The Great Immurement’
April 21, 2021
ALBUM REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Vukovar ‘The Great Immurement’
(Other Voices Records) 23rd April 2021
In the metaphorical (and actually quite literal) wake of last year’s chthonian mini-opus The Colossalist, Vukovar now bring us the second chapter of their most recent incarnation and equally as consumed with vague auguries of fallen empire and gothic yearned romanticism, The Great Immurement.
In an atmospheric sonic vision of Bosch’s triptychs, this latest (the 9th album proper) work marks the second in a triumvirate of albums under the ‘Eternity Ends Here’ series (The Colossalist being the opening account in this saga). As with the previous industrial, post-punk and spiritual hungered epic, The Great Immurement pays homage to the dearly departed; featuring as it does the final song that the group’s co-conspirator of recent years and inspiring guide Simon Morris recorded with them. As a codex, nee mini-requiem, that last impassioned-esoteric-pop-song-hidden-in-a-mire, ‘Cement & Cerement‘, is a brutalist romantic anthem from the crypt of mental fatigue: pitched somewhere between Joy Division and Alan Vega catching a lift on Death In June’s vapour. Morris committed suicide in 2019 but his spirit continues to affect the band; looming large over both this and the last album. If you ever need to know just how influential but also how personal his death was for Vukovar, who’d managed to corral the much-venerated underground figure (notably for his instigation of The Ceramic Hobs) into their ranks, please take time out to read, one of the founding members of this pyre of a band, Dan Shea’s stark but intimate account of their friendship (an account the Monolith Cocktail published back in 2020; coincidently just a week before lockdown in the UK).
Morris may very well have been part of Vukovar’s constantly imperiled lineup if he hadn’t decided to vanish and leave this mortal realm as he did. His involvement was part of one of many changes in the band’s fortunes. Pressing forward though, constant warden and co-founder Rick Clarke is not only joined by another Hob and oft collaborator, Jane Appleby, but once more embraces his foil Dan Shea, who for various reasons in a fraught dynamic left to pursue other projects, notably, with fellow Vukovar stalwart (though missing from this lineup) Buddy Preston, forming the low-rent, lo fi bedsit synth Beauty Stab duo. In what is a convoluted historiography and rock family tree nightmare, and in what maybe seen as a case of ‘pop eating itself’ Meta, the neu- Vukovar inception actually cover one of Beauty Stab’s anthems, ‘O Eden’. Adding a certain gravitas and making a last supper out of the original, it now kind of makes sense as a Vukovar song that never was. Both versions are great it must be said, though the Stab’s was more Soft Cell, whilst this appropriation is more OMD misty march of yearned reverence; swaddled by a shapeless noise and opportune stabbed high piano notes: still bloody magnificent.
Followers of the blog may recognize the name of this latest waltz-at-the-end-of-time, The Great Immurement being also the title of Clarke’s voyeuristic supernatural peephole entombed book, which we serialized during the pandemic nightmare that was 2020. Though separate from the album’s themes and concepts, an illustration (etched by the celebrated Andrzej Klimowski; a great coup for Clarke and the band that was) from that sordid travail dons the cover – as it also did The Colossalist.
The Great Immurement, as the title suggests, denotesa certain sense, anxiety of confinement from which to break free. And so most of the album’s music seems to smoother, even overpower with an echo chamber of reverberated voices, malingering traces of spirits, competing opinions and fallen angels. There’s even a fallen ‘Icarus’ figure, trapped in multiple veils of sorrow, industrial fizz and vapours; with a searching, decried vocal attempting to escape the ether.
In the feted mode of spiritualism, Vukovar turn to the Psalms; another cry of freedom soundtracked by pleaded despair, communal deliverance and a brilliant stark but intimate voice that channels Ian Curtis, Ian McCulloch and Charlie Megira. An estranged linger of religion permeates the entire album in that kind of post-punk battle between haunted Catholic gilded guilt and alternative pathways of spiritual guidance, bordering on the occult. The sort of practice that Coil, Fritch and Current 93 had a kink for. It won’t come as a surprise to find out that Vukovar recorded a collaborative album with the Current’s Michael Cashmore (2018’s Monument), or that Coil, and the affiliated Tibet and Balance all prove an obvious inspiration. They even re-purpose Current 93’s ‘Rome For Douglas P’; turning the source into a vortex vision of Suicide on a quickened sordid rock ‘n’ roll charge with the renamed ‘When Rome Falls’: A real crushed but energetic industrial soul boy vocal is echoed in a backbeat tunnel, as the funeral pyre flames rise over a new Rome.
In the middle of this vacuum you might well hear the lingers and outright borrowing of a Siouxsie’s Banshees, early Cure, Christian Death, Talk Talk and even a less pompous Sisters Of Mercy. Yet Vukovar don’t do things the easy way; contorting, obscuring and vaporising the melodies, riffs and the niceties, even vocals as much as possible without losing the intrinsic value of their message and new romantic lament. True confessionals, aspirations and pained release caught up in a venerable maelstrom, Vukovar’s middle passage of ambitious anguished caustic industrial soul, experimentation and empire crumbling Cassandra oracles continue to impress; ringing even more inspiration from the macabre and mentally gruelling. We can only await the final piece of this fated triptych with baited breath.
The Vukovar Cannon As Featured On The Monolith Cocktail:
2020: Cement & Cerement (here)
2020: The Colossalist’ (here)
2019: Cremator (here)
2018: Monument (here)
2018: Infinitum (here)
2017: Puritan (here)
2017: The Clockwork Dance (here)
2017: Fornication (here)
2015: Emperor (here)
Also…
Rick Clarke’s The Great Immurement
Opening Chapters (here)
Parts 4-6 (here)
Parts 7-9 (here)
Parts 10-12 (here)
Parts 13-15 (here)
Parts 16-18 (here)
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Written by Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski
As you may know if you’re a regular follower of The Monolith Cocktail, we’ve been serialising a number of new novels and writings from debut authors over the last two years; beginning with Ayfer Simm‘s Istanbul pyschogeograhy A Rumor In Üsküdar in 2019. Following on Ayfer’s heels we’re now serialising the Lynchian semi-biographical and incomprehensible jukebox set wanderings of Dan Shea (Bordellos, Vukovar and Beauty Stab infamy) and Rick Clarke’s (bandmate of Shea and rallying beacon of the band Vukovar, and Horrible Porn) new novel The Great Immurement: The previous fifteen chapters of which have appeared over the last two months.
