Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Self-promoted as the “Great Beast 666″ from the Bible’s Book of Revelations. Slandered by the British press as the “Wickedest Man in the World.” Yet, theatrical occultist Aleister Crowley pioneered a radical re-imagining of self determination through managing paranormal spiritual entities, shaking up early 20th Century polite society. He founded the libertine religion of Thelema, and through sex rituals and extreme drug abuse emphasized the not-necessarily-wicked ritual practice of Magick.
The principal innovator of Ambient and Generative Music, multi-media composer and producer/collaborator with David Bowie, Talking Heads, and U2, Brian Eno is most fascinated by chance music by performers who ‘don’t completely understand their territory’
Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 masterpiece “Under the Volcano,” about the fervid last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico, is set to the drumbeat of coming internal and external conflict. Autobiographical and reflective of the expatriated trust-funder in a futile search for an artistic home, the perpetually inebriated master got lost along the road toward his own abyss, and died under suspicious circumstances, out-of-print.
Rising from the East Anglian shadows of Benjamin Britten, William Alwyn’s prolific compositions and pioneering film scores from the 1940s-50s set him apart in 20th Century classical music. Stephen Vessels curates the discussion.
The first band ever to be called “industrial,” Throbbing Gristle’s confrontational live performances and use of disturbing imagery, mixed with pre-recorded tape samples and special effects, created a distorted sound performance, quite ground-breaking in its time. Spinoff bands Psychic TV and Chris and Cosey continued to shock and beautify into the 1980s.
Watch “The Delian Mode” a documentary on the innovative electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, who worked from 1960 to 1973 at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. She utilized both real-life and ‘artificial’ electronic sounds in her compositions using a musical style known as Musique Concrète.
As bassist for Joy Division – one of the most important bands of the post-punk movement in England – Peter Hook kept the rhythm together, a kind-of-distorted lamentation, after Ian Curtis’ suicide and for better or worse into mega-stardom of the New Wave synth phenomena New Order.