Magick Concrète is a new project from Andy Sharp, the English Heretic, and Mark Pilkington, incorporating heavily-manipulated, site-specific field recordings from charged environments.
Our first release is a 13-minute Christmas charity single, ‘Do They Know it’s Mithras?’ – available here.
All energies acquired from downloading and listening to the track will be donated to worthy causes.
Sunday 12th December saw the first act of Magick Concrète. Mark Pilkington and I took a 3 hour walk from Tottenham Court Road, through Crowley’s Holborn beneath the pealing bells of St. Paul’s, to the displaced remains of a Mithraeum at Walbrook. Along the way a number of field recordings were made. Mark then processed the recordings through his modular synthesiser set-up – MISTY. I have subsequently taken these recordings, to create a ceremonial structure, overlaying them with readings from a Mithraic Ritual. We are releasing the the resulting track “Do they know it’s Mithras?”, as a free download. It is possibly the first ever occult charity record. Each download will accrue magical energy for worthy causes over the Christmas period. By downloading this song, you are pledging 13 minutes worth of pure oja…
The track is dedicated particularly to the activism of lecturers and students alike, who have shown both courage and vision, using the society of the spectacle and its machinery to subversively bright ends. Moreover, that the vital tools of humour and imagination can disarm and re-vision evokes Octavio Paz’s statement, “a chained man need only close his eyes to make the world explode”. To mix the puer of Jupiter with the senex of Saturn is dissolve the lectern between pedagogue and pupil. As such, “Do they know it’s Mithras?” is a ceremonial volley from the esoteric underground of the spectacle, a shadow academy – the society of the spectral. On a more hermetic level perhaps it is necessary for us to dwell in the saturnine night of discontented winters in order to glimpse the jupiterian light and new possibilities – what the alchemists called the lumen naturae.
The track serves another purpose. As we know, Christmas is often a time of celebration-induced stress and unwelcome guests. Therefore, rather than treating this track as a piece of festive entertainment, and because of its somewhat atonal nature, we would recommend playing it towards the end of Saturnalia when one wishes to rid the House and Parliament of toffee-scoffing hangers on. A banishing perambulation to work off the gluttony of capital.
Download “Do they know it’s Mithras?” here / read Andy Sharp’s full notes for the track here
