VASILISK - Mkwaju

Format: LP

Label & Cat.Number: Steinklang SK78

Release Year: 2014

Note: re-mastered re-issue of the second VASILISK LP from 1988 (Eskimo Rec. Japan) - a masterpiece of experimental ritual music - lim. 150 copies coloured vinyl, contains one rare bonus-track

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.00

More Info

"Reissue of Japanese tribal/industrial pioneers, released back in 1988 on Eskimo Records. Originally recorded and mixed in Tokyo from December '87 to May '88, now remastered with additional bonus track. Comes on transparent blue vinyl, limited to 150 copies." [label info]

www.steinklang-records.at

"Probably the most fully realized of the Vasilisk records, Mkwaju was originally released via Eskimo Records in 1988 with a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of a Diane Arbus print as the cover. This portrait of patients in a mental hospital, masked in their Halloween garb from what they could gather from the dustbins and forgotten closets is a potent metaphor for the autodidactic / outsider temple music that Vasilisk began creating in the mid-'80s. Unfortunately, the cd reissue campaign neglected to reproduce the original liner notes for Mkwaju, which stated: "Vasilisk's musick, as an expression of human consciousness and will, is an attempt to break through the cycle of determinacy and establish an independent existence for man... Ritual, based on the principle of gradual intensification, with ecstatic, cathartic climax, promotes the solidarity of life. Man acts as the responsible center of the rite." These rituals for Vasilisk are hypnotic in nature, with fundamental architectural drones, throat singing harmonics, and blurred miasmas of synths, tape loops, & guitars woven throughout Vasilisk's signature tribal percussive patterns. The somber, arcane atmospherics of Mkwaju align Vasilisk most closely with the ritual industrial practitioners that spawned from the early '80s metal bashing of Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Dept., and Dissecting Table, with all of that aggression tempered in favor of a ritualized solemnity cloaked in buzzing mesmer and transcendent aspirations." [Aquarius Records]