Inadmissible Evidence

A crackling, a sonic reverberation, the beginning of another epic transportation into the world of Caustic Reverie. The first track is quite light and whips around you like a cold wind in a winter forest. Spirits passing by in the dark, the swaying branches whispering a warning to run away. But already you are lost and the monsters loom from every deep shadow. This sense of desolate isolation continues from track to track, with variation and progression. By the third track the demons have already ripped your soul to shreds, scrying for a bleak future with your entrails as you scream silently into the void. This artist is in a league of his own and I suspect will always be so. Every album is a new adventure with the same huge structures and darkly passionate effort of will to create such Behemoths of soundscaping, without ever sounding like the computer programme was simply left to run its course, while he popped out for a cup of tea. There is a presence always of involvement and effort to accomplish something so wonderfully unique, that I can only take my hat off to in reverent awe. Which is what creative musical expression should be about. To listen and be bowled over by the product of a vast array of ability and judgement to do the right thing at the right time and make it digestible. Admittedly, this manner of expression is not for everyone, and maybe that's one of the reasons it appeals so readily to me. In other aspects of my life I am one of the chosen few and I'm not being religiously self-righteous, I really am one in a million or so. It's not a boast, it's a curse because it makes my life hideously difficult to live sometimes. However, it is that very adversity that enables me to listen to this manner of creativity and assimilate it into my own psyche without it sending me over the edge of a cliff. I'm already there hanging on by my fingernails, so in a sense it doesn't matter anymore, hellbound already, I am one of the fallen and there is no escaping that condemnation. Ask anyone who knows me, in real terms or virtually. I cannot win but my only consolation is that I believe I am coming to the end of my various cycles that have gone on before me in the manner of transmigration of a soul older than I could expect anyone to comprehend. I can turn a person's brain to mush just by a simple (to me) utterance, and that is a power that I wield carefully and appropriately to suit my everyday needs. That boils down to an assertiveness that then demands backing up with qualification and here it is, right in front of your eyes and written in page after page of my attempts to review all this wonderful music and anti-music, abstract and obtuse, fair and unfair, good and bad, worthy and unworthy, magical and plain. So, am I sticking to the 'rules' and talking about the music or am I talking about me? What I am talking about is the effect that the musical expression has upon me, so yes, I am sticking to the rule but bending it to suit my own requirements, and those vary to the nth degree from day to day, in different forms. I can listen to stuff that to others is nothing but chaotic noise and feel moved so deeply and profoundly that I could cry for the sense that it instils within me. That is the fearful, awe-inspiring effect I seek. Or, I can listen to very controlled and stylised music, that adheres to its proclaimed genres in a myriad of forms, a veritable cornucopia of styles and still hold my own. I know why that is possible and if you take the time to read my reviews, and I know a few who do, and even fewer who get the picture and appreciate what I say, you might see what I am trying to get at, or out. And, there's the rub, to wax Shakespearian. What I say is merely the outpouring of an existential epistemological subjectivity that is more simply put, just what I think. It is not wrong or right, just me and my experience. Sometimes that is judgemental, sometimes its simply experential. The former is put into play generally when I'm trying to encourage an artist to get stuck into their own sense of creativity and expression, the latter when the artist is sufficiently adept in their own artform, so that I can relax and release my own tension and sometimes frustration at a world that, simply put, can do my head in, good and proper.

So, here I stand, both feet in the shifting sand of subjectiveness, unable to escape my ingrained Weltanschauung. Confused by my myriad personalities that come and go, sometimes making me feel good and on top of the world, sometimes making me feel like I am stuck in some interminable hell on earth. So, what do I seek from music? Spirit. One simple word and a single word that drives me on to survive in a relatively safe world compared to a lot of other souls, if I am to be ecumenical enough to expand my sense of my own situation in comparison with others all over this godforsaken planet, that appears to me to be in a downward spiral into a black hole of the bowels of an expanding multiverse of existences. I am beside myself most of the time in more guises than one, and spend most of my time confusing even myself let alone the people around me. If I don't 'understand' me then why should I expect others to? The ones that purport to know what I'm made of live in bounded systems of self-righteousness, they are ontologically delusional, strong and firm in their belief that what they think IS reality. How do they figure that one out by being anything other than plain crazy? And I'm supposedly the madcap, get that! Having said all this, I am not the only one, there are a handful of people that I know, to varying degrees that find it possible within themselves to be able to tolerate me, to handle me appropriately, so that I can sometimes yell, sometimes literally, sometimes virtually, and they just calm me with a few words of wisdom. They are my fellow soul mates, and in that sense I am polygamous. I have my proverbial lobster, as some say, a chosen mate that I share my life and love with, but I also have love enough for more than one person, and the trick is to find the ones that appreciate that for what it is. It is no superficiality to excuse profligacy in an already sordid world of people with pathetic platitudes to justify their stupid and inane, thoughtless and uncaring behaviour. It is a truth, and take heed I say A truth not THE truth. Ask me again tomorrow and I might deny that I could have taken the liberty to use this exceptional musical expression to express myself and feel that it has inspired me to be so damned cheeky.

So, how to wrap this up and put an end to this and if you have bothered to read this far, I take my cap off to you too. Talk to me, send me a message, even if it's just to say 'hello' and make me feel less alone in a world full of strangers. Even then, I feel I am taking a liberty and asking too much but for some peculiar reason I keep trying to communicate, it is the essence of my existence, to make contact, you and me. I have this mad hypothesis in my convoluted brain that better communication leads to a better life, or am I just echoing what philosophers have been espousing for thousands of years? Have I just read too many books? Have I the audacity to think too much? If so, why should that be wrong? Why should I feel bad about that? Why can't we try harder to make the world a better place? Why can't we turn off the TV and go and do something less boring instead. There are a million ways to do it and I feel I am surrounded by people who don't even have an inkling of the notion that they may be wrong in their nurtured subjectivities. I might be wrong, but at least I am prepared to accept that possibility. Anyway, at the end of the album, all I can say is that I believe it to be the epitome of what I seek in an artists work, that it inspires me to wax lyrical and become transported, nay even possessed to write like a demon. Fantastic work, from an artist who just gets better and better everytime. I mean, look what you made me do! That's awe inspiring, that's the way it should be every time. Well, that's just what I think anyway. Thanks for sharing your magic.