INFERNO SESSIONS (WRITE HERE FROM MAY 22-29)

[chzi]

Laughing with previous comments. Feels familiar. Do not want spoilers, yet is here commenting - thus reading here. But want no spoilers. Hihi, could be me. There's one and only one eas.. ahem, difficult! solution to this paradox.

[Autocode]

Seems like "possible" new videos will be dropping soon from the album later. This is from there main account on Youlube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMQC3-nMX8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r43bw4IRRpY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-PDZg8cYCk

[Quadrivium]

Will be attending a record store Inferno session later today. Am actually feeling quite nervous!

[stags209]

Seems like "possible" new videos will be dropping soon from the album later. This is from there main account on Youlube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMQC3-nMX8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r43bw4IRRpY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-PDZg8cYCk

Or just uploading each track to their page....guess we'll find out

[Interface de l'enfer]

Late session, London. Which I came quite close to missing. NB. I am on the autism spectrum and have fairly extreme levels of social anxiety which, if left untended, could power a medium sized village. People? euch (shudders internally). Why put myself through all this palaver? It's Boards innit. And I'll apologise upfront at my habit of banging on aimlessly and relentlessly at the most inconsequential of matters. There may, however, be glints of insight amongst the spray of typed ordure.

What on paper should have been a five hour, complete non-event of a train journey from the north of England, roughly where the Night's Watch durisdiction starts, very rapidly descended into an eight hour plus fiasco of cancelled departures, late arrivals and missed connections. We were only just skimming the outer edge of sun flattened Camden at 7pm. Tense, nervous headache? Check. Finally arrive at Euston - no way i'm going to have enough time to book into Travelodge, freshen up, change and get back out so I bit the big one, and ploughed on to the tube to Tottenham Court Road. It was rammed. The lower down the escalators I went, the greater the increase in temperature - almost as though I was crossing over, at the irresistable persuasion of an unseen conduit or interface, to the hinterlands of some infernal, diabolical realm. It was worse than exponential. Gritty eyed heat under a greenhouse roof discomfort was smartly and instantaneously roundhouse kicked into touch by a thundering furnace wave of demon fire breath. One stop. Nobody got off. Two stops. More people got on. Head swelling, eyes pounding, breathing getting shallower. They'll find my furious, dessicated husk of a corpse on Sunday morning under a bench seat, giving everyone the finger. What a way to go. Doors opened and the carriage vomits a morasse of impatient clammy flesh onto the platform. Breathing and sight restored. Human(ish) again.

Then up - up and out - swept along and dirty birthed onto sun blinded streets Tortured scenes that would have caused Bosch to pause, brush in hand, palette drooling onto the floor, colours melding into newer, unexpected shades of trauma, despair, decay and perversion. The pavements throbbed, trees vibrated. My ears blanked out at the subsonic frequencies that were folding the horizon into an endless singularity. Eyes and eyesight stuttering. There was an under-hum of end times. The catwalks people saw themselves on in their hippocampus movies were drenched in JP Gaultier, shorts by Venison, fawnskin loafers by Oeuf du Soleil, Wayfarers by Night. Selfies? The cameras - their souls - ignited like atelier windows on a Paris morning, imploding with pointless desire. Somebody was live streaming a bagel. "Lissen! I ain't starting wiv that shizz again bruv - not this fackin' weather" Old Bill was wondering if they could nick themselves and have the night off. A sly Nando's on the way to the cells. Evening all. Good try. Then there! There, then was the landmark. The theatre. The boy who lived - the early years. And just as I'm drawing level with the hugely ornate advertising arrangement which - in the weakening blast radius of sun appears to read "Hayter & The Cured Id" - two gentlemen - eyes pinned, hands explaining mid-air, hit me with the drive-by remark that lifts my already frantic pulse from catastrophic to aneurysm ".......and the worst of it is, I'm going to have to wait a WHOLE WEEK before I can hear it again........" (said no-one about [choose your favourite pop artist who writes two minute sugar dirges with committees of 300]). Focussing I see the doorway. Then the faces of the exiting. Dazed. Elated. Ponderous. Changed. Wordless. Relieved. Huddled conversations kerbside. Flickering amongst the kaleidoscope of horns, brakes, exhausts, fuck out of the ways were stray splinters of overheard snippets............ominous as shit............took me somewhere.........jesus....................I tried keeping up with the tracks in that little pamphlet thing but, eh, no chance of that..............found myself crying..............needed to be WAY louder, man!

