The question of “why we do it” often comes up in every genre of music. I like to believe is what defines the listening experience. There’s an interesting excerpt from Basquiat’s quasi-fictional film where a certain New York luminary laments about the pitfalls of being a musician and the bleak, nihilistic attitude he has aquired over time.

He gets to the gig super early so no one sees him lugging his gear up the stairs. He argues with promoters and club owners over their shrewd observations. After all, if he is having fun on stage, why should he be getting paid in the first place. And he muses in his closet studio why he doesn’t have more time to paint when he consistently has to rehearse for critics who will ultimately say he obviously didn’t practice enough in the first place.

When you’ve spent most of your adult life enmeshed in the dance music scene, you get very adjusted to the desires and whims of fellow producers and musicians. A friend of mine refers to the specific mode of speak that develops from these desires as ’shop talk’ of which she dreads almost as much as cat hair and pollen. Its a consistent filler of a void quite possibly from the innermost wishes to be one’s own boss. To take that entrepreneurial spirit by the balls and make something of one’s self and one’s music. To sell records and collect the spoils that lie beyond. To hustle to the point where you become a walking robotic mess, poisoning past friends and confidentes with near saccharine proportions. To make money doing what you fucking love which will ultimately become what you hate in the end.

I can’t bother to promote myself worth a shit anymore to be honest even if blogs and constant status updates seem like some half assed attempt. Music and art to me no longer have much financial meaning to me either way. I can’t spend much time at all in any sense creating consumer based packages for people. In this day and age, I write music to mark the times much like marks on a calendar. Sometimes, they are like arts and crafts for friends and family. Little souvenirs that acts as curios on a shelf to remind people that I might not be all that self absorbed. Small, coded gifts to personas that keep me living and breathing through the boredom and the mire.

Its a hard sell especially in the wake of whatever finger pointing that is status quo in these compact urban areas full of skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts. I’ve caught myself more than once in the past months misdirecting scorn. But its so hard to navigate. Its always hard to tell who is seriously damaged and who is just trying to be and therefore which one is the lesser of two evils. Who is an auteur and who has an insidious and devious agenda.

Which brings me to P.W. Elervum, self confessed poem printer, record label owner and souvenir vendor. I was introduced to him through my weekly CD trade with my friend Matt at Handlebar. Knowing my current obsession with doom and sludge metal, his suggestion of Mount Eerie was based on the press’s adoption of the Black Metal tag for the new album “Wind’s Poem.” And its a dangerous labeling at that. It bares the teeth of parties on both sides of the wolf pack. The same people who both despise the hipster fetishization of niche genres and the lack of purity and homogeneity that comes with padlocked scenes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rck9Qt-2RA

The opening chords of “Wind’s Poem” are a reminder and a nod to Elervum’s obsession of such one man bands like Xasthur, who so happens to also be on the short end of the Black Metal stick. You see black metal means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. If I spent a whole blog dedicated to it, it would sort of have me spiraling into some sort of de ja vu with the dance music scene. There is a certain production ethic and thematic ideal. And therefore, I’d gather a certain currency evoked from being a black metal musician. As ridiculous as this all sounds, Venom sounds almost nothing like Burzum or Darkthrone as does Bone Awl or even on the very far end of the spectrum, Nachtmystium, as U.S. inspired black metal acts.

Mount Eerie has more in common with Xasthur and little known projects like the forgotten Brazillian demo by Thy Light. Its in nature borrowing closely from a genre that is most commonly referred to as suicidal black metal. And truth be told, if you take it all the way back to bands like Mayhem to the days of lead singer, Dead, it has more of a common root there than shitty production values. Dead originated corpse paint. He literally buried his fucking clothes in the ground until they’d rot just to get the smell of death on him. This was a guy who knew he was going to die and was not happy in the slightest about it. And he used his music to address it.

Now keep in mind, its not the easiest way to get the girls or get that money. But the question why was pretty fucking obvious. Which is where if you analyze the story behind P.W. Elervum and Mount Eerie, you can understand the similarities. This is a guy that wrote a whole microphones album as a story of him dying and ascending. And thus from those ashes was born the project of Mount Eerie that speaks of the wind as the destroyer of worlds. That muses “nothing means nothing… everything is fleeting… don’t get used to it.” That speaks of being “buried in space” and “driving to work in the morning… we live in graves.”

Which brings me to my inspiration by such things and why I do the things that I do. I can only aspire to be a printer of poems and a souvenir vendor. I can peddle my whittled goods on the back porch of the internet while engaging you in some witty banter. And you can listen, preferably at a distance. Because the reason why I do things are similar to the aforementioned. Its not shop talk. As much as I may be associated with certain projects tangentially, I have no real interest in anything other than creating.

I recently read something about Xasthur and how he never intended to ever play any of his compositions out. I have to empathize with him on that. There is something very claustrophobic and special about recording. Certain music was meant to be enjoyed live and the “why we do it” feeds into some sort of vapid exhibitionism. But sometimes, sitting alone in your studio which generally is more like your studio apartment, can’t be translated to a larger audience. Because for the most part you are writing for one or two people… or maybe even one or two types of people and all that really matters is if you get it.

Which is why sometimes records like Mount Eerie, Thy Light, and Xasthur are so special. Because they aren’t made to be listened to by anyone other than kindred spirits. People who understand that points connect beyond genres, titles, rules of engagement and scene driven shop talk. That everyone’s voice is different yet speaks the same old, torrid litany.

“THE WHOLE LIVERY LINE
BOW LIKE THIS
WITH THE BIG MONEY ALL
CRUSHED INTO THESE FEET.”

entromc-thewholeliveryline-roughdemo.mp3

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