We continue with those NSFW semi-esoteric imaginings below, and bring you the final chapters, ‘Infinitum’,‘The Garden Of The Parabolic Mirror With One Thousand Eyes’, ‘The Angels Of Cremation Cremate The Great Immured, and ‘‘The Body Abdicator’; illustrated as always by the illustrious Andrzej Klimowski.
INFINITUM
Whose body is gone? To recount is to doubt. To understand is to un-exist. Whose body is whose?
I inserted my penis into the lubrication port – the uncomfortable tickle from the sudden spread of cold gel upon the head of my genitalia remained the same each day, and had done since I first started producing sperm all those decades ago when my body was different, much different, and I was just a boy.
Our leaders made a point of rearing us to be aware and to be intelligent just to show us how stupid we are; farmed bovine only alive for the purpose of being milked for our seed. They kept us justabout- content and satisfied so that we would never chase nor imagine a a grand change. We were fed, sheltered, occupied, cleansed, educated and given a certain amount of freedom. All as long as we provided our milk at least once a day. We don’t need or want to exist much outside of our small but comfortable rooms. One click of a button and you could change the appearance of your room instantly. I kept mine neutral. We had unlimited access to any leisure, any art to occupy the mind, to never feel dulled, to never want more.
The men with defects were destroyed straight away in the abattoir, along with the elderly, infirm and the ones whose milk ran dry, or missed their appointment, or became ill – this was rare as the leaders made every effort to stop the spread or cultivation of diseases.
The enforcers who took the no-longer-productive to the abattoir were to be avoided. It’s hard to understand what they were, whether they were actually human or not. They would appear out of nowhere, seemingly made from a rubbery, shiny burgundy type overall that covered them head to toe, with a gap for the stainless steel framed goggles. They came in armed – unnecessarily so as they would never be attacked – with a 7 foot high steel stick, atop of which a complex, multi-layered metal mesh square was fitted, very much akin to a fly swatter. It gave off a hideous high pitched feedback sound which didn’t have to try very hard to persuade us to stay in our rooms. They walked slowly, like a funeral procession, fly swatter swung ever so carefully like a towering, nodding bringer of torment.
———
I pulled my penis from the lubrication port and held the thick, throbbing fleshy tube in my hand. Filled with an odd sort of pride I had never felt before for the glistening succulence of my powerful erection, I moved to the back wall of my room and inserted it into what me and my fellows liked to call the ‘glory hole’ – a perfectly smoothed round hole built into the glossy concrete. The extraction was strong, almost sucking the semen straight from the sack, and the orgasm was weak, as was usually the case.
An alarm sounded as I wiped myself down. I looked up to see my walls flashing red – none of this was particularly uncomfortable; the lights weren’t garish and the alarm was quiet.
Gas.
I awoke briefly to see I was being led by the enforcers towards the abattoir. I caught occasional glimpses of things in fits of occasional consciousness. I saw a female in the flesh for the first time – there was a cluster of them in the sterile room around me. Some busy with machinery, others staring at me in-between furiously taking down notes.
———
I found myself in the body of a two year old, my surroundings felt homely and close to my heart. I was surely experiencing the life of an ancestor long forgotten.
It was clear to me that I had misbehaved. I looked down, pouting, in a mixture of shame for my behaviour and defiance in the face of being disciplined. I felt like I’d been sitting on this naughty step for forever, though it couldn’t have been longer than a minute. The moment was broken in the most tender way possible as a hand descended down in front of me towards my own; my Father’s silent indication that all was forgiven and that I should take it, and walk on alongside him, wherever that may be – into the living room… into the wild… into death. At that moment, at that age, at that awe, wherever he would lead, I would follow.
There is a blurring of lines in this immurement. One death is all death and all death brings are these strange fevers.
THE GARDEN OF THE PARABOLIC MIRROR WITH ONE THOUSAND EYES
All romance and romantic ideals, all meeting of souls and all other proclamations of singular love all move their story to one place; it is the place of the height of feeling, and, also the place of the death of it. The Great Immured takes a look from a window that no longer exists.
To move quickly, to go with haste.
We dragged our unresponsive flesh to the place where we meet thee.
Corridors of vicious brambles and sharp-end smashed glass – these tours met with insolence and nonchalance. Hands torn in desperate pulls on barbed wire spurs, skin encrusted in assortments of filth.
Always just beyond, always just one more lifetime of effort away… Non-paths seemingly leading straight TO but then away FROM this exalting garden, and if hope had begun in the first place then it would surely end. And time…
Time passes, running in the direction of our next encounter. Oppressive in its overwhelming manner; requesting everything of thee, to offer up thy life, but in turn, thy life becoming enriched by it.
…and still time passes. That is until we and thee clasp hands once more in this sacred place of reflection and refraction.
Not even time can find us there.
The fire of thine eyes, the care of our lips.
Time sighs – it knows it can’t get us. It is nothing. Together we have escaped nothingness.
X X X
The parabolic mirror with a thousand eyes, a thousand stars, a thousand stares, stands majestic in its corner of overgrowth, cracking the damp concrete and remnants of another place upon which it now rests.
‘Lord’ we say ‘sever our souls.’
The thousand eyes, thousand stars, stare us down but not without sympathy.
Us vessel-snatchers know the power already.
