Culture
KRUGERVILLE
KRUGERVILLE
Culture
But then one morning the world awoke to a mysterious stranger who whirlwinded into town in a white jumpsuit, pointy shoes and fuck-yeah beard. This stranger was Pop Levi and he had tales of myth, mystery and mysticism to tell. Gather round …..
years ago, civilisation was at a revolutionary stage. Elvis rocked up and shook his hips, girls swooned, boys got boners, parents raged. Rock and roll was new, exciting and dangerous. People chewed gum and smiled. Culture was changing, there was magic in the air. But this simple and accepting happiness didn’t last forever. Seasons changed, decades rolled by, progress was made. Science and technology took over. People no longer spoke, they poked on Facebook. Bands didn’t flyer for gigs, they sent MySpace bulletins. Any toothless child who ever caught their mum putting a shiny silver coin under their pillow knows what it’s like to lose a little faith in the wonder of the world. By 2007, the magician had revealed his secret. And while the revelation brought knowledge and knowledge brought power, the magic had gone. Once the innocence of a people is lost, it’s nigh on impossible to regain.
“I use a technique called Scrying to write my songs. Essentially it’s a creative tool that gets in touch with an interpretative side of your brain and gets it to write stuff for you. It was popularized in Victorian England by Dr. John Dee who used it to invent the Enochian language, which he called the ‘Language of the Angels’. He would stare for huge times at suggestive things like scribbles or sand or smoke or mirrors or glass or crystal balls until the negative space would just suggest stuff. The idea is you get your brain to invent negative space, you don’t shy away from it, you just write down everything until your brain gets into it. I’ve invented something called audio-scrying, where I listen to sonic landscapes for long periods of times until I hear harmonies and melodies come through and I write all those down and write songs that way. I like that because it means that they’re not really my songs. I’m not trying to say it’s massively revolutionary because people have been doing this type of thing but just describing it in different ways for ever, but I do think now more than ever, it’s a potentially more interesting way of creating art than just saying I’m going to write a song
“I’m not interested in anything other than music and fucking. If I said I was I’d be lying”
about what happened on the bus the other day. Saying that though, that doesn’t mean to say you need to write songs about clever stuff. I write all my songs about girlfriends. What else is there I’m interested in? I’m not interested in anything other than music and fucking. If I said I was I’d be lying. Oh and Maths actually.” With scrying, sex and subtraction in the space between the space in his mind, exLadyton bassist Poppy set about recording his first album on his laptop while traveling around the world, in places varying in scope from aeroplane toilets to cathedrals. The end result, The Return to Form Black Magick Party, is the most infectious thing you’ll ever fucking hear. A cultural highpoint for uncultured times. If one of the Vestal Virgins asked you what sex was like, you could play her this album and she’d either be a slut or scared of cock for the rest of her life. Pop explains “It’s a completely uncommercial artrock album really. Which The Sun tried to say sounds like a Bolan album. It sounds nothing like Marc fucking Bolan. It sounds as much like Marc Bolan as it does Jimi Hendrix as it does Marvin Gaye as it does Brian Wilson.” It sounds like all of these and none of these and some of these musical milestones all at once.