Trilogy Tuesday

I finally got around to completing my collection of the latest trilogy by The Hafler Trio. This is a fairly substantial, if austere, collection of drone based work, theorized by many to be built around the sound of a cello. Each member of the collection shares the common characteristics of the same foundation drone, out of which small shifts, processes, and other tones grow and shrink - again, in a very austere manner. This collection is in no hurry to get any where, nor does it spend too much pride emoting its minimalism. Each piece comes with an accompanying booklet and envelope, double layered with fly paper and textured card stock. Along with the subtle differences in sound between the three members of the set, there are subtle differences in the design and content of accompanying physical material.

1. Cleave: 9 Great Openings. The underprinting of the booklets cover is silver.
2. No Man Put Asunder: 7 Fruitful and Seamless Unions. Gold. Falls into more sinister sounds than Cleave, and perhaps more austere.
3. No More Twain, Of One Flesh: 11 Unequivocal Obsecrations. White (can only be seen by lifting the fly paper on the cover and seeing the etched text underneath). A little fuller sound than the previous two parts.

Each part is bound to one of faith, love, or hope, as applied to consciousness, feeling, and the body. And each part praises consciousness, lambasts feeling, and seems indifferent (or a tad cruel) to the body. In the realm of consciousness, the series is a fascinating tool. I sat high up in my apartment last night, with my feet hanging out the large south windows from which I can see the entire valley sprawling out from the city. I stared, unfeeling (or just uninspired) by the twinkling lights. The psycho-acoustics would flare up, significantly, at times, filling the apartment space in a way that a turn of the head would cause different tonal sensations (a technique powerfully employed on Ryoji Ikeda's Matrix [for rooms] disc). The tones fused with the sounds of the street so that at times the source of some of said sounds were difficult to ascertain.

Deep into No More Twain, Of One Flesh: 11 Unequivocal Obsecrations, I was deep into trance and ripped apart by my own twain - two entities guiding and dividing my life right now - and had to fight my way out of such deep and frightening consciousness and back into the body. Scratches and cold medal were put to use to reinvigorate the breath and to bring myself down out of the super present to the merely present.