Our prayer: when we go and meet in the garden of our dreams, let us lose our arms, lose our legs, melt into the air, cut our friends, cut our hair, melt into one.
But in this meeting, in the absence of time, in the weariness of these bodies that were not meant for us, the love of the parabolic mirror before us will give in, we will be entangled, as we already are, but we will be at play; at play freely in every sense of the word, at play always, never again lost and having to be found.
X X X
Every eye, every one of the thousand, of the thousand stars, must be stared to and at all at the same moment.
This is done.
The tearing sensation brings peace as much as the pain – the death of pain is swift, with the deftness of the promise of happiness bringing the relief.
As the visions of silence split, as the whole self splits, all sensation becomes far-away – still there but as though distanced by a tunnel; the light at the other end is clearly visible, however incomprehendable it may be, and so filtered by the air and space between.
X X X
The court of the parabolic mirror remained still. The eye and the star and the stare of each fragment sometimes darted quickly, seeing everything that can ever be seen, and sometimes looked lazily straight ahead. Nobody would ever find themselves in this part of the Otherlands again. But the promise of the parabolic mirror no longer mattered. It had performed the act of ultimate transformation it was always destined to. The stars would soon return home and the eyes would rest; the cracked glass would be covered with a wildfire moss and the passing of nothing would continue.
X X X
They played, hiding and seeking at opposite ends of the universes without fear of loss.
Play without the looming shadow of curfews.
Play without the need for justification.
Play without end.
The Great Immured turned from all he had seen before, bored, wishing that one day, true love would resemble something else, somewhere else. To take on a different form than a romantic notion of lost souls finding each other. Something he himself was guilty of.
THE ANGELS OF CREMATION CREMATE THE GREAT IMMURED
We witness
Without sympathy
But with love
Without warning thee from above
Of the terror and the peace that’s about to come
You’ll be our little grey sprinkles
Our magic little sprinkles
Our black and white cinders
Our tiny little presents to God.
THE BODY ABDICATOR
As now, during this final abdication of the body, leaves me unable to regard the room around me with any sense, the urge must lead somewhere.
This room… this room, its regard for me held in high contempt, this place itself as torture, this room with its ever changing features. It doesn’t allow me to sit and wait for everything to pass, this room.
There is the crying man in the corner. He cried. He says nothing, he cries. His crying un-comforts my inner child. His crying allows no words but I know its from a visceral memory, something he cant escape but I don’t even wish I could wish I could care.
I just want to move. To always move.
The Three Shades stand in formation, in pose, holding haggard in their stance their intention to lead. We lead each other. We understand each other. They accompany me and I them and then they are gone, or then I am gone; we are all gone. The Third Mind remains.
There is a ribbon I walk on, bending in and out of shape, in and out of time. There is a distant pounding, a drum march of war, a steady thunder getting further away and closer, concurrently. These are bodies without bodies all in front of me, all behind, all always moving, all moving together on this ribbon.
Without it, we are nothing. Without us, it means nothing.
All Previous Instalments Below:: Click On Image
Parts 13 – 15
Parts 10 – 12
Parts 7 – 9
Parts 4 – 6
Parts 1 – 3
Written by Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski
As you may know if you’re a regular follower of The Monolith Cocktail, we’ve been serialising a number of new novels and writings from debut authors over the last two years; beginning with Ayfer Simm‘s Istanbul pyschogeograhy A Rumor In Üsküdar in 2019. Following on Ayfer’s heels we’re now serialising the Lynchian semi-biographical and incomprehensible jukebox set wanderings of Dan Shea (Bordellos, Vukovar and Beauty Stab infamy) and Rick Clarke’s (bandmate of Shea and rallying beacon of the band Vukovar) new novel The Great Immurement: The previous twelve chapters of which have appeared over the last two months.
We continue with those semi-esoteric imaginings below and bring you next trio of penultimate chapters, ‘Moonlight’, ‘The Silent Surgeon’, and ‘Trial By Fly; illustrated as always by the illustrious Andrzej Klimowski.
MOONLIGHT
And so to the Moon The Great Immured did non-look. He stared and wished. A spectral figure appeared and approached. He told:
The symbols have now shattered.
I was free. I probably lived an unremarkable life and probably still do. But the symbols did shatter, and they shattered for me and my Otherlands – the space between spaces.
The backstory:
It could be described as a romance. Lunar. A silent romance. We started to notice each other from afar, as these things normally demand have happen. I learned it could’ve been because of the connection between the dripdripdrip of the bloodbloodblood in the absence of Motherhood.
In vials I collected this space between fertility and held it up to the space between day. With a desperate, knowing affection we bathed in each other’s appearance. It became an obsession to the point where I refused to acknowledge its solar non-equivalent – convinced was I that this was an imposter, evil in its way, casting light on things that ought not be lit.
When I thought about my moon, I would think about the mechanics and likeliness and consequences of its perforation.
I could grow a penis. I would sharpen the very end into a point with the veil’s blade and gently press it against the tough silvery surface, like against an eardrum, and hold it in a position just before its desecration. My limbs would twitch in a glorious anticipation. I would enjoy that position for a lifetime; neither in life nor crossing the threshold into death. Its skin, a leathery elastic, at peak indentation.
I now feel that sickly feeling in the very pit of the stomach whereby I want to do something with all my might but with all my might know I shouldn’t, like holding something fragile and valuable out of a high window, or stepping from the chair with rope-tight-round-neck. Eventually it’s going to drop, by accident or perpetrator’s design.
I press that little bit further forward with grown, sharpened penis and it begins. A warm ooze coming over me, sticky and thick. It’s only a small opening so I drive myself in and out and in and out and in and out again and the scent is of… the feel is of… the sound is of… the taste is of… the sight is of… I can’t speculate on this.
After a few encounters I lost everything there ever was except for my love’s glow. “I am the light” said it, and “The Light Is My Leader” said I; LVX MEA DVX.
It got bigger and bigger.
