Evangelista: Prince of Truth

What a sad example of "Oh Icannot conclude what I do not dare to experience so the things I cannot see/hear/feel/experience must be of a crazy origin"-thing going on here. This album is simply one of the most thrilling, courageous, generous and beautiful (in the term´s non-popform) I have heard for a long long time. Life is not something which leads to a conclusion more real than life, no brother it is the other way around. Wake up and smell your fear of experiencing and please find another thing to do than reviewing because you are simply too weak at it.

I can agree, at pains, with some of the things you say, but I think this is bad music with or without our heartwarming existential banter...

That is, of course, all right. But what made me angry was especially the kind of thing I have seen too much of in several reviews (from different reviewers) and that is the "let me tell you what the real motif for making this record is"-rhetorics which is simply a lie everytime, an impossible insight. To make a statement like that only establishes a nice litltle foundation for further non-investigation. Another thing that I really find fascinating though is that you write about anxiety being contagious and I really believe that is a question of surrendering or not surrendering to that feeling as a bridge/a deeper understanding (on many levels) of the music. But maybe I am just so crazy about the music that I find it impossible to believe one can find it bad. Here at last I will excuse for my last remark in my first comment which was based on pure rage and not okay.

Hey Rune,

I don't fully understand your points about my pushing of a motif, but I appreciate the efforts to further communication.

My essential reaction to this, is that if you engage with it at length and give it a whole lot of time and room it could become very interesting. But it's the kind of effort that will only be made by the willing; for whom this particular mood has immediate (perhaps urgent) meaning.

For me it would involve manufacturing a false sense of disquiet (not that I am eternally at peace etc etc) in order for the music to interact with it, and I don't like reviews which suggest this kind of mood-matching in order to appreciate "art".

Hey David, thanks for your answer. I don´t think I can explain it more and it is not that important after all. It is perhaps obvious that I am Danish when it comes to the nuances of the language.

I think it is very interesting to see your argument about the willing and the immediacy of the particular mood and I am glad to see the clarity of that statement. I will think further about these different ideas of musical "magnetism" it opens up to.

It is a question of a bridge if I make myself clear here but anyways it was interesting and really rewarding to see more exactly where we disagree.

Hi again. I keep coming back to re-read the review and our little ping-pong afterwards. I am truly sorry for the condescending tone in my first remark, I hate myself when I do that.

There are many exciting elements in the differences of points of views and one of the most exciting, to me at least, is that I think the record is a celebration of courageously saying out loud what a lot of people might consider being either "insane" or weak but is instead just honesty and an exhibition of totally natural existential confusion. I know I shall be aware of using the word natural but to me it seems like the music is saying something like "this is a strange victory, but a victory it is because I tell you how I am alive and how it feels and I tell it because I cannot tell it in any other way". I really think this is made because it was not an option not to. The fact that you write how the editing of the recordings were someone having a good time was the reason first and foremost about you pushing a motif. Because how do you know that? I really believe that the final way of mixing the music is made to make the expression as exact to the vision of what to say. I have listened a lot to the record by now, and I simply love it now because of the reasons above and many others. I highly recommend it.

(was the reason first and foremost I wrote about you pushing a motif)

hey Editor,

give this guy a job eh? Every time you come back Rune, I dislike my review a little more! Your first comment responded to a provocative review, and I could tell that it came from a real place.

Having articulated so clearly your interaction with the album, I think that together we have made a worthwhile piece of something... perhaps more reviews should be like this. Is this what Ancient Greece was like? But with real human interaction of course... not this poor excuse.

We could cut up your responses and my review and mix something around and get closer to the (non)truth? Just kidding around.

Perhaps my almost regrettable tone stems from my feeling that confusion and despair are much easier aesthetics to market than wisdom or sanity. But this album is without doubt neither calculated nor an exercise in marketing, and one person's wisdom is another person's...

If we can place my sarcastic tone aside (which was in part created and augmented by the music - not that I would place greater blame on either side of the equation), I still feel as I did in my previous comment. When you propose this: "this is a strange victory, but a victory it is because I tell you how I am alive and how it feels and I tell it because I cannot tell it in any other way"

I understand what you say, and I get that impression too, but where we differ is whether that kind of authentic depth/dark/delving makes good music. Should we all be realising our visions? Are all realised visions inherently interesting? I realise that was an imagined statement on your part, and shouldn't be read to acutely represent Evangelista, but even if it did, what would it matter?

I am not particularly convinced by the modern conception of what it is to be an "artist", and although Bozulich clearly represents this contemporary approach within music, I find myself wondering if good music incorporates an artists existential dilemnas (however obliquely) rather than growing from their soil exclusively.

I also laid my own trip on the record: I want to hear of people, whatever position they may be at in life, looking to move on and understand. Here I feel that Bozulich is trying to render "understanding" and "moving on" to be moot ideas, to be mere figments of the imagination stemming from the irrational, desperate, hopeless hopes we all sometimes succumb to. "Illusions Game" Chogyam Trungpa calls it.

This may all be true, but I also believe there may be something in the transition they instigate. On an instinctual level I feel that there is a degree of wallowing and self-pity masquerading as rage in this music. But that's a heavy thing to say, and is for now purely instinctual.

Sounds like we've given up convincing each other, but to have our ideas (and illusions) challenged is something I welcome.

I welcome that too and your openness about it makes it very interesting indeed. Your comment this time makes me think about what is permitted and not permitted in music when it comes to emotions and possible explanations of these emotions such as your instinct suggest here concerning self-pity etc. and I am of that meaning that everything is permitted and more important everything shall be permitted in order to make art. Not "art" but art. I read one place that Carla Bozulich said that Evangelista does not make spiritual music but instead makes music which allows them to get rid of themselves. It is not a quote but close to it. I think that is important to keep in mind and heart when listening to this music because it is a way of making it both risky, free flowing but first of all not a lesson to be learned. My opinion is the complete opposite when it comes to "wisdom" and "sanity" because the realization of one´s visions has a near-perfect landscape to tumble in when it comes to music and other art forms for that matter. I really believe this is the finest purpose of art because it is a safe place for maybe otherwise intolerable and criminal behaviour. Despair, self-pity and aggression may be very politically incorrect and otherwise incorrect as well when channeled through other spaces in life but music does not even house these "dangerous" feelings but need them in its freedom and its way of mirroring what could be, is or should not be outside of the music. That is my thoughts right now about all this.