Stegzy's Music Project

A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

Jun 12

Hecate – Ordo Equitum Solis [#581]

by stegzy

R-436890-1421008785-2640Further darkwave caterwauling from the Franco-Roman musical union of Ordo Equitum Solis.

It is with this album one is clearly able to distinguish the influences from bands like Dead Can Dance, Miranda Sex Garden and Coil woven throughout the album’s fabric. Like a dusty tome, the album is often difficult to digest in the wrong setting. This isn’t something you might want to accompany you while you do the vacuuming or brass polishing, nor is it the ideal setting for a children’s eighth birthday party unless, of course, you are fostering future gothlings. Instead, this is the kind of album you’d probably want to burn some incense sticks with while donning one’s floaty hooded gown following a healthy manicure for those extra long nails of yours and drinking large amounts of dark red wine while lasciviously doing the dance from Kate Bush’s music video for Wuthering Heights.

The album is split into at least four sections, an introduction, Songs of the Man, Songs of the Fool and a coda which kind of suggests to an old Prog fan like me, that this work should be listened to in its entirety with attention paid to the liner notes or the song titles. Sadly, I don’t have any liner notes. All I have is song titles and from them, I conjure up mental imagery of sordid sexiness of the hooded variety in vaulted cellars filled with wine and incense smoke. Which probably says a lot about my own psychology than anything else…

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1995 dark wave Etheral Wave gothic Ordo Equitum Solis Projeckt

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Jun 9

Heavenly Voices Parts 1 – 3 – Various Artists [#578-580]

by stegzy

A bumper three albums on a Friday with a most peculiar acquisition, Heavenly Voices.

Much like how Looking for Europe does for the Neofolk genre, Heavenly Voices does for the dreampop/ethereal wave genre by way of the artists on the Hyperium record label. Here we have, in effect, three distinctly glorious compilation albums featuring a whole range of talent from artists like Eden’s Sean Bowley and his side project Sunwheel to fully functioning bands like Bel Canto,  Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Miranda Sex Garden.

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[#578] Part One is possibly the most accessible of the three. A little catawauling here and there but a nice build up towards (and what was my introduction to) Ordo Equituum Solis‘  Playing with the Fire.

Dreamily swimming onwards through Die Form’s Cantique and culminating in Winter Moon Descending by Annabel’s Garden

hev[#579] Part Two takes a different approach. The songs here have a much more floaty dreamy kind of feel with a slight dash of hauntology. This album was my introduction to the whole Heavenly Voices trilolgy and as a result not only are there many artists who have appeared previously in the Music Project, for example Collection d’Arnell Andréa and Black Tape, but also many who are yet to come. Possibly my most favourite tracks from this album are Sunwheel’s Walk Upon the Grass (which, incidently, I was intending to shoot a music video for but couldn’t find a willing person to film in time! Maybe a later opportunity will arise) The Sea is My Soul by 24 Hours and the haunting 56 in 81 by Eleven Shadows.

 

11K190SNXWLFinally Part 3 [#580] copies of which are currently changing hands for around £300. Featuring a much more accessible approach to the genre with more familiar artists like Miranda Sex Garden and Bel Canto. Again, this album introduced me to many artists and it is easy to see why people prize it so highly. Emerging from Part 2’s forest of floaty vaginas into a dystopian landscape of industry like a stumbling ninny, the listener finds Part 3 rips up the leafy glades of Part 2 and drills deep concrete foundations of industrial darkwave right into your mind.

Legend has it that there is actually a part four and a part five compilation. Rumours, whispers abound.  Sadly the Hyperium label closed shortly after the death of its founder in 2002, but many of the acts continue on in the worlds of Darkwave and etheralwave.

 

Bel Canto Black Tape for a Blue Girl Collection d'Arnell Andréa compilations dark wave Eden Etheral Wave gothic Miranda Sex Garden Ordo Equitum Solis Sunwheel Various Artists

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Apr 14

Goth Stuff – Various Artists [#542]

by stegzy

This is an unusual compilation, and it is one that guided my ears in the direction I took when exploring the genre. It’s an unofficial compilation and, like all good music, not available in the shops. More of a mix tape someone put out onto the wibbly wobbly web back in the nineties.

The first track is Hoquetus I-VII by an unknown composer and by the third track, a Saltarello  also by an unknown composer, it starts to become clear that the compiler is trying to take the listener through their interpretation of goth music through the ages. Soon we hear Minstrel Hall by Blackmore’s Night. Not exactly goth but dabbling with medievalism, nicely leading us into track two, 18th Century Gypsy Music by Bubak and Hungaricus. Layers of folk influences building up. By the time we reach midway point, we are already being tricked into believing that Ataraxia’s Canzona is a faithful reproduction of a old classical piece.

Of course it’s not. But by this time you don’t care. Further tracks of the acoustic, goth, medieval theme float past including Eld’s interpretation of Death in June’s Death of the West, songs by Ordo Equitum Solis and Eden  also don’t seem out of place. The cherry on the top being Bauhaus‘ King Volcano. 

I’m still fond of this compilation, even though, in all honesty, I am missing a number of tracks from  the original compilation. Moreover, this album also saw me eager to discover more about bands like Ordo Equitum Solis, Blackmore’s Night  and Eden. Bands I would never have heard of if it had not been for illegal downloads of music from unregulated sources.

Of course, like home taping before it, downloading music illegally was the death of music and we know today how empty our lives have become because  music was killed.

1999 Bauhaus Classical compilations dark wave Folk gothic Industrial NeoClassical neofolk Ordo Equitum Solis Various Artists

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Jul 16

Album #75 – Animi Aegritudo – Ordo Equitum Solis

by stegzy

Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 12.40.53Animi Aegritudo – Ordo Equitum Solis

Neo-folk? Goth? Both? Not entirely sure.

There seems to be a lot of dark wave European bands with latin names. Ordo Equitum Solis, or Empire of the Sun are one such example . OES have a similar sound to Dead Can Dance only without the wailing Lisa Gerrard or weird avante-gard revivalist instruments. There are no sackbuts or crumbhorns here.

Animi Aegritudo (or Mind Illness) gives you that haunting mediaeval feeling, like you should be in some sort of red candle lit cellar in Italy, just before red cassocked hooded monks come into the room and sacrifice you to some dark entity.

I really like them (OES that is, not weird demon summoning monks).  I could quite happily sit in a cellar somewhere and listen to their haunting songs while supping red wine from golden jewel encrusted goblets. Of course most of their stuff was released a long time ago although they have recently had a bit of a come back.

I was really lucky to discover OES whilst on a Usenet music harvesting excersise in the early noughties. Of course, at the time, none of their stuff was available to buy legitimately in the UK. Sure you could buy imports but the last time I did that I ended up with a large credit card bill for porn and internal flights in the USA, which, of course, I have no recollection of buying. Anyway, you can buy their stuff now through Amazon and CDBaby if you’re really interested. I suggest giving them ago. They grow on you . Like moss. On a red candle lit cellar wall.

 

 

 

Ordo Equitum Solis

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