Label: Sub Rosa

ベルギーSub Rosaが展開する激ヤバ・アンソロジー3部作!!本作はタイトルからもお分かりの通り、所謂オカルト現象に関する記録を音とテキストで纏め上げた大変貴重なシリーズもの。第一弾となる本作は"スピリチュアリズムと幽霊屋敷の探求"にフォーカスした作品で、心理学に関する音声の歴史を辿るというもの。悪魔祓いの現場、ポルターガイスト現象、奇術師の講演など恐ろしいサウンドが満載、更に古い録音ではワックスシリンダーの質感が更なる恐怖を付加しています。32ページブックレット付き。









'Have a gramophone in every grave...'
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

The Anthology Spectra Ex Machina brings together rare documents pertaining to so-called occult phenomena, most of them taken from little-known archives. In the course of three volumes, this series traces an audio history of parapsychology through the exploration of spiritualism and haunted houses (vol. 1); musician mediums (vol. 2); experiences of extrasensory perceptions (clairvoyance, psychokinesis, etc.) and electronic voice phenomena (vol. 3).

The documents gathered here are, by their extravagance and far-fetched aspects, more than the mere objects of belief one would be tempted to reduce them to. They are vestiges of aberrant phenomena, fossils of an unknown civilization buried in the depths of the unconscious that are revived, in a way, when we listen to them. They can be understood as "works," in the full artistic sense of the word, and constitute a kind of "cabinet of sound curiosities" that is worthy of aesthetic interest. Sometimes imbued with a disconcerting dramatic intensity, these documents bear the features of an authentic time machine, placing the listener in the position of a witness of the time immersed in the dim darkness of the experimental hall. And it is at that precise moment that the aesthetic power of these archives takes precedence over their probative value. Their somewhat old-fashioned charm, maintained by the surface noise of magnetic tapes and old wax disks, gets stronger with each listen.