Hortvs – Domimium Trerrae (Attenuation Circuit) – Hortvs are Saintes.Glaces (Rolando Torres Martin and Lidwine de Royer Dupré), Thébru Čelet and Signalstoerung. Domimium Trerrae has been flowing in here through the darkness of Autumn and now here at the start of Winter, yet another album that we desperately need to say something about on these pages…
“Nature abhors a vacuum. Into the void, nature places love; the mind often puts hatred into it. Hate occupies.“ (Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs, Paris, 1869)
Domimium Trerrae is warmly intriguing, inviting, seductive…
A hortus is a garden.
“A garden that we might dwell longer in or that may grow over our graves”
“…paradise haunts gardens” (Derek Jarman).
Will that paradise be ours… or the Earth’s? Spoken word, seductively French, French always sound seductive, especially so here at the start of the whole rather intense experience that is this coming together of the three parties and this album. I wonder what she’s saying? Seductively haunting, rich, velvety, pagan? Some kind of other way, something laced in ritual, in spirit, in inviting warmth…
They, Hortvs, talk of “a cry. Woodsmoke drifts across a field and into the forest, an acrid smell haunting it, and the sound of distant cheering, chilling those squatting wide-eyed among the underbrush. It could be anywhere in Europe in the 15th, 16th or 17th centuries – a woman being literally burned alive, outwardly for being at one with Nature, but more prosaically and to many in the know, for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The deafening, hateful voice of patriarchal religious piety that found service subjugating the masses, then justifying massacres, wars, invasions, colonisations and genocides still does so today. But now it has added habitat destruction, corrupt legal systems and endless capitalist ‘growth’ to the list of its clients. The godless using the religious as a fig leaf for their obscene deceptions and plausible deniability in the increasingly precarious house of cards we call civilisation”
– and yes, all that, in terms of just listening, in terms of just standing here in the darkness of the studio and the demands of paint and the dark shapes of trees in the Winter wind outside, just standing here listening to it again for the umpteenth time, those words do make sense, although in here it feels inviting, it feels deliciously warm, encasing, communal somewhere beyond all those words. A shared experience, a higher plain, the place the curiosity of the black cat took her to, that place to contact and switch the other (yes, the spirituality of Webcore), it doesn’t feel like something that’s fighting the voices of the patriarchy as much as rising above it all. Otherly, this is otherly, it is rather like stumbling on something in the woods that you weren’t meant to stumble on, it is rather beautiful, powerful, feminine, strong, defiant, embracing..
“Dominium Terrae – rulership over the Earth as it had been conveniently interpreted up until recently, may become an epitaph of mythological hubris. The original archaic desert texts from which the Latin was derived can alternatively be interpreted as denoting humankind’s responsibility – the guardianship and husbandry of the planet, but once again, that voice was not heard. Those who would seek to commune with Nature rather than dominate; who meet her with their soul and their senses, with sacredness and awe are similarly silenced and sidelined, even in the face of a now vast volume of inconvenient truth. As the city of myths burns, hurricanes and typhoons bellow and the waters rise over rich and poor alike, who is crying out now, and who listening? Humankind, like a lost and desperate child in the rubble, now cowers from the vacuum within it, now squats wide-eyed in the underbrush unable to see what it perceives; believe what it knows or hear love in Nature’s word….”
“But that voice never went away. Cannot go away. Over the centuries it has grown, found harmony with science and now has swelled into a roar from the forest”.
Mostly, whatever this album might be about, it is essentially a warm and beautiful thing, a spiritual thing, an uplifting journey into otherness, an embracing process, a glowing positive…
Saintes.Glaces is the collaborative project that brings together multi-disciplinary artist Rolando Torres Martin and singer/multi-instrumentalist Lidwine de Royer Dupré from the Cotentin Peninsula, France. Both are known for their visual and audio compositions that have lead to various exhibitions and releases. Rolando also writes about music via silenceandsound.me and EX! magazine.
Thébru Čelet is a multidisciplinary visual and sound artist based in the UK. Active since 1982, his work typically explores human relationships with Nature, ancient consciousness and randomness, with occasional forays into the political. Čelet is also known for music/sound and video work under the name Disorganism and runs the experimental radio station Greyclay Radio
A couple more links: instagram.com/signalstoerung.official / www.attenuationcircuit.de
THE ORGAN 