Each previous encounter it was flirting with other things, dancing with the formless smoke and clouds. But I didn’t mind. However, one clear night it had eyes only for me and me alone. That was the night…
I rose, PM. I would soon be feeling the true force of nature. I don’t know much about so-called cosmic forces and I find ridiculous the way people talk about them. But I felt what I felt.
It was the moon, my lover, my king, my queen and all things in between.
I stepped outside into our eternal garden – I didn’t feel the cold.
I looked up and saw the moon, full, in all its glory.
The clouds were moving unusually quickly.
A hole remained in them, connecting me and my love so that its gaze would not stray, connecting us personally, speaking to me.
I finally managed to give myself over almost completely, ignoring the dark symbols surrounding and being formed by clouds, and, after seeing and feeling the earth upon which I stand moving, I shut my eyes. I felt the pull. I didn’t quite leave the ground. Had I tuned in wholly I’m convinced I would have.
I felt totally at peace.
The being collapsed into the atmosphere around itself. The Great Immured, briefly, saw the moon’s glow through the thick impenetrable walls of his Immurement and continued with his self-sacrificed placement with few other questions.
THE SILENT SURGEON
The once-partner and now nevermore makes an appearance through a photograph, through mind’s eye, through misunderstood hazy recall.
The Lady Of The Otherlands convinced herself she was now too weighty. Too much indulgence and ingestion of filths, she thought, that’s the reason the things of the Otherlands no longer caved into her charms… but that wasn’t true. She had gotten older, her face and body less structured. And the other things she thought of around her were just figments of the ever greying fog that clouded the rooms and ante-chambers of her thoughts and living arrangements.
In her area a very famous surgeon now resided. So celebrated were his soul and hands that he was rewarded with being kept hidden from the outside world. His skills had not been tested thoroughly in a while. He was unable to practise on himself as his infatiguable enthusiasm had rendered his own body almost useless. So when the Lady presented her broken specimen before him, were he able to express his delight, he would’ve done.
“I need an operation.”
“…”
“It’s for my wellbeing, sexually and physically.”
“…”
“Can you not just slice some off or whatever you do?”
“I can pay you.”
“Please, no. Medical well being only. None other surgery.”
The lady went away knowing what must be done. Flesh must be gone. She would grow flesh that must be cut away, as the uncontrollable growth would be considered harmful to the well being.
It became all in her power to cultivate and farm the little things that become bigger things until the black mass was in charge of itself.
The rumours that the great surgeon had disappeared or moved on were not true. She found him in the same place. His non-movement and non-breathing meant that the Lady had to undergo the operation by her own hand, under the silent guidance of The Silent Surgeon.
A long and not painless time later, the Lady emerged from her desecrated operating table, clutching the carvings against her breast, tightly and darkly. It represented the heaviness of the weight she had successfully lost. She felt attractive once more and spent her time trying to quench her unyielding thirst for all things to be inside her.
TRIAL BY FLY
A strange noise. Familiar but reminiscent of almost nothing at all.
The ceilings tall.
The windows tiny and infrequent.
The rooms infinite.
Everywhere would be white but for the flies and the tape – the tape yellowing on white surfaces no longer visible, covered by masses and masses
and masses and masses and masses
And masses and masses and masses
x7
of flies… tiny little things forming the decoration, little black bodies everywhere.
The purpose? The purpose…
Experimentation. No. Engineering.
To build a set of wings from their wings but the power and size to fly a thing of this power, of this size.
Shaped angelic like.
To fly!
No other material is so abundant. No other material is so suitable.
It’s all about appropriation.
Or re-appropriation.
The collecting of flies has taken a long while. But that isn’t something to notice. The ideation is nearly intention.
The process is what it is. Every piece of tape needs to be checked for the newly-captured-still-winged.
A snip and a slice later and the wings to a new place have grown. Heavenly is the warmth of pride and promise of completion. Satisfying is the rip and parting of torn wing from now-torn body.
X X X
Only one more set is needed.
A furious search is conducted; hectics, urgent; all previous patience dissipated for this search for new patients. This search feels an eternal thing.
…
…
…
X X X
But now the search is over. A winged fiend. No, a winged friend… is splay on its front, spatchcock, given itself to the triumph of the will.
This last one is to be s.a.v.o.u.r.e.d and savioured.
A martyr for O murta.
Thumb and forefinger are positioned and the operation is begun.
But a quiver.
A quiver?
A quiver and a noise. A tiny noise.
A quiver and a scream?
No.
Pain? Torture?
Everywhere around in this impossible place… flies flies flies… destroyed.
Oceans of it.
Suddenly, very suddenly, it all becomes noticeable at once. A cacophony of minuscule screams rises until the brains feel as though swelling to burst.
There is no repentance that can be done, only a gesture.
X X X
A collection of still-winged flies are manically sought, freed and message conveyed.
The wings of sin are now finished.
This product of despicable engineering and this engineer of despicable engineering are now let loose.
The Otherlands and the sensation of flying is a total peace, a total manifestation of ambient.
X X X
Flies form a convoy.
They know their seeker of forgiveness will follow wilfully, and follows just so into the nest of exaltation.
The once angelic-wings are torn from flesh, from grace, and taken apart.
The body follows soon after.
Previous instalments:
Parts 1 – 3
Parts 4 – 6
Parts 7 – 9
Parts 10- 12
Written by Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski
Expanding the Monolith Cocktail’s remit to include more in the way of new literature and poetic musings of a kind, we are pleased to announce the serialization of burgeoning author and rallying beacon of the band Vukovar Rick Clarke’s new novel The Great Immurement. Following on from the first three chapters, kindly and perceptively illustrated by the much-respected Andrzej Klimowski, you can now read the next trio of chapters below.
