by David MetcalfeThe funeral for the recording industry is going quite well. With pyres lit across the fields, from tech savvy dance halls to the tattered fringes of ghostland, we all stand in joyous expectation as the façade falls down. Behind the veil of conflagration, Chelsea Wolfe’s voice echoes through lurking atmospherics, monastic guitar riffs, invoking goetic memories of past performers and present players. Such a lovely voice to sing the dirges of the day when music dies, and ars musica is called back from the grave.
We’ve stepped out of the mediated séance parlor of the late 20th century, with its pantomime passion for theatrical display and sleight of hand, songs are starting to sound real again. Artists are taking back the techniques stolen by corporations and conmen. If we are beginning to once more see true poesis, soon we’ll see true gods.
Wolfe’s latest expression, Ἀποκάλυψις, her second album released through Pendu Sound Recordings, leaves trite table tipping to lesser musicians in favor of summoning spirits on dead urban hillsides beneath the sidereal spin of unseen forces and the city’s dim lights. Mystery returns full force, gaining ground against the ill bent representations and mock revelations of pastiche plaguing the industrialized music scene.
