Have Secret Chiefs 3 just entered the studio? Is the long awaited and much anticipated Book of Souls nearing a release?
Who knows, posty has the goss though. Check it out.
He also has an excellent write up of the recent Melvins Eugene gig and a cool pic from Ches Smith’s FB:
You may remember Sanne Vinter from such epic photo sets as these babies. This time around she has been clicky click on Secret Chiefs 3 when they were in her neck of the wood.
A pleasant surprise from the Secret Chiefs 3 camp! Yesterday WoM announced that they will be releasing a new album titled Satellite Supersonic Vol. 1 on May 25th.
The album consists of reworked and remastered tracks from the 7 inchers that were released a few years ago, along with a few other rarities from the “satellite bands”.
The press release also mentions that the long awaited follow up to Book of Horizon’s, Book of Souls will also be released “this fall”.
Satellite Supersonic Vol. 1. Tracklist
1. UR – Circumambulation
2. ISHRAQIYUN – Balance of the 19
3. ELECTROMAGNETIC AZOTH – Ubik
4. UR – Kulturvultur
5. ISHRAQIYUN – Balthassar : Melchior : Kaspar
6. ELECTROMAGNETIC AZOTH – The Left Hand of Nothingness
7. UR – Anthropomorphisis : Boxleitner
8. ?
1,2 and 6 are digital remixes of previously released vinyl versions, 5 has not been previously released, 7 is the original UR version, and 3 and 4 are extended (original) versions remixed for digital.
Official Press Release
“Satellite Supersonic
2010With their long-awaited album Book of Souls due to hit the shelves this fall, Secret Chiefs 3 have chosen this moment to bring the digital world up to date on some of the clandestine (i.e. vinyl-only) activities of the SC3 “satellite bands.” In 2007, a string of 7-inch records by these groups were all snatched up by fans within just over a month, leaving many potential listeners feeling a bit left out. Web of Mimicry is pleased to announce that eight tracks from UR, Ishraqiyun and Electromagnetic Azoth have made it on to Satellite Supersonic Vol. 1, and five of them are from those coveted 7-inch records!
In true Secret Chiefs 3 fashion, these tracks were not just rehashed “as is” from their 2007 vinyl masters and hastily transferred to bits and bytes. Rather, each track was given a full studio work-over in early 2010 for this CD. The band, which is about to tour Eastern Europe, Turkey and Israel, originally intended this as a low-key tour release, but such new life was breathed into the tunes in the process of remixing them (some of them even having new and expanded arrangements) that the whole project deserved to be presented as something more substantial.
To that end, Satellite Supersonic Vol. 1 really takes off when Secret Chiefs 3 adds a brand new, previously unreleased track to the Ishraqiyun repertoire. Yep, a new one. A killer. Also, an old UR favorite from Book of Horizons (2004) abandons the Secret Chiefs 3 nest completely, in order to roost in a more UR-specific “proto-mix.” No one can say whether this song jumped forward 6 years or back 26… or maybe this is the origi- nal, and the version released in 2004 is an impenetrable hyper-dimension- al layer-cake shakily built upon the more solid foundations heard here.
For good measure, one more song (this time a true uber-rarity of mysterious origin from 1998) completes Satellite Supersonic Vol. 1—a bonus track that is a nostalgic foretaste of ancient things that haven’t happened yet. That’s the speed of it. Seasoned SC3 listeners are accustomed to fast-moving objects in space in the form of satellite bands warping time and tonality along the impossible curvatures of the mother-band’s cosmic-geometrical schemata. And they sit at the center of that universe along with the band, watching it all unfold. But now, with Satellite Supersonic Vol. 1, every listener with a CD player gets a palpable, close-up and intimate view from inside three of the wandering stars in the twinkling SC3 sky.
Please note that this is a PREORDER. The CD’s official release date is May 25, 2010. Orders that contain this product may be delayed until a shipment on or before May 25.”
http://www.webofmimicry.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=88
Secret Chiefs 3 have added a few more stops to their upcoming Euro tour: ISTANBUL: TURKEY, TEL AVIV: ISRAEL, SOPHIA: BULGARIA, TIMISOARA: ROMANIA, WELS: AUSTRIA, ESSEN: GERMANY
The full dates (as posted at WOM)
28.04 / WELS (au) @ Schl8hof
Alter Schl8hof Wels – Dragonerstraße 22 – 4600 Wels – Austria.