So then - in, I get QR-ed, wristband, gallery or ground floor? I get nosebleeds going up a stepladder. Ground it is. Pile of goodies thrust at me, downstairs for the pre-ordered t-shirt, the bar (looks like something John Wick would waste a load of neckless gym-loonies in), the lav (where I change into my home made Prophecy/Inferno sweatshirt [photos if you wanna see?]), back upstairs, it's 8.10pm. A queue has formed outside a door. Reality dawns. Breathing hitches tightly. I pull at a shirt collar that isn't there. Inhaler. Breathe, man. Refocus. Something a bit special is about to go the eff down. The queue is piling right up on this narrow landing. Eyes dart, spiralling in on themselves. I'm turning into a cyclops. Somebody checks a watch. I look at mine. Eight fourteeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnfifteen. The door opens. Christ.

We are Dallas, Lambert and Kane entering The Derelict. A domed, vaulted ceiling. Red light, pillars, a (sleeping) red lensed, hexagon eye points up to the dome, and a haze permeates. Shadows deepen and blur, swelling. A smell of - dry ice? incense? - a lulling, beckoning bass throb - meandering, bubbling, murmuring like a slowed river. The floor undulates and coerces. Red chairs, arranged foursquare face the eye. Banked like a jury. This is some Eyes Wide Shut heaviness. I take a perch on the south westernmost corner, fold myself into an expectant knot and wait. It's only then I notice speakers, on stands about 6-8 feet high, paired at acute angles, pointing AT the seats - arranged as if on the four courners of a square. More people arrive. Chairs flll. The ante ups. Lights dim and an expectant hush...........this is happening.

Geogaddi, for all its successes, its leaps and bounds in form and gesture, its hall of mirrors of clues within clues within clues, when set against what I just

EXPERIENCED - WITNESSED - CONSUMED - WAS CONSUMED BY - SHED A TEAR TO

was a statement of intent or a manifesto; an as yet un-peer reviewed theorem; the striking out for new worlds, a new form of expression.

Inferno is The General Theory of Relativity or (perhaps more tellingly) On The Destruction of Species made flesh. A coalescence of history. The crossing of vital, final paths. The new territory upon which unfettered adventure took root, flourished and ulitmately drew up its own demise.

I cannot point to single moments. This was a "whole" to be experienced as such. A movement with chapters and connections and punctuation. Woozy, formless drones recalled Kevin Shields. Glider. Robin Guthrie seemed to be in there again. There were passages that sounded like A BAND WAS JAMMING, MAN. I've read a couple of sniffy reviews that point to the halting, mid-paced drum tracks as being a weakness. Nah, you're alright. it's nothing of the sort. Rather, the "rhythm" tracks in some places seemed to be led entirely by a single bass drum. Sometimes - deliberately, destabilisingly - without what might be considered the "natural" counterpoint of a snare on the 2 or the 4 or wherever they would have chosen to put them. Had they not. There were instances of recognition. Chord progressions - a portion of a squarewave - a dream that escapes you as you're opnening your eyes; just catching the glittering tail of ectoplam as it rounds the darkened bend. For a split second I thought I heard what some of us have thought was Noatak start up, but it was gone as quickly as it arrived. As was the session. I was genuinely moved. I was overwhelmed. It HAS been worth the wait.

The album has just arrived in the post. Ready, let's go................

[Den]

A BAND WAS JAMMING, MAN.

I felt this too.

[fujee]

Glad you made it mate. I was there too!

[μasch]

It was amazing. Not only did i get the goodies and the flexidisc, but i also got to see one of the infamous VHS tapes in person. The guy who owns it even accepted to come at my place so i can record his tape.

[Cub\cub]

Three tracks in at the Leeds session and the amp has overheated. #inferno

[PurpleFlurp]

You Retreat in Time and Space... Wow!!

