Wednesday 6 May 2009

SHROUD SONG (Peter Scion 1998)



PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED (sort of)

This is a curiousity in every way.

First of all, it was recorded during a week of fasting - voluntary food depravation. The opinions on fasting differ vastly depending on who you ask, and I won't go into the pros and cons of it. I will say though that all your senses sharpen while fasting, and I assume it's a way for the body to say "hey, if I sharpen your hearing and better your sight, will you go out to hunt down some food for me, you lazy bugger!". Listening to music while fasting has often been a fascinating experince to me, but it wasn't until "Shroud Song" that I actually recorded music under the influence of the practice.

The result was "Shroud Song", which is an altogether completely different thing to anything I had ever done before. There are no songs on it; the entire album is instrumental (which should come as a relief to those of you who can't stand my vocals!) and owes a fair bit to the "kosmische musik" seeping from the German kraut rock scene in the 70's.

That might be a reason why I didn't pay much attention to it right after I finished it. It was all done in a couple of days, two, perhaps three. It was all improvised. Compared to my previous albums, even at their spaciest, it's an outsider. When finished, I put the tape among other tapes and didn't think of it a lot until I pulled it out and made a copy for Lars at Domestica. Lars loves German kraut rock, and "Shroud Song" had him firing on all cylinders. We were discussing a potential release, but in the end we dropped it. I can't remember why.

Around this time, a Peter Scion website was set up. The website is basically dead now, with no updates being made after I withdrew from playing. Anyway, through the website, two albums were released in the short-lived "Archive Series". One of them comprised outtakes and rehearsals, whereas the second volume was "Shroud Song". "The Archive Series" was made in an extremely limited edition of 30 copies and given away free to website visitors and members of various music forums on the internet.

The history of "Shroud Song" is indeed obscure, but I'm delighted to present it to you here.

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