THE GIRL AND THE PLAY-THING
The Great Immured/I/Us/They still absorb the contents of this sticky, crumpled paper from time to all-time. The letter received:
Said the girl to her play-thing:
‘Sometimes I feel you don’t belong… anywhere’
She stroked
And stroked
And thought…
‘Except I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere else – I would be enraged… inconsolable…’
And so they sat upon their metallic plinth, the rust gathering rust in their infinite day-time play-time.
The play-thing, red, raw, balding and seeping felt it belonged … anywhere … except its current placement, and so it left.
The girl cried. She ignored the pain of the departing-wound, with all the blood, pus, open flesh and swinging innards and all else with it, and instead, she felt the pain of her lament for her greatest lover.
All day she cried.
All day….
All day….
All-Every-Day.
On her plinth, in the outskirts of the inner Otherlands – not quite all white, all light – she cried.
The play-thing had escaped into the inner Otherlands – all white, all light – and lost itself in amongst other clawing appendages of desires and almost irretrievably gave itself to the brutality.
It found peace and rested.
The girl did not stop crying. The departing-wound was healed to a smooth white mound, hairs penetrated the flesh (inwards and outwards) unevenly at uncoordinated angles.
The play-thing heard the sobs. The glistening, slightly sticky tears it could see without seeing were replicated in excitement rather than despair.
The play-thing found the girl. An arrival-wound could not be forced. However, the two were reconciled in a new way; a happy ending for both.
Sometimes these crumpled, sticky papers would get more crumpled and sticky at differing alltimes. Unreadable, in fact.
THE PARTIAL SEIZURE
To the doctor RE: Immurement – there are things my/our body/hole is doing without instruction ||| INFORM ME THAT I MAY REINSTRUCT THEE ||| Yes doctor.
In the Otherlands – I know longer know anywhere else – the temporal shifts are plentiful.
The rooms and the dimensions… the shapes… constantly change – permanent revolution, something I would wish on noone.
The shift comes.
LOSE YOURSELF TO IT AND DESCRIBE FULLY ||| … .
I don’t hate the weirds I see in the street. They amuse me. I find them amusing. I find it amusing that they can’t detect their own filthy stench when everybody else can. Unwashed flesh, soiled clothes… the piss of their cats spray from their throat as they invent nonsensical sentences…outloud… to themselves of course. Who else will listen?
An all too familiar summer’s breeze passes over and through my skin. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, overlapping with real time, causing sickness and nausea before I’m even aware of the fact. I’m disconnected. I’m watching myself from within myself. My thoughts are about my thoughts. Maybe the faint sound of music that’s drifting into my insides from a nearby side-street is the cause, maybe it’s the scent of some familiar-unfamiliar fauna or washing powder. Maybe it’s everything combined. Whatever the trigger, I’m hit.
A rising liquid warmth from the pit of my stomach spreads upwards through my chest, across to my fingertips and upwards once more to every nook and darkened lump in my brain.
It isn’t possible to overstate the sickness.
I see what’s in front of me as any non-blind does, but I see more… There’re images that I
can’t
quite
identify.
I can understand them for no more than a nano second, these pictures are seen with eyes open, mixed in some impossible way with the reality that’s in front of me.
I glimpse a man who I recognise and instantly unrecognise. I just about hold in the vomit.
This is the point where my deitic coronation and entitlement reigns supreme. I know all, I see all, I have lived everything that is going to happen, my foresight shows me what I am about to live, a second in advance. Just a second.
And it’s all true.
For half a minute I am the King of all things. And then… again…
I’m hit.
The line of time – the timeline – that is lay out before me, by me, collapses immediately under noteven-close scrutiny. Everything was and is ridiculous, nonsensical… This future that had been crafted that fitted glove-like now appeared to be like the crackpot ramblings of the cat-piss-breathweirds I saw before. For now, they don’t amuse me anymore. I feel hatred and I feel no sympathy for these scums. It won’t last, I know when I’m next out in amongst them, I’ll giggle inwardly at a rogue flailer, escaping with a childlike glee from its carer.
I get home and my body purges itself, uncontrolled by my mind or my will, and I rest. Nothing feels completely real for a v v v long while after, not until the next day.
HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO THROUGH THIS? ||| Every moment of every time. ||| … ||| What can you do? Relieve me. ||| NOTHING. ||| Help me. ||| NO. EMBRACE THE ALL-KNOWLEDGE. YOU CAN RELIEVE YOU AND YOU CAN RELIVE YOU. RELIVE YOUR OWN DECAY. ||| … .
WOMB OF ALL THINGS TO DIE
In which The Great Immured thought of himself, sang to himself, trapped himself.
Though any future of you and I
Was hastily stored and shut inside
The womb of all things to die,
Still I await you, arms open wide.
And though briefly this foetus came alive
And escaped its home in the deathly bride
The Motherly noose was quickly tied;
The babe now rots in its natal slime.
I swim the lakes of happiness denied
With each stroke I am to defy
Our deceased future over which I have cried
To punish myself in self-righteous, self-spite.
Through this act I manage to say goodbye
To the terminal tumour that engulfs my pride
And though I’ve longed and lusted and tried
I let it go to let it lie.
Rick Clarke
Parts One to three here…
Our Daily Bread 310: Interview: Beauty Stab
March 22, 2019
Interview: Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Beauty Stab are Dan Shea and Buddy Preston, two former members of the, highly tipped at one time, Goth rock industrial folk band Vukovar, who left to share their love of post punk, disco and 60s/70s/80s pop to the world. Their current three track EP has been one of this year’s musical highlights a stunning release bringing back the much missed and much needed glamour, heartbreak and bedsit seediness to the pop world.
Why did you leave Vukovar?
Buddy: For the love of music and art, we needed a change of scenery. For a while, I fell out of love with producing music and was finding myself feeling so emotionally detached from it. Upon leaving Vukovar, I initially didn’t want to do music anymore and concentrated instead on other artistic ventures for a while. But music is where the heart is.
Dan: I’ve no desire to dwell on that or air dirty laundry. All that needs to be said is that I did.
What made you form Beauty Stab?