[tvsr]

has anyone managed to find the introduction/chant that played before the album yet?

[saturdayindex]

Well, Shibuya listening session was great, but... 1000 times better on the headphones.

[saturdayindex]

has anyone managed to find the introduction/chant that played before the album yet?

I have a video of it sent my a fellow member, but the audio of the chant is next to impossible to make out and it didn't record the whole thing.

I'm sure there is a better recording out there... anyone?

[A_Northern_Soul]

Three tracks in at the Leeds session and the amp has overheated. #inferno

This is very BoC!

[Den]

Well, Shibuya listening session was great, but... 1000 times better on the headphones.

I'm so excited for my first headphone listen.

Thank you everyone for sharing your dispatches from the sessions!

[observation]

has anyone managed to find the introduction/chant that played before the album yet?

HI tvsr
I have read several different folk wondering what the drone was in the May 22 listening parties. I wonder if it is track 19 - Inferno. I listened to the whole album on Apple Music (excellent, of course). Then I went to do something. Came back, opened my laptop again, and a drone started playing - it was track 19, which hadn't played after the album ended. It also had a cool hexagon/candles image which was different to the album cover. Maybe that is the drone track from the start of the listening session. The intro voices at the listening session were (I think) linked to the MBI voice (bible institute?) that has been mentioned elsewhere.

Enjoy!

[Buckie High]

After listening to the album a few times on my hi-fi setup at home, I am pleased to confirm that the audio/acoustics/PA system at the NYC session were terrible and materially impacted the experience in a negative way.

There are several incredible tracks on Inferno that I know I will enjoy listening to for the rest of my life.

Some highlights after a few listens:

- Age Of Capricorn
- Father And Son (had me in hysterics in a good way)
- Naraka
- Memory Death
- Into The Magic Land
- Arena Americanada (possibly their best outro, on par with Happy Cycling, Satellite Anthem Icarus, and Left Side Drive)
- The Process (another tremendous outro)

[Interface de l'enfer]

After listening to the album a few times on my hi-fi setup at home, I am pleased to confirm that the audio/acoustics/PA system at the NYC session were terrible and materially impacted the experience in a negative way.

There are several incredible tracks on Inferno that I know I will enjoy listening to for the rest of my life.

Some highlights after a few listens:

- Age Of Capricorn
- Father And Son (had me in hysterics in a good way)
- Naraka
- Memory Death
- Into The Magic Land
- Arena Americanada (possibly their best outro, on par with Happy Cycling, Satellite Anthem Icarus, and Left Side Drive)
- The Process (another tremendous outro)

100% agree. The sound in London was a touch brittle and I was tiring of it (not the tunes) in the last third of the show. It's a shame, really, as now that I've listened to the album a good 5-6 times already - it arrived yesterday - on heaphones and through a half decent-ish hifi, I imagine what could have been at the session. A couple of decent subs would have been a no-brainer. Totally in sync with your highlights, too. I remember laughing out loud during Age of Capricorn at the session and saying to no-one in particular "This is just too good!"

[Interface de l'enfer]

Glad you made it mate. I was there too!

Nice one! It was a hell of an experience. Just wished I hadn't sat quite so close to the dry ice machine!

[Redd Panderson]

...what I just

EXPERIENCED - WITNESSED - CONSUMED - WAS CONSUMED BY - SHED A TEAR TO

was a statement of intent or a manifesto...

...a dream that escapes you as you're openening your eyes; just catching the glittering tail of ectoplasm as it rounds the darkened bend.

I just want to say that I read your whole post and I can relate. I've only listened to the continuous mix a single time at home, yet the way this album's gorgeous lingering light and shadows continue to stretch and grow in my subconscious is honestly something unique. I haven't heard much music that has had this level of an effect on me. I literally am choosing to not listen to the album again for a little while only because I'm savoring how it's transforming in my subconscious before I dive in again.

I think this might be one of my favorite albums of all time. I can't say it now, it's too new, I've only listened to it once, but DAMN MAN, they've created something utterly sublime here!