It’s been no secret that I’ve been very sick for a very long time, though the past week or so has been better as I acclimate to lithium and start seeing returns from it. Music has been all I’ve lived for, more often than not, during this bipolar hell-ride. And, we have, as of the 26th of this month released for pre-order, the second of four (or maybe five) artifacts for the Salvation writing cycle. This artifact, the Death Cult LP, is the first main artifact for the cycle, as the Unspeakable EP was mostly just a teaser of things to come.
What makes the Death Cult release so interesting and special, is not only the collaboration we had within the collective, now known as Jessica B. Kelly & The Void Conspiracy, but this was the first time I had asked those that I was not directly working with to supply remixes of a track that we wrote. And, I was blown away.
It takes courage to bring others into one’s own work. It also takes a degree of humility, which I am only sometimes humble and the other times very arrogant, to do the same. When I first brought our drummer and producer on board to unfuck the Fidelity release, it was a time of uncertainty. Yeah, I’d lose part of the sound, but it wasn’t right, and she knew how to make it better, so no big deal. When I asked her to sequence the percussion for Voidtouched, it was another big step: giving creative control to the actual structure of the songs as well. When I asked her to return in both roles and brought in Venya to handle the bass work for the Salvation cycle, it was yet another big step, as I was incrementally giving parts of the essences of these songs to other people to mold according to their vision.
Now we are going even one step further, and letting others use the raw assets of the songs to come up with their own works that reinforce the meaning of what we’ve created. The idea for this was but a manic fever dream, when I first asked a select group of Fediverse individuals to imprint their own essences onto the title track of the LP. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I had come to accept that letting others have the creative control they need to be empowered and fulfilled was absolutely necessary in creating such amplifications of the original message.
Let’s just say, I’ve been blown away. The full release of the Death Cult LP contains four original songs of mine or the collective’s, eight remixes of Death Cult itself, and a remix of Salvation, the song, as the segue into the main release of this whole cycle, Salvation itself, hitting at the end of next month. This present release was never on the roadmap until manic-ass me had an idea to let the community amplify my message: that fascist implementations of religion are ushering in the downfall of mankind. And here we are. Buckle up and enjoy the (sonic) violence.
You may listen to and purchase the Death Cult LP at this BandCamp page.