New Years / Christmas Presents from Mythos Media

A New Year For Us All - From the www.MythosMedia.net team.

Amidst all of the turmoil that has occurred both in the US and abroad in 2008, many of the media giants are stomping around blindly. There is no better time for truly independent groups of artists, musicians and myth makers to band together to collaborate, share and grow their myths. This is why Mythos Media formed in 2006-2007, and it remains our singular goal. The time is ripe now, but we need to meet each other halfway.

The purpose of this message is to alert you to what we have been doing over this past year, and what we look to create in 2009. The days of purely passive media are through. Sure, everyone likes to unwind and watch a movie from time to time, but always existing in that state of consumption leaves people shut-down, and isolated. This is why social media is exploding, even if major corporations are trying to turn the Internet into an ad-laden, vapid wasteland.

We all need stories that we can participate in, and a framework for us to collaborate and create work together. This is our goal moving forward- not only building our own myths but creating a sandbox for you to build your own as well. We believe static media like books and DVDs are merely entrance points into interactivity, collaboration, and the creation of new myths in the future, using technologies that are still being refined even as we speak. We hope you join us.

--James Curcio, Christmas Eve, 2008.

See the full, unabridged State of the Union, with tons of free books, music and more, go here: http://www.mythosmedia.net/content/2008/mm-12-08.html

Including: Lives of Ilya with Tara Vanflower, and the audiobook chapter read by Jarboe, Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning, a full, some re-issued re-masters of early Choronzon and Veil of Thorns material as well as some more recent releases, free 256 kbps release of subQtaneous: Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation, the Art of Memetics, and sneak peeks at many up and coming projects.

Mick Mercer's review of Veil of Thorns: Cognitive Dissonance

VEIL OF THORNS
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
Mythos Media







Although working at another end of the noisy bastard spectrum to History Of Guns, Veil Of Thorns, and other P. Emerson Williams projects, provide the same alternative. Just when you have become used to experiencing your guitar stimulants, your ethereal relaxants, your electronic placebo, along comes Doctor Thorns, like a knight in deliberately ill-fitting armour and bellows ‘No more!’ causing all patients to fall from their beds. Where a lot of old-school Industrialists make deliberately obscure, ugly amateurish trash and new Industrialists churn out whatever club-friendly sounds they hope will land them a big record deal, there are some artists wading sternly through the same muddy waters with more artistic sensibilities. Veil Of Thorns may make threatening music but it is not without gentler asides, and often presents itself in alluring form. This is their most stylish work, but some of the thorns have an extra edge.

It’s really just down to P. Emerson Williams on virtually everything but the live drums of James Curcio, whose alarming novel I am currently reading. That’s the thing – music and other genuine influences, with P. himself a very talented artist, as I am sure many of you realise. It infuses what might be a trudging sound and throws light into murky corners. ‘Peripatetic’ has a dark rhythmical flow below a bright needling guitar and the drums stay furtive, the vocals commendably aghast, the song briskly cantering into action. It is actually hard to follow the vocal narrative but maybe that’s a good thing? ‘A Weirdness Less Expressed’ is great. If ever robots develop their own Thrash genre with a glaring sheen and viciously seedy bass pulses they will point to this song as a formative spark; more keenly urgent vocals and liquid guitar unusually catchy at times.

‘The Enigmatic Rarely Atone’ is slippier, as guitar slides away from the gleaming, undulating core. ‘Fallacy Decides Initiative’ lurches off after the seamless intro into a sighing, tumbling exercise, but ‘Delusions Of Excitement’ has low key, sweeter sounds and a dignified comeliness, deeper slopes and a playful atmospheric element. ‘Surgically Dream Like’ does what it says on the bloodbag, the cello providing a blurred setting, as though orchestral ocean liners were calling to one another, Industrial whale song!

‘Languishing In The Rusting Valley’ is not the worse holiday brochure ever, but a fractious combination of tingling guitar and grating rhythm in a plainly enjoyably melodic cacophony, as pert as the ungainly ever get. ‘Corrode And Engulf’ is deep growliness, like an ambient intestinal voyage. ‘Night Access Hallucination’ is a weird entity, being spindly, addled art-rock, with a touch of the Frank Zapata about it, with ‘Anomalous Breaks’; fun, not fearful. Austere, like monks hungover on mescaline, and then the title track itself sends you home with a cold bowl of sonic porridge.

They’re one of the few creative outlets for these more tangled sounds, and this gets the thumbs up, being a fine record, and one which some people might find easier to get into than earlier works as it’s got elements you’d recognise. Okay, you may develop extra thumbs with prolonged exposure, but what is life without risks?

