Raincat
12
Lee Scratch Perry and Annie Besant.
I’m thinking of Lee Perry in his Black Ark days: cobbled together equipment pushed to its limit, art all over the walls, ritual and magic. One thing that I particularly loved was the story of him digging a hole next to a palm tree, sticking a microphone in the hole and thumping the tree to get a drumbeat. So in a small scale homage I collected some twigs and attatched them to a bit of wood to make an instrument. I recorded four layers of me hitting it with another stick.
Annie Besant (1847 -1933) was a British socialist and radical involved in Women’s Rights, Irish and Indian Home Rule, education for the poor, unions and strike action. Then later in her life, after reading and meeting Madame Blavatsky she converted to Theosophy. She wrote quite a few books on it and one book; “Thought Forms” has always intrigued me. The basic premise of the book is that shapes and colours are a kind of univeral spiritual language and that artist/mediums were able to channel and visualise these invisible energies. I’m not a Theosophist, I just like that idea. One thing the book talks about is Chladni plates and their patterns. I don’t have a proper Chladni plate, but I decided to approximate one with a cymbal screwed onto a block of wood and played with a very tattered violin bow.
Short earthy clonks from the twigs versus long bowed tones from the spirit world.
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