20:30 – 8/10 €
_______
29.04 / BRNO (cz) @ Melodka
Kounicova 20/22 – Brno 602 00 – Czech.
20:00 – 150/190 czk
_______
03.05 / BUDAPEST (hu) @ A38
Pet?fi híd – budai hídf? (Near Petöfi Bridge Muegyetem Rakpart) – 1117 Budapest – Hungary.
20:00 – 1500/2000 huf
_______
04.05 / TIMISOARA (ro) @ Set Up
Pestalozzi Street no. 22 – 30000 Timisoara – Romania.
20:00 – 10/20 lei Continue reading
11.05.10 / ZAGREB (hr) @ Teatar &td
12.05.10 / LJUBLJANA (sl) @ Kino Siska
17.05.10 / GENEVE (ch) @ L’Usine
18.05.10 / MÂCON (fr) @ Cavazik
19.05.10 / NANCY (fr) @ L’Autre Canal
25.05.10 / SAINT NAZAIRE (fr) @ Vip
26.05.10 / BOURGES (fr) @ Nadir
27.05.10 / MONTPELLIER (fr) @ Secret Place
28.05.10 / MARSEILLE (fr) @ L Embobineuse
29.05.10 / DÜDINGEN (ch) @ Bad Bonn
02.06.10 / AARHUS (dk) @ Stubnitz
03.06.10 / HAMBURG (de) @ Hafenklang
05.06.10 / PARIS (fr) @ Jardin de la Villette
06.06.10 / TOURCOING (fr) @ Grand Mix
There is a good quality audio boot of the recent Secret Chiefs 3 Masada show in Barcelona featuring Fred Frith on the first of July 2009. There is also a gallery of piccies from the show.
Thanks to Diego for the tip
As part of the North Sea Jazz Festival this weekend, of which John Zorn is Artist in Residence, Secret Chiefs 3 will be playing Masada (Xaphan?) on the Yukon stage.
“With a show that is freaky, sometimes rock hard, but especially enchanting, Secret Chiefs 3 is able to transport its audience into the dark cellars of the musical underworld. During the Jazz Rocks! theme on Saturday on the Yukon stage, SC3 will unleash its demons and shock its audience but also charm them with their magical, improvised show.”
Good news! A new Secret Chiefs 3 album has just been announced, and it’s due out next month!
Bucking the usual Mimicry trend of announcing an album and then releasing it a few years later, the new album is due for release in May.
It will be released on both CD and limited edition 12″ vinyl, and is now able to be pre-ordered at the Web of Mimicry store.
The album is by one of the seven Secret Chiefs 3 satellite or sub bands, The Traditionalists, and will be shipped around the 3rd week in May.
Tracklist:
01. Faith’s Broken Mirror
02. Sophia’s Theme
03. What’s Wrong with Cytherea?
04. Mourning In Ekstasis
05. He Hates Us
06. Psychism 1: Cytherea’s Possession
07. Love Spell
08. Agenda 21
09. Subcutaneous Solution
10. Abyss of Psychic Enchantments
11. Subdermal Sequence (Nano-Correction)
12. RFID Slaverider
13. Dionysian Dithyramb (Eros-seed of the Egregore)
14. Zombievision
15. Perfectly Reasonable
16. Psychism 2: Fear is the Great Teacher
17. Abolish Believers by Abolishing Belief
18. Funeral for What Might Have Been (Sophia’s Theme)
19. Codex Alimentarius
20. Putting Forth the Hand to Take
21. Psychism 3: Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind
22. Hypnotopia (Obey your Passion)
23. Nano-correction / Human Migrations / Faith Realizes
24. Chapel by the Sea (a Heart That is Broken and Humbled…)
25. The Strength to Sever
26. Baby Hedone (Harvest of the Egregore)
27. Zombievision 2012
28. The Great Die Off (He Mocks Us All)
29. Cytherea’s Awakening / Martyrdom at Romiou Point / Return to the Foam
30. To Love God is Sweeter than Life (Sophia’s Theme)
Read the album info and listen to some samples here
Other coverage: Mainly Music Meanderings / mxdwn.com
The album info from mimicry:
“From out of nowhere Secret Chiefs 3 (operating here as Traditionalists, one of the seven ‘satellite bands’ introduced on Secret Chiefs 3’s album Book of Horizons) presents an elaborate “colonna sonora paranoica” — a paranioac film soundtrack. The film is imagined, but the horror is real. This entire project, as you might expect from this band, is a spiralling allegory that extends itself well-beyond its starting-point cliché as a “soundtrack for a non-existent film.” But that’s always been one of those potentially good clichés, in theory anyway. Pursuant to that potential, this particular work remains singularly, decidedly faithful to its sworn genre, the Giallo Horror Film Soundtrack.