B: The need to carry on pursuing making art and music with a close friend. I know that anything Dan writes is genius and I hope he thinks that my contributions do them some justice. Whilst in Vukovar, I wanted to record Dan’s rejected songs because I always saw something in them in a way I knew I could make them work.
D: The current landscape musically is devoid of sex and danger. Our society is moving backwards at a frightening rate. Even though we are at present operating on a very small scale, I really want to one day be to some confused queer kid living in the middle of nowhere what Marc Almond or David Bowie was in years past (or John Balance from Coil was to me). I am queer in both senses – I am gay but more crucially I am fucking Weird. Our homos should not be homogenised. We are not milk, although Harvey was. Queer is not just about sexuality – I’ve been lucky enough to know straight people with very queer sensibilities and cursed enough to know gay people who are cripplingly pedestrian. There are others doing this at the moment – SOPHIE would be one that’d spring to mind, she made my favourite singles of 2018 (It’s ‘Okay to Cry’ which is a beautiful song and ‘Ponyboy’ which is just sheer filth).
But no one is doing it in the field we operate in. It’s full of hopelessly glamour-less people with beards who make the right noises and have the right political opinions but they’re making sexless facsimiles of records made by people who, shock horror, listened to stuff by people who didn’t look and sound exactly like them. Or maybe they are but I’m not meeting them. If you’re out there please get in touch with me through the obligatory Beauty Stab social media because lord knows I need a friend. If you’re not already doing it, put some makeup on however badly, wear some nice patterns and poke at a synth ineptly and I would love to share a bill with you. I’m into the idea that left-wing politics doesn’t have to be austere and devoid of joy. Bronski Beat strike a chord with me far more than some dullard with an acoustic guitar telling me what I already know in a way I don’t want to hear.
I know it’s also an ABC reference but Beauty Stab is a powerful combination of words. A shard of luxury you don’t actually have to be able to afford because we’re there, you’re here, it’s now and this is the only time we have. In my current crop headed state, Buddy’s the Beauty and I’m the Stab. Bad news from a pretty mouth.
What are your influences?
B: Life experiences, tales of old, people we appreciate. Musically, whatever we’re listening to at that moment. We’re creating mixtape style playlists for various streaming media to let people know what we love right now, and maybe we can enlighten some people.
Dan: Quote Clothes – “girl group hymns and jackboot disco”.
Different movements really. Musically, all the people listed in England’s Hidden Reverse with Coil being the best. We like lots of Italo disco and Chicago house and Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Prince, etc. Those people were emulating. We’re also massive, massive fans of Rowland S Howard and pretty much anything he touched. Then there’s all the obvious Bowie, Iggy, Roxy, Lou Reed. Then there’s girl group records and by default anyone who has the sense to plagiarise them.
Then we’re also influenced by how shit everything is, and also the ethos that riot grrrl bands and people like Crass had even if the artwork and the ideas are invariably more interesting than the music which is a bit sonically conservative and paint by numbers.
You worked with many established artists with Vukovar, have you any plans to collaborate with any with Beauty Stab? Or are going to rely on your own talent?
B: We’ve played with some people that have really inspired us as artists; so to call those friends now is incredible. I wouldn’t want to rely on those with an already established fan base, we wouldn’t say no to the right people, of course.
D: That’s a bit of a pointed question isn’t it? We’ll see what happens. There are people I’d love to work with but whether it was as Beauty Stab or part of their project or something else entirely is another consideration. We’ve both got a very definite vision and aesthetic for what we’re doing and that may morph over time but anyone who we did work with would have to fulfil two criteria.
- If we can do it, we do it. If we can’t then we’ll bring them in.
- This ship has no passengers. I only want to work with people who have ideas of their own and can contribute to the creative process: not a glorified plug in we’re scripting or trading on the value of the name of. An example of someone I’d love to work with would be Karl Blake. I keep asking him. He’s not released a record in decades. Mick Harvey plays on about half of my record collection but that’s never going to happen. We’re obviously going to collaborate with the Mekano Set because they’re our friends.
Are you going to stay as a two-piece or have you any plans to expand the line up?
B: We plan on having quite an interchangeable line up depending on what type of gigs we’re attending. For now, we’re using all sorts of machines, synths and tapes to help us get the live sound we want. But in the future, we would love to play our songs with a full band.
D: I’m open to ideas.
Any gigs planned? Plans for the near future?
D: Our live setup is mostly composed of broken equipment, also utilising drums and sequenced bass tracks played off a tape recorder a la OMD. As such there are no dates to announce – we are in talks with several different venues and I’m looking forward to making everyone of any gender in the audience pregnant solely through the means of my voice and dancing. If that doesn’t work Buddy is categorically the best looking man in the world so there’s always that. I can only imagine that even blind and deaf people could develop a crush on him.
The recently released Beauty Stab EP, O Eden, can be downloaded from all usual outlets or from Metal Postcard Records bandcamp.
Words: Brian Shea
Quarterly Playlist Revue 2018: Part Four: Deerhunter, Jimi Tenor, Open Mike Eagle, Marianne Faithfull…
December 11, 2018
Playlist: Selected by Dominic Valvona/ Matt Oliver
Priding ourselves on the diverse, pan-global playlists we collate for your aural pleasure and indulgence, the Monolith Cocktail Quarterly Revue series is the eclectic behemoth of them all. With no demarcation of any kind or rules we mix the harrowing and gothic with beckoning polyrhythmic dancefloor screamers, flights of panoramic fantasy with raging protestations, and the most sublime peregrinations with experimental cries from the wilderness.
Everything you find on this playlist has either featured on the site over the last three months or been in our general orbit (the sheer volume of music we get sent means there is inevitably issues of space and time, and so some great tracks just don’t make it; this is our chance to feature those lost tracks).
We’ve also included the previous three playlists. And only leaves me to say on behalf of the Monolith Cocktail, thank you for supporting us during 2018.