By Mick Mercer.

iTunes.


http://www.veilofthorns.com
http://www.myspace.com/veilofthorns
http://joinmycult.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/choronzon333

subQtaneous & Veil of Thorns review on Nemesis To Go

And I think they pretty much nailed it dead center.




subQtaneous:
"What strangeness have we here? This: a trippy ride through post-industrial atmospheres, guided by multi-instrumentalist and producer James Curcio. Although SubQtaneous seems to be a collaborative effort, with many names in the credits, it's James Curcio's name that crops up most often. This music runs riot from dubbed-up rumbling to heavily-fuzzed guitar workouts, from incongruous jazz odysseys to bouts of bad-trip psychedelia. At times, it resembles rock music, particularly on 'Daily Grind', which sounds like the kind of mashed-up splattery racket you'd get if you shoved Ministry down a waste disposal unit. At other times, rhythms you could (almost) dance to are hauled into the sonic melee, and there are effect-laden interludes and sample-soaked soundscapes, although even when things get a little mellow the listener can never quite escape the suspicion that monsters lurk just beyond the music. 'All You Know' is a jazzy rap, springing forward on the vibrations of a double bass, and in a way it's the most radical thing here. Stick out a white label 12" with this track on it, and I bet it would be all over hip hop radio in a week. 'Panning For Gold In Rivers Of Blood' sounds like someone slipped the orchestra that accompanies silent movies some amphetamines, while 'Out Of Control' belies its title with a tumbling, chopped-up neo-rock rampage. I'm not at all sure who SubQtaneous think is going to buy their wayward art, for it's obviously not aimed at any particular market, and the band - if indeed there is a band - takes a particular delight in eating generic boundaries for breakfast. But you know what? I'm glad this stuff is out there."




Veil of Thorns:
"Another emanation from the Mythos Media monster, in this case a solo project from P.Emerson Williams. And - somewhat surprisingly - we're in the rock zone, sort of. Veil Of Thorns are not exactly a band, but the music does inhabit a rocky landscape, even if it sometimes doesn't seem entirely comfortable there. P. Emerson Williams is responsible for vocals and most instruments, with James Curcio on drums (I'm delighted to note, by the way, that the album was engineered by someone called Fluffy) and together they brew up a dust storm of tight-but-loose guitar riffs and driving, nervy, drums. Let's sample some: 'The Enigmatic Barely Atone' has a lost-in-the-desert feel, as if the sands of the Sahara are shifting under the music as it hurtles towards the sunset. 'Delusions Of Excitement' is a fine title for a spooky, sepulchral song - the desert night has fallen, the world is hushed. Even the bass seems muted here, rumbling somewhere in the background as if Steve Severin was hiding behind a pyramid. 'Corrode And Engulf' (Veil Of Thorns are great on titles) is a grind of treated cello, half way between a lament and a threat. This music is, naturally, high on atmosphere, and if, at times, it teeters on the brink of proggy indulgence it has enough latent attitude to pull back from the brink. It's like nothing else out there, that's for sure."

iTunes picks up initial Mythos Media albums.

subQtaneous: Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation and Veil Of Thorns: Cognitive Dissonance are now available through the iTunes store.

An initial group of fifteen companies have picked the albums up for digital distribution, and we will provide the information as we recieve it. We start at the top with the trend setter for digital content delivery.

subQtaneous: Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation downloads can be purchased here, and Veil Of Thorns: Cognitive Dissonance here.

You can purchase songs a la carte or the full albums for the complete experience.

Different day, same grindstone.

Up all night doing some early production on the soon-to-be-released Veil of Thorns album, Cognitive Dissonance. I only vaguely recall laying down the majority of the drums for this peculiar creature. (I refer to the project, in this case, not it's creator.)

Here's a sneak peek of one of those tracks... the Enigmatic Rarely Atone.

I'll soon be passing all those tracks on to Ken S to puzzle over, and I'm sure, clean up.

I had Peter re-do the pencil on page 19 of Fas Ferox episode one. Somewhere between 8+ hour sessions editing Fallen Nation, and the crunch time I did this last "night" on the VOT stuff, I re-colored the page. It's now in a similar state to the rest-- somewhere between 70-90% done.

If you haven't noticed-- come spring, there is going to be a lot of content available through Mythos Media. Even if ordering has to start on internet only, it'll be there. Start the whisper down the lane, I don't have the resources for a PR agent just yet.