At this point, it’s fair to assume we can take the dizzying conceptual maelstrom that comes with anything SC3-related as a “given,” right?
Alright, so we won’t go into that here.But a word on the strictly musical side of things is warranted. The first thing to note is that Giallo cinema music has the distinction of having been graced by nearly all the great masters of Italian film music in general: Bruna Nicolai, Stelvio Cipriani, Ennio Morricone, Goblin, Pierro Piccioni etc. And though this area of “B cinema” certainly has its appreciators, one still-underplayed element is that when considering the music, Giallo’s harmonic language was developed by brilliant people who, by current musical and aesthetic standards, set the bar very high. For any of us wannabes to share in the magic of this lost artform, we have to bring a bit more more to the table than some vintage amps & keyboards and vague undeveloped musical ideas based only in hipster aesthetics. Because if you ignore the deeper intricacies of the music theory at work, the orchestration, the arrangement, etc., you’re really only asking to make an ass of yourself (which is likely anyway no matter what you do). But the usual thing is to sample stuff or simply borrow themes from the masters and to then repackage them in a new “updated” context. Well, in a climate like that we should emphasize that Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini is quite simply an album of original compositions. The process should be likened to when someone is learning another language and begins to have dreams in that language. It’s the same process in any style of music, really. So to state it plainly, these are original compositions that were dreamt into being in the harmonic language of the Giallo Horror Film Soundtrack. It’s that simple. The point is not to be strictly period-specific, or culturally-specific, but to be psychically specific — caring first and foremost about how to convey things that will affect the psychic state of the listener in the intended way. After all, the point of dreaming in this particular language, with all its sophistication, elegance and beauty, is to go that much more deeply into the territory of nightmare… and um, let’s just say SC3 feel it’s necessary to pursue this particular range of the human experience at this moment.
The album itself is a full orchestral score that fully capitalizes on SC3 stock of musical manpower (Trey Spruance, Ches Smith, Timb Harris, Shahzad Ismaily, William Winant, et al.) and adds to that a broad cast of A-list hired musicians (among them Laurie Goldstein and Hans Teuber). The material runs the gamut; dissonant violent strings receding to beautiful textures with flute and female vocals through echoplex; analog synthesizers, harpsichords and celestas over a tight ’70s-style rock band rhythm section; crazed psychedelic freakouts with major payoffs; church organs granting repose, until tape treatments and a chorus of possessed shrieking voices force the listener to reconsider his position on the existence of Evil… If you can imagine all that produced to the standard found on any other Secret Chiefs 3 release, you’ve pretty much got the idea here.
The album was mixed analog to 1/2 inch tape. LP comes in 180 gram vinyl. CD is a mock gatefold LP, with a printed sleeve. Pure win.”
Based on the samples I just finished listening to, this is going to be a must have. It sounds awesome!
May 22, 2009 - Milwaukee WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom
May 23, 2009 - Chillicothe IL @ Summer Camp 2009 festival
May 24, 2009 - Thornville OH @ Hookahville XXXI festival
May 26, 2009 - Northampton MA @ Pearl Street
May 27, 2009 - Portland ME @ Space 538
May 28, 2009 - Boston MA @ The Middle East
May 30, 2009 - Brooklyn NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
May 31, 2009 - Philadelphia PA @ First Unitarian Church
2 June, 2009 - Quebec City QC @ Le Cercle
3 June, 2009 - Montreal QC @ La Sala Rossa
4 June, 2009 - Toronto ON @ The Mod Club
June 6, 2009 - Ozark AR @ Wakarusa Music Festival (LATE NIGHT)
June 9, 2009 - Los Angeles CA @ El Rey Theatre
June 10, 2009 - San Francisco CA @ Great American Music Hall
