Secret Chiefs 3: Second Grand Constitution & Bylaws: Hurqalya
1998
Mimicry Records, reissues this CD with previously unreleased bonus
tracks. Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws was originally released
by Amarillo. Taking a big cue from early esoteric Imami Shi'ism,
Ismaili gnosis, Ishraqi philosophy and its later redactions at
Isphahan, the SC3 attempt here to weave sound tapestries consistent
with their dim but growing understandings of these phenomena. Heaped
with inspiration, lacking equipment and funds, and ailed by various
agonies that fed this recording, the recording process of this CD was
so passionately pitted against the banal shit-world of the Apparent
that the music here still to this day refuses to be pinned down,
gentrified or co-opted into any boxed-up 'Weltanschauung' -- and still
oozes with longing, mystery and immediacy. None would guess the
conditions under which this production was executed. Refusing to
descend into a Manichaean dualism, and armed with only two mics and
two ADAT machines, on this CD, SC3 couldn't help but exude that other,
more controversial side of the psychic spectrum: that of "holy war".
No mere ignorant blunder into militant experimental darkness, this
music is a heroic and Herculean effort of that 'struggle' that we
think brings real excitement back to the world of sound.
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