Lacrimae Angelis Dei (Requiem)

Running Time: 6:59

Released On: "High Risk Of Rainbows & Hair Ribbons ( I Got The Corona Virus - 19 Blues)" - Various Artists (98 tracks)

Label: Harsh Reality Music

Release Date: 27th April 2020

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

Chris Phinney labouring at the typewriter (ask your dad), back in the day...

Our second take on the Covid-19 pandemic came courtesy of a very long standing friend from the heyday of the cassette underground, Chris Phinney of Harsh Reality Music. His was one of the first of the old tape labels to release one of the Magic Moments At Twilight Time Flashbax series, issuing Volume 1 as HR 239 way back in 1991! Chris has made some pretty fine sounds himself over the years too, and we were very pleased to have both Cancerous Growth and Viktimized Karcass in the M&E catalogue, not to mention some of the albums he did with Messrs. McGee, Henson and Moneymaker.

Flashbax Vol. 1 (Harsh Reality, 1991)

Chris tells us this particular compilation project came about as the result of a conversation between himself and Berlin based musician, Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt. Crisis spawning creativity, as I'd mentioned previously in the article on A Baneful Circle Of Light. He describes the idea behind it as circling the wagons and going out with your boots on, being sure to leave a mighty footprint behind. What you end up with is a phenomenal 98 track collection, running at 6 hours, 38 minutes and 13 seconds, (no, I haven't counted, he did that), our contribution to which was Lacrimae Angelis Dei, track no. 41. Although not done specifically with life under the virus in mind, it suits the concept amazingly well. It started life as a track Skit and I recorded during the Digitalis Sessions, originally titled Sweet Voices Poison, but it was ultimately deemed a misfit, a long way ahead of collating the finished album a year on.

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When Chris sent the invitation for this compilation, I remembered it immediately, it has an appropriately deep and sorrowful quality, albeit quite discordant in places. Whereas A Baneful Circle Of Light was a full on sensory assault, an Aztec death whistle laden chunk of fear and anxiety, we realised this track had the potential to work as a requiem for the dead, of which there had already been many by this time. The samples were of synthesized 'sweet' female voices, 'poisoned' by our electronic box of tricks, then married in various combinations, some of which deliberately create an unpleasant harmonic resonance. We re-edited and remixed to take out some of the harsher edges, being left with something Skit described as "like hearing angels cry", which is an unusually beautiful comment from someone who normally likens everything to a favourite power tool. The title is, of course, Latin for "the tears of angels", my everlasting tribute to his one single moment of human sensitivity.

SOLIDARIETAS