Tracks:
Deerhunter ‘Death in Midsummer’
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets ‘My Friend’s A Liquid’
Brace! Brace! ‘Whales’
Slift ‘Fearless Eye’
Stika Sun ‘Psychedelic Three’
Jimi Tenor ‘Walzeth’
Fofoulah ‘Kaddy’
Paula Rae Gibson & Kit Downes ‘If You Ask Me’
The Alchemist ‘Mac 10 Wounds (Instrumental)’
François de Roubaix ‘Amour Sur Les Rails’
Homeboy Sandman & Edan ‘The Gut’
Thom Yorke ‘Suspirium’
Open Mike Eagle ‘Single Ghosts’
Westside Gunn & Benny ‘B.I.G Luther Freestyle’
Apollo Brown & Joell Ortiz ‘That Place’
Lyrics Born & Aloe Blacc ‘Can’t Lose My Joy’
Chuck D ‘freedBLACK’
Beans with ZVK & Dan Wenniger ‘The Ugly, The Ugly, And The Ugly’
Unloved ‘Love’
Marianne Faithfull ‘They Come At Night’
Ex:Re ‘I Can’t Keep You’
Masta Ace & Marco Polo ft. Pearl Gates ‘Still Love Her’
Damu The Fudgemunk ‘Fire’
MysDiggi ‘Evil Within’
Bixiga 70 ‘Primeiramente’
The Scorpios ‘Mashena’
Moulay Ahmed El Hassani ‘Lklam Lakhar’
The Rebels Of Tijuana ‘Erotique’
Cappo & Cyrus Malachi ‘Aqua Lungi’
Annexe The Moon ‘Full Stop’
Paul Jacobs ‘Easy (Warm Weather)’
Gloria ‘Heavy’
Deanna Petcoff ‘Stress’
David Cronenberg’s Wife ‘Rules’
Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam ‘Running From My Ghost’
Insolito UniVerso ‘Vuelve’
François de Roubaix ‘Daughters Of Darkness Opening’
Vukovar & Michael Cashmore ‘Little Gods’
Cousin Silas & The Glove Of Bones ‘Saturn Incoming Dub’
Qluster ‘Lindow’
Refree ‘Tirania’
Society Of The Silver Cross ‘When You’re Gone’
Steve Gunn ‘New Moon’
Ben Osborn ‘Fast Awake’
Panda Bear ‘Dolphin’
Delicate Steve ‘O Little Town Of Bethlehem’
Part Three
Part Two
Part One
Our Daily Bread 286: Vukovar/Michael Cashmore ‘Monument’
November 12, 2018
Album Review: Dominic Valvona
Vukovar/Michael Cashmore ‘Monument’ 16th November 2018
Another month, another three-syllable entitled grandly Gothic statement from Vukovar; on this occasion traversing the void with Current 93 stalwart and producer/composer Michael Cashmore, who appears under the guises of his Nature And Organization nom de plume.
A congruous in what is a melancholy harrowing romance partnership with the morbidly curious Vukovar, Cashmore leads with a vaporous, industrial and often godly (whichever God/Gods they be) brutalist swathe of sagacious moodiness and narration; adding to the already despairing lament that is Vukovar’s signature.
Deadly committed to the point of alienating everyone they work with, Vukovar’s fraught collaborations may end in acrimony, but the results musically are always first rate and dramatic; this latest breaking-of-bread partnership proving to be among their best work so far. It’s impossible to tell where Cashmore ends and Vukovar begin, and vice versa, and who’s album this actually is. Arguably inheritors of Current 93 and, even more so, Coil’s gnostic-theological mysticism and brooding venerable communions, Cashmore seems the obvious foil. Current’s The Innermost Light and Coil’s (and John Balance’s swan song as it were) The Ape Of Naples both permeate this conceptual opus.
As ever, reflecting the band’s reading material, monument is fueled by Hermetic occultists, despondent followers of Thelma, Dante’s visions of purgatory and redemption, and, to a point, architectural analogy. Inhabiting the concrete musically and materially, twisting post-punk, Kosmische, industrial and early British synth-pop, Vukovar and their partner in this gloomy trudge through the wastelands produce an apocalyptic hymn of gauze-y supernatural resignation and dreamy visages.
Straddling two slabs of vinyl, Monument’s indulgences are given ample room to haunt the listener. Shorter narrations and passages fade into more fully realized songs. Shorter pieces like the ‘This Brutal World’ feature a reading of a most despondent, mopey even, extract from Alice In Wonderland (the sad Walrus’ ‘sweeping away’ metaphor sounding even more plaintive read out in this setting) and fairytale surrealist, erring towards the unsettling, twinkled xylophone, followed by more expanded visions of yearning dark arts. When the band and their host do emerge from the ether, the Gothic experimentation features a more melodious, dare I even suggest catchy, quality; even in its most stark sleepless eulogy form, with a chorus like, “In a dream she’s always dying/One day she may awake”, taken from the Bauhaus swirling cathedral indie ‘Little Gods’, there is a certain surge of broody dynamism and anthem.
Vocally for the most part, both the voices of Vukovar and Cashmore’s dulcet, lower tones are layered over each other; some sung, though mostly spoken, uttered, howled and cried-out. On the middle section of the ‘Visions In Silence’ cycle (following the edict entitled nod to Rosicrucian championing physic and occult icon, Robert Fludd, ‘Utrique Cosmi Et Sic In Infinitum’) the “exist as I exist” mantra and ruinous decaying lyrical morose could be by Alan Moore, and the off-kilter jerking march of the no-wave ‘The Duty Of Mothers’ sounds like an unholy alliance between John Betjeman and Aleister Crowley.
