TELE.S.THERION – LUZIFERS ABSCHIED
LABEL: MINOTAURO RECORDS
RELEASE DATE: 04.08.17
You may have immersed yourself in the blackest of metals for decades. You may feel you have embraced the sonic distillation of evil. You may have walked the deepest catacombs of black metal’s kingdom of fire and shadows, searching out the harshest creations by the most intimidating of the face painted disciples of darkness. Not one moment of all those years, searching in the black, has prepared you for Luzifers Abschied, the latest invitation to madness from Tele.S.Therion... Created in collusion with some of the world’s most renowned practitioners of jazz, free improvisation, avant-garde and contemporary classical music, this album explores the void between art and noise and uncovers the essence of evil within the darkness. Despite the manner in which Tele.S.Therion have eschewed traditional song structures and cast aside the customary weaponry of electric guitars, in favour of saxophones and enharmonic electric bass, nothing has captured the sound of the abyss quite like this.
Luzifers Abschied (Lucifer’s Farewell), is a work based upon the fourth act of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s opera, Samstung aus Licht (Saturday from Light) – the second in a series of seven operas composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche (Light: The Seven Days of the Week). Luzifers Abschied is the concluding part of Samstung aus Licht and a ceremony of exorcism; an exorcism of the ultimate figure of evil, Satan himself.
The battle of the exorcism rages throughout Tele.S.Therion’s Luzifers Abschied and the sheer terror exuded in these chaotic sounds is beyond anything invoked by any black metal in the genre’s history. The walls of reality fall away, revealing an endless labyrinth of unfathomable madness and the eyes of Lucifer are upon you, as you stumble from one sanity crushing vision to the next. When the final sounds of ‘Period XIII: Ausgang’ echo into silence there is no sense of victory or relief...only the chilling sensation that if Lucifer has said his farewells, then he may just have taken you with him; that an eternity in the labyrinth beneath his cold gaze is all that awaits.
Acousmatic black metal is the term that Tele.S.Therion have coined to define their sound – and a term of their own was most definitely needed. Acousmatic sound is sound that is heard without being able to see the origin, or cause of the sound – as listeners to Tele.S.Therion see only their speakers and not the artists who create the sounds that emit from them. Visually Tele.S.Therion reveal nothing – the album sleeve just words, the artist images only darkness – and this sense of absence and separation serves to heighten the unnerving experience of listening to their work. Even the musicians involved were isolated from each other, improvising their work with no reference to what their fellow collaborators had recorded, only a previously recorded enharmonic bass track to guide them...
Bewildering, terrifying and all consuming...Luzifers Abschied is like nothing you have experienced before...and nothing you will ever hear again.
Genre: Acousmatic Black Metal
For fans of: Melek-Tha | Abruptum | Diamanda Galas
Line-up:
Akousmatikoi: Scores, enharmonic electric bass. | Audio mixing, sound synthesizer
With:
Lunurumh: voices
Michel Doneda: soprano saxophone
Le Quan Ninh: percussion
Jason Van Gulick: drum
Kasper T. Toeplitz: bass
Antoine Chessex: tenor saxophone
Paolo Sanna: waterphone
