CODEX SERAFINI - GOD'S SPIT

 




Some groups draw inspiration from a literary source; others elevate influence into creative symbiosis. Pace Mark E. Smith and Albert Camus’ novel The Fall (or Nick Cave with Harold Pinter’s play The Birthday Party), the Brighton, UK-based psych rock outfit Codex Serafini do more than take their name from Italian architect and artist Luigi Serafini’s imaginary encyclopedia Codex Seraphinianus. They aim to emulate the work’s fantastical reinvention of the world. Self-proclaimed emissaries from Saturn, they operate under conditions of strict anonymity, performing in red robes and black masks. Although most of the tracks have lyrics, their female lead singer sometimes sings in an invented idiom, as asemic and open to interpretation as the language in which Serafini wrote his codex. Musically, they combine elements of sludge metal, freak folk, space rock, noise rock and psych fusion into a potent brew that can gather in contemplative pools or trickle forth speedily under its own flammable impetus.

Their new live album God’s Spit contains nine songs from the two previous EP releases Invisible Landscape (2021) and Serpents of Enceladus (2020). While the players stop short of complete reinvention, a latent raw heaviness is enhanced. The sax player brought on board to finish Invisible Landscape and a new drummer enlisted during lockdown (“one of Brighton’s best” according to the group) bring a Morphine-style swagger to the pagan folk elements, linking jazz swing to unearthly blues and electrifying the pace of these bizarre interstellar transmissions. God’s Spit was recorded at The Smokehouse, Ipswich during a 16-show UK tour in the winter of 2021 playing with similarly prog/psych-inclined groups Gnod, The Brackish and Guranfoe. Following live stream shows and reduced capacity events that took place with the easing of lockdown restrictions, the recording captures a tighter band inspired by the company of fellow sonic travellers and champing at the bit to reconnect with live audiences.

A UK tour with German space rockers Electric Moon, along with appearances at bigger festivals and supports with Acid Mothers Temple, Helicon, Melt Banana, Ditz and Poly-Math convinced Codex Serafini and their labels Halfmeltedbrain Records and Ceremonial Laptop to focus on getting the Ipswich recording ready for release to mark the closing of a chapter in the group’s early history. The presence of Acid Mothers Temple in Codex’s orbit is apposite. The Japanese psych legends are another outfit that create their own magical cosmos out of reimagined cultural elements placed in surreal juxtapositions. Codex Serafini titles like ‘Organismic Thought’, ‘Mendoza’s Memory’ and ‘Time, Change and Become’ conjure some psychedelic realm born out of a graphic novel collaboration between Carlos Castenada and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Their mysterious costumed vibe and heavy psych rock sound invite comparisons to other cultish outfits such as Californian vegan oddballs the Source Family’s Yahowa 13 project while the desert rock intro to 'Mendoza's Memory' recalls the incantatory phrasing of Tuareg guitar warrior Mdou Moctar. They couldn't be any more outernationalist if they really were Saturnian emissaries - but then again ...

Codex Serafini have a UK tour booked for March and April (see dates below) and a studio album due this year on Riot Season Records.

(C) Text by Jon Kromka 2023



Codex Serafini's God's Spit is out now through Halfmeltedbrain and Ceremonial Laptop and is available on Bandcamp:

https://codexserafini.bandcamp.com/album/gods-spit 

Live:

March 4th - London at Chaos Theory Fest Day 3
dice.fm/partner/dice/event/2xxm6-chaos-theory-festival-2023-day-3-4th-mar-signature-brew-blackhorse-road-london-tickets

And the rest of the UK:

31st March - Ipswich

1st April - Chelmsford

2nd April - Bristol

6th April - Birmingham

7th April - Sheffield

8th April - Rotherham

9th April -Leeds

11th April - Canterbury

12th April - Brighton

14th - St Leonards

15th April - Manchester

https://www.facebook.com/events/1387103892032014





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANOCHT-KLAVIER KRIEGER-STRIBORG AT ALTAR, 1/7/23

Image
  This concert provides rewarding insights into the fruitful intermingling of genres that occurs on metal’s experimental fringe. Anocht and Klavier Krieger, two artists from Melbourne, join Tasmanian underground legend Striborg for a series of one-man performances where the theatrics and bleak themes of black metal meet dark ambient textures and mutant synth pop. Anocht initiates proceedings with strategies inherited from Blue Sabbath Black Cheer’s noise metal scene, layering ear-splitting shards of feedback guitar over a low ominous pulse. His 30-minute set is a feverish trail of amorphous themes that shares atmospherics with the dank, tomb-scented exhalations of Gnaw Their Tongues and Abruptum. Tortured vocalising over synth tritones and chitinous squeaks gives way to an even more dour sequence of delay accumulated guitar riffs collapsing into a swirling fog of distorted moans. Klavier Krieger’s set begins with isolated, echo-drenched beats, opening space that will be gradually
Read more

CODEX SERAFINI - THE IMPRECATION OF ANIMA

Image
  Codex Serafini have found an appropriate home for their first full-length album release. Riot Season, an independent label based in England’s Black Country region, provides an outlet for musicians that share a similar spiritual intensity with the mysterious Brighton-based psych rockers. They’ve shared a stage with Japanese neo-psych superstars Acid Mothers Temple on at least one festival date. Mahti, another labelmate, features members of legendary Finnish avant-rock group Circle. The more raucous elements in their sound have a parallel in Shit and Shine whose 2004 noise rock mantra Ladybird Riot Season has re-released in an anniversary edition. In a manner  fitting  for such eminent company, The Imprecation of Anima sees a broadening and deepening of the mystic energy Codex Serafini has demonstrated on their previous Halfmeltedbrain EP releases Invisible Landscape (2021) and Serpents of Enceladus (2020). The album’s four, longish suite-like tracks evolved out of a year’s worth
Read more

CHRIS ABRAHAMS/OREN AMBARCHI/ROBBIE AVENAIM - PLACELESSNESS

Image
  This collaboration between Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim brings together three of Australia’s most innovative experimental musicians. Although Ambarchi is now based overseas, the trio's improvisatory practice retains a collective identity. This is an artistic interaction developed through years of friendship and enhanced by each musician’s refinement of his own methodology. The grounding of this practice and the open-endedness of the music generates an intriguing tension, a simultaneous augmentation and contradiction of the title’s semiotic chain of meaning. Placelessness is a term coined by Canadian geographer Edward Relph in the 1970s to describe the erosion of individuality of place under modernity. Capitalist imperatives (commercialisation, mass consumption) and bureaucratic standardisation instil homogeneity in the cultural environment. A companion concept in the field of anthropology, describing a similar form of alienation, is the non-place. Marc Aug é
Read more