From haunting melodrama to harrowing decay, unrequited love to radiant escape, the loss of innocence and youth to sagacious death rattles, Vukovar prove ideal torchbearers of the cerebral Gothic sound and melancholic romanticism. A meeting of cross-generational minds with both partners on this esoteric immersive experience fulfilling their commitments, Monument shows a real progression for Vukovar, and proves a perfect vehicle for Cashmore’s uncompromising but afflatus ideas to flourish in new settings, whilst confirming his reputation and status. Whatever happens next, this ambitious work will prove a most fruitful and lasting highlight in the Vukovar cannon; one that’s growing rapidly, six albums in with a seventh already recorded; another ‘momentous’ statement that affirms the band’s reputation as one of the UK’s most important new bands.
Our Daily Bread 277: Premiere: Vukovar ‘Infinitum’
June 23, 2018
Premiere: Review: Words: Dominic Valvona
Vukovar ‘Infinitum’ Le Recours Forêts Production, 8th July 2018
Not since Richey Edwards etched ‘4 Real’ in blood across his arm, or Ian Curtis decided to hang himself have artists and bands taken themselves so seriously and to such extremes to prove their commitment to a musical cause; or even before that, checked out of for good at the ’27 club’. The romantically despondent and incredulous Vukovar are, in this non-committal age of vacuous validation and smoke, very much cut from that same cloth. Even their band name is taken from a most serious harrowing episode of modern barbarism: Vukovar the infamous and harrowing Croatian city where 300 poor souls, mostly Muslims, were rounded up and barbarically executed by Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav Peoples Army (the worst committed atrocity of its kind since WWII) during the implosive Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Easily one of the UK underground’s most promising bands, if not among the most important in the last five years, Vukovar have already produced a sizable catalogue of material; though each release barely has time to sink into the public consciousness before another ambitious epic replaces it. Infinitum is unquestionably one of the band’s deepest, darkest and mysterious records yet; inspired no doubt by recent events and the wearisome ebb and flow of jeopardy that surrounds them. Living by their art – almost dying by it in fact -, Vukovar are not to be taken lightly.
Consistently snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and hardly adverse to self-sabotage, Vukovar have despite countless mishaps, frustrations and fall-outs managed to release a quartet of three-syllable sloganize entitled albums of morbid Gothic and post-punk curiosity in that time. Their latest, and fifth, Infinitum pulls at the mortal coil of human misery in a murky quagmire. An endless backing track of reverberating delayed snare strikes, a rolling timpani bounding bass drum, esoteric stately sounding waltzes, unwieldy bestial guitar, resigned new romantic synth and escaped melodies muddily, and often amorphously, swim and oscillate around a combination of longing, if worn down and depressed, swooning vocals and Rimbaud-meets-Crowley-meets-Kant-on-the-edge-of-an-abyss poetic despairing narration, on what is a bleak if at times gloriously dark beauty of an album.
Often channeling the spirit of Ian Curtis (though not so much alter-worshipping the miserabilist icon as imbued by him), Scott Walker, The The, Martin Rev, David Sylvain and The Sisters Of Mercy on not just this album but the previous four opuses, it’s the ghostly echoes of Alan Vega’s inimitable rock’n’roll croon and nod to the melancholic heart of Spector’s girl group maladies that can be heard on the album’s most swaddled and beautifully sad song, ‘The Destroying Place’. And the album’s grand finale, delivered with a shade of monastic incantation, ‘Remains’, with its odd sound collage passages of insect-like chatter, strange foreign voices, far off screams and pitch-shift centrifugal motion effects, sounds vocally like John Cale sharing narration duties with his old Velvet’s honcho, Lou Reed.
Bound-up in their own self-imposed limitations, these anarchistic dreamers go one further than the Hebrew code of law commandments by adhering to 13 of their own; each one a rule or restriction in the recording process that couldn’t be broken, at any cost. So strict were these conditions that even if the band were close to finishing the album, any infringement no matter how minor, would result in the entire sessions being abandoned. Mercifully they made it through to the end; releasing a troubled, bleak lo fi ritualistic romance of an album.
Vukovar, even if the resignation and despondency in the music reflects a broken spirit just waiting for the end times and a final release, are growing in confidence and creativity; stretching themselves to encompass the Gothic and miserable but also brilliant at escaping the murky waters’ pull of desperation to occasionally break free into the light with bursts of radiant post-punk pop excellence.
Pouring fuel on a bonfire of vanities, whilst pouring out their hearts, this serious act recoil from the spotlight with nothing short of contempt for many of their peers; frustrating even fans, and once again limiting the album’s release physically; confining it to a special limited edition number run on cassette tape.
The fact they can back it up, gives them an edge, way ahead of the usual indie and post-punk fodder we’re normally fed on a daily basis. As the bland-lead-the-bland in a merry dance, Vukovar, as they did on their last single, read from the cerebral, philosophical and the political in a ‘Clockwork Dance’ towards the precipice of doom; their fifth album no less polemical and important.
Dominic Valvona
Previous Vukovar reviews:
Emperor LP
Fornication LP
Puritan LP
The Clockwork Dance Single
Exclusive: Sankofa share their latest video, ‘Into The Wild’
February 3, 2017
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
Words: Dominic Valvona
Intoxicatingly beckoned by their satanic majesties into the subterranean, the bewitching new single from the reputable morbidly curious Liverpool band Sankofa, Into The Wild, is a sassy, knowing two-geared esoteric augur. Following hot on the heels of their last, and equally daemonic psych single, All The While, ahead of the band’s debut album (released later this year), this entrancing incandescent liquid lightshow video adorned doom-monger shifts from a malady of Crime And The City Solution style tremolo twanged gothic country, The Doors and The Creeps, to a final unyielding, heavy rock guitar crescendo. In case you missed the subtle hints and miasma, both sonically and lyrically, the cover art can’t help but give you nightmares, alluding as it does to very real metaphors of puritanical regimes and their witch-hunts.
Into The Wild will be released by the, burgeoning, independent Glasgow-based In Black Records label (home to Acting Strange and Mark McGowan) on the 3rd March 2017; for now, you can catch our exclusive taster video.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 