Blarke Bayer / The King In Yellow 12" Black Vinyl ***PRE-ORDER***
Blarke Bayer 'The King In Yellow' 12" Black Vinyl
Preorder shipping from Dec 12
In 1895, the American writer Robert W. Chambers published his best known work, The King in Yellow, a confounding and beautiful suite of supernatural stories, involving a shadowy, pernicious entity, a sinister churchyard watchman and a forbidden play which causes madness in anyone who dares to read it. This book serves as the central inspiration for prolific experimental musicians and composer Benjamin Andrews astounding new solo record THE KING IN YELLOW, released under the moniker Blarke Bayer. Full of glacial drone, crushing, subterranean guitars and torpid synths, Andrews offers a kind of redux to Chamber’s prohibited play—here is an uncanny, almost menacing record, which may induce despair or derangement. Will you dare to listen? But despite this gloomy conceit, this is a record of hypnotic pleasures and pockets of radiance. Luminosity creeps out unexpectedly from walls of devastating noise, and Andrew displays an incredible ability to transform tones of wreckage and confinement into something sacred and enlivening.
The album was recorded over a sweltering autumn weekend in 2021, at the dilapidated All Saints church in Bendigo, built in 1856. Producer, engineer and label-head Alex Cameron had managed to get the keys off the church’s caretaker. The pair had hoped to set up gear inside and stay the night, but the church’s state of total disrepair made this impossible. The windows were smashed in and the floors were littered with trash.
During the recording, locals entered the church with questions and curiosity, and a hope that they could come in and listen. “People started turning up and asking ‘Can we pay entry?’ And we had to say, ‘no sorry, we’re making a noise album’. No one complained. They enjoyed it. They were really excited and stuck around”, remembers Andrews. Cameron was essential to the project. “It wouldn’t have happened without his interest and motivation… he comes from a more traditional rock background, and it was great to have an outsider looking in with a different set of references,” says Andrews.
“It was an honour and privilege to work with my friend, confidante and music hero on this.” says Cameron. “We fled Boogie festival in Talarook and took shelter in the church, which was in a sorry state. Desecrated by Satanic graffiti and strewn with squatter’s detritus, it was a fitting setting for Benjamin Andrews’ waves of dark ambience. It was recorded with the barest of set ups and my rudimentary engineering skills were put to the test by the immense volume of Andrews’ legendary rig.”
“We had no delusions of grandeur. We wanted to record it really quickly and really raw” adds Andrews. They had a couple of microphones, guitars, amps set up on the pulpit, and an old Yamaha synth. Takes were quick, and they didn’t labour over certain arrangements or sounds. This frenetic spontaneity can be heard on “THE LAST KING” a slice of sludgy guitars that sound as if they are being transmitted from inside a deep well, and “BLACK STARS” a bracing track of industrial clamoring, which could be the soundtrack to a forgotten 1930s horror film.
Field recordings and voice samples were the final pieces produced for the LP. The album launches with ominous church bells on intro “ANGELUS” and finishes with “THE MASK” where some lines of Anna Karina in Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville are sampled, which describe the devouring pull of desire. Similarly, THE KING OF YELLOW puts us under its spell, drawing us into a devouring, incandescent pit of noise and drone.
Benjamin Andrews has been a stalwart of the Australian independent scene for over two decades, with various noise, metal and experimental projects which include the long running industrial rock group MY DISCO, exploratory black metal band KILAT, and the highly influential two piece grindcore group, Agents of Abhorrence. THE KING IN YELLOW will be released by Endless Recordings, an independent record label operated by Alex Cameron, whose roster includes renowned Australian acts such as Jack Ladder, Placement and The Pretty Littles, among others.