Black Ops Arcane
Thoughts Without Soul
Thoughts Without Soul is a project that took a lot of work. For a while things looked a little bleak, but perseverance pays. 12 months passed since the previous, release, but a few extra months' work did wonders. This album continues a creative journey started in the previous album and goes on into some new territory.
The following poem, Thoughts Without Soul, is read in two parts by the artist on two tracks. These are Souls in Absentia and Desert Wind. These two tracks take an avant-garde approach to dance music with some complex percussion and amelodic or barely-melodic musical parts. They are programmatic pieces and attempt to depict in musical language, arid, desolate places inhabited only worthless, soulless ones and the anger we direct at these hollow, hypocritical men.
The poem was written by the artist in about 10 minutes, followed by roughly 15 minutes' editing at various times. This was after many years' rumination on TS Eliot's The Hollow Men. and several years of learning to ad-lib on music radio. It was literally possible for the words to flow straight out to articulate some well developed inner subjectivities.
The rest of the album varies between, dark and brooding trance with the punch and grit of hard rock, and some other styles. Sounds of the 70's and 80's become obvious here and there. Some brighter, melodic pieces are sewn in to make it nice for the kiddies.
Thoughts without soul
Eyes without sight
Men of honour absent
The natives of a dry expanse
Knowing only as one
To whom nothing is known
These are the has-beens
These are the dead-within.
A homestead built on dreams
Dreams of Death Valley
In night-time awakenings
Quench the thirst with sand
Sing the serenade
Sing to hollow trees
Sing to solid stone
And silence – a friend.
This is the rock-land
A land of sheep
This is the grave-land
Where fools stumble about
The cowards stand
They make no point
And scarecrows flap
shirts in stinking breeze.
“It is I,” says the buzzard
“I have come to point you home"
So slight the response
So pathetic are the men
Whose souls have no thought
With hearts of charcoal
And brains of chalk
“We have our home,” comes the reply.
