Where a nefarious fever unleashes upon your humble scribe a wicked storm of memories powerful like vampire sirens, they bite, but their bite is sweet, they sing, and their song is wistful.

And what is the story that they utter?

One of sweaty bedrooms where some kids fight for the fate of the universe against overwhelming forces, armed with but a handful of dice, paper and pencil, from dawn til dusk. Yes, role-playing games, the last refuge of the imaginative and shy teenager who, rejected by a world where success and acceptance are monopolised by those who are big and mighty and good at kicking the ball, where action and consequence seem to be utterly and confusingly disconnected, suddenly finds a portal for becoming whatever he wants and making a difference through sword, sorcery or lethal blaster.

This is the definitive moment when disbelief is suspended, look at a form covered in numbers, that’s you, look at a reticle in the floor where a bunch of citadel figures lay scattered, behind and between plastecine blobs that simulate furniture and landscape, that’s the world, look at that chubby and spotted fellow staring at you from behind his cardboard screen, that’s God, sometimes cruel, sometimes benevolent. All of which will eventually become useful skills.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, stay in the past which is what matters today, because somehow, off the mixture of these odd trinkets something amazing emerges, battles are fought and friendships forged, stories unfold, new universes explored. Astonishing shit, I tell you, but also requiring all that time that starts becoming scarce as one grows up. I haven’t played RPGs for ages, and I miss it. I used to be a dungeon master, and a guardian, I used to craft and rule over worlds, now I have to live in but one, and one which can be quite boring while we are at that. So I feel thankful whenever I stumble upon music which is epic and fierce and demented, progressive and mindblowing, music which simmers with that old time magick that my friends and I used to get wasted on before we even tried alcohol or psychedelics. This is it and this is what we are about. Now roll those dice.

The new Lightning Bolt album does what it says in the box: imagine all the best things in life according to the private diaries of a Greek deity- slaughter of foes and kin alike, throwing rays around like there was no tomorrow, reconfiguring clouds into horrible grimaces with which to inspire fearful prophecies amongst the oracles, the shattering of temples’ pillars with but a handclap, gobbling wine and fighting hand to hand with tigers and lions. Fixing up Aries’ spears down at the ironsmiths while listening to Slayer and Hawkwind, chaos unleashed and unspeakable orgies.
That’s the life kids, and that’s what Earthly Delights sounds like: 360 degrees onslaught in infinite intersecting planes of pure vicious ravishing sound, a bit like one of those killer spheres in phantasmagoria if only they were covered on Peyote slime. Impaled again, such capers.

Lightning Bolt-Funny Farm

It’s a shame I didn’t know much krautrock in those role-playing days, because I could hardly think of more suitable music to skate across the avenues of mind-bending fantasy, science fiction speculation and maddening crawling chaos which used to be my bread and butter then.

Krautrock is the sound of an adventurous spirit expanding like a 3D fractal virus across virgin taigas begging, in their silence, to be populated by the products of a hallucinated imagination. Against the eternal return of pop music, with its choruses and bridges, Krautrock represents the hero’s journey, forever forwards towards the big eye in the sky whose iris marks the end of this world and a precipice into the beyond, a falling which is floating.

In HyBoLT, his latest 12’, Von Spar gives us krautrock and then some, metronomic trip in a silver chariot pulled by a mechanic Pegasus of slender grace, over awe-inspiring dreamscapes, idyllic villages and vast garrisons, menacing crystal castles configured in impossible angles from whose minarets loom devious sorcerers made of brimstone and shadow. It really sounds like the soundtrack for some 70s animation film produced by brainfried hippies, or a video game which we just about have the technology, but not the attitude to deliver.

Von Spar- HyBoLT

How many times must have I described how it feels to slide under the massive arches of an exotic citadel, the wonder of a bazaar where a thousand wares lie displayed for demanding adventurers to inspect, words from a thousand dialects fence in bargaining followed by the tinkling of a thousand currencies stamped on the same gold they all chase, white-robed penitents march under the angry gaze of sneaky pickpockets very aware of suspicious guards in iron breastplates at the feet of marble towers at whose top lounge damsels covered in silk who long with misty eyes for the opportunity to slide under those arches alone, bereft of vassals, bodyguards and assorted minions, free and outside into the plains.

I could have done a better job if I had read Samuel R. Delany, Fritz Leiber or Italo Calvino, or if I had put into the stereo the rather astonishing ‘Zetland’ by Prince Rama Of Ayodhya. Particularly Gold Dawn, which sounds like an intoxicating melange of Magma, Gang Gang Dance, Fremen country music and Neveryon gospel.  It is prog as fuck, and in the best possible way, unhinged, whirling beautiful music which soars like layers of fabric covering the bodies of the Gods as they dance beyond the blue veil of the sky, shedding them one after another, each of them becoming a different season.

Prince Rama Of Ayodhya- Golden Dawn

BONUS

Go to IGETRVNG and buy the first FRWWYS. Or even better, subscribe to the whole series. Check out the video of Excepter remixed by Carter Tutti. w00T!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPJcps5pDkM[/youtube]

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with italo krautrock prog