Track-by-Track // Eric Arn – Higher Order

Eric Arn has mined the nether regions of avant-rock, free improv, drone and psychedelia beginning with the Crystalized Movements in the 1980s, and continuing with Primordial Undermind for over three decades.

I decided to focus with this album on just the guitar, but as it came together over time of course each piece ended up using a different approach to playing, composition, and recording. Once the pieces were arranged, the whole thing revealed itself to be a rite of passage or initiation in seven steps.

6 or 7 Adepts – A summons. on or at the threshold of that path. following elusive strands, groping for the latch. locating the means. liminality. the call to the dance

Warpage in the Figures – Left versus right brain. Intuition against intellect. The fight that evolves into a dance, then a union. the illusion cracks. control of the vehicle.

The Glass Scarab – the probationary path. presentation of the challenge, and acceptance – engagement and struggle, setback and progress. indicating a point achieved does not bring about that achievement

Wer Tauben füttert, füttert Gespenster – zones of yielding. the Lunar Pitris whispering in your ear. negative feedback loops. but in the pauses, a chance to break the cycle(?). the struggle to sever the bond.

Palais Mesmer – The rush, expansion, the excitement of discovery. Mandelbrot. Spanish arabesques built on North African architecture. The infinite in the infinitesimal. the fire is burning brightly. (see https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab700c/pdf)

Meandric System – Labyrinths of reason, knots of thought. recursion. crystal cathedrals. both ordered and complex. not what you expected it would be. the hermeneutic of suspicion in spite of appearances. successive and graded stages of unification

Blumenfelder – Elysium. Yāma. Empyrean. Satyaloka. Zion. Meet the new pantheon here.

Paean – The summit is not the end. The yearning that remains. a process, not a ceremony

Greets the dawn –