akira rabelais: spellwauerynsherde

Boomkat Editions offers the first-ever vinyl edition of Spellwauerynsherde, a masterpiece from LA-based artist Akira Rabelais, originally released on CD by David Sylvian's Samadhisound label in 2004. It comprises a suite of seven medieval choral pieces which have been sublimated and recomposed via Rabelais's self-built Argeïphontes Lyre software. The results arguably stand as one of the 21st century's greatest musical enigmas and could be said to presage contemporary obsessions with processed vocals in a deeply uncanny manner, enduring to resonate with up-to-the-moment music as much as the record's distant roots in the seminal works of 12th century German mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen, and the writings of John Milton, among others. Spellwauerynsherde has always been crying out for a vinyl issue and Rabelais has done the piece proud with this sensitive new version, allowing its seven parts to gently flow in sequence over both sides, with the added shroud of vinyl infidelity lending a beautifully subtle patina of detachment which perhaps only serves to heighten the paradoxical -- both temporal, spatial and timbral -- nature of the record's ethereal vestibules and elusive, illusory sonic specters. In remodeling these ancient works of art, Rabelais performs a sort of hypermodern animism on ostensibly dead musical material -- dead as in hardly anyone knows or plays them in the modern age -- imbuing them with a contemporary relevance through the process of his bespoke software (which is freely available to download) which serves to faithfully render, open-up new dimensions and plasmic aspects from work which is now nearly a millennia old -- so old you can't even call it classical music. Spellwauerynsherde has set a benchmark for experiments with ancient composition and computer music -- each immersion in this vinyl is akin to floating through the mists of time and will sends shivers down your spine just even thinking or writing about it, never mind listening. Spellwauerynsherde is one of the most magickal, perplexing, and strangely life-giving records that you'll ever hear. Photography by Jacqueline Roberts; Design by Michael Worthington. Lacquer cut at Dubplates & Mastering.