Somatick Media Magicks
The Hauntomantic Era of Magickal-Micro-Press and Talismanic Tapes.
I plan on a fully detailed assessment and ramshackle documentary concerning the following, however, I feel motivated to ramble and ponder-wander through a major development that was fully realized just yesterday:
Yesterday, October 30th, or (‘Devil’s Night’ for any Proyas Crow fans out there) was the official launch of the long-schemed ‘Somatick Aeon’. I thought I would take a moment on the holiday (and my anniversary) to give a little lore about the Somatick schema and conjurations…
The internet is dead laments the internet. Long live the internet.
I have been releasing original music since discovering the democratization of album printing and creation spurred by Mp3.com. Finally, my bedroom tapes under sneaky heteronyms (like Dakota Slim) could finally share shelf-life in jewel-case’d professionally printed CD form! I was 13 years old and spent whatever odd-job money I had purchasing copies of my own one-off mutant projects that I could share with snob-nosed kin as if I had some esteem or interest behind me now encased in uniform ink. It blurred the lines between the approved-by-committee and mass-funded artist and the lowly latch-key-kid with defunct instruments and a 4-track. They printed barcodes on my albums! I’m somebody now…?
The smirking resolve and luster faded rather quickly. The sneaking and sinking feeling that gilded turds like those 13 year old bedroom albums, no matter how professionally presenting, were left languishing unheard even still. So I went back to my passion, the process itself, and grew quite weary and apathetic of the final form albums would so often become. I was the first generation with the ability to make an album and have it professionally printed within the same week, sure, but also the first to spoil the feeling, too. Little did I know that over two decades letter, over 20 albums of original material made (some professionally, some not) that the sneaking and sinking feeling would become a nightmare of flippant digital consumerism every artist is now left to contend with.
Yet, here I am, deeply longing for that honest sweat equity and craftsmanship of compiling an album from the spare instruments I wrote it with, to the spare cassettes and construction paper I used to release it with—before the advent of the internet even touched our homes. Yes, I remember. The deeply intentional magickal craft of a personalized mixtape of original music made for a specific recipient. The deep knowledge that every part of me made this tactile and sonic talisman. A lost art they say. Another art eradicated by the wills of ‘feasibility’.
Mp3.com was a herald for the continuing exorcism of certain unique processes for album creation I’ve always held dear. At 13 I was wooed by the veneer of mass produced artifice, as if machine duplication and printing bestowed esteem over the handmade. And ever since then I have been seeing this mutate and devour other such processes in the name of legitimacy. If Mp3.com taught me that even if you can get an album duplicated and printed professionally, it doesn’t mean its something deserving of more attention, then what does that say about where we are now? About Spotify? What does this say about the need to plaster and compress music for wide birth attention-algol-rhythm punch-ups? What have we done to the deeply intentional and talismanic processes that allowed for an artistic will to drip into every facet of the vehicle in which it is delivered to the observer?
Look, the internet won. But to me it has been an animated corpse for some time. I don’t mean the advent of bots outnumbering human users, but the validity for which it was used as a tool died the day it became the destination. But it died valiantly, first democratizing the abilities and tools to create hitherto unafforded to lowly latchkey kids like me. We shall toast to that. But it is dead, nonetheless, and all we have to show within this shared somatic reality is tons of machines in the ocean pretending to be clouds that hold all our art in 1’s and 0’s.
Through the Hauntomancy workings I have personally re-discovered my passion to transmutate the childlike earnestness of those makeshift cassettes with the knowledge and creativity attained throughout the years. I’ve allowed that Aspectre of Dimming Room late-night-tinkering to become the Prospectre of the hallowed Now by re-imagining and re-constituting what I consider art to be, and where it lives, where it bleeds. Is it a collection of songs to be flippantly observed? Does an album exist when never casted into the shared somatic realm, or is it a digital spectre only? Is an album a collection of talismanic sonics casted onto a totemic vehicle? Does it always have to be? I think, for me, it does. It needs to be.
Spurned by the hollow halls of the digital deluge, We The Hallowed, the magickal multi-media outfit currently spired by Eric J. Millar and I, decided to throw the in the towel and white flag our concession to the attention economy. We’ve decided to respectfully bow out of the social media jabberwocky and reassess our hyper-production of deeply intentional works often thrown to the void like digital detritus in an autumnal storm. So we decided to launch a campaign of “Somatick” (or somatic—of the body; tactile—magick) by casting our conjurations through print media first and foremost. This is a means to negate the digital isolationism and build true somatic tethers to those interested by haunting their mailboxes and homes with talismanic media. Intentional connection will out.
To begin this Somatick Magickal romp, we decided to utilize the paywall structure and embedded community-of-interest that Patreon has afforded us. Some quick calculations concerning materials and shipping were drafted and through Patreon.com/Pragmagick we added new tiers specific to these Somatick works; we grandfathered in current patrons to respective tiers and quietly professed to would-be subscribers our intentions via the WtH digital newsletter at http://wethehallowed.org/newsletter. The longterm hope is to sustain the output for these very patrons without having to deal with piecemeal production by selling each item individually for this initial conjuration.
We’ve devised a sort of seasonal premise for the various Somatick Media releases, birthed around a newsletter / zine we call “The Hollers”—A literary and design fold-out highly that will be radically different in execution each release. The first issue was designed around a 1970’s “Desert Rat” printed humor pamphlet/fold-out I have long adored. This first issue features writing from Frater Perseus, Eric Millar and I with design and art by Eric Millar:
As for my Aspectre-punching to reignite the beauty and processes I long missed concerning album creation, I got my elbows deep in the muck and mire of cassette talismans. I accidentally created a cassette label, I suppose!
Substack subscribers may have realized that my podcast, PRAGMAGICK, is no longer housed, in-full, via this site. This is because I launched HAUNTOMANCER in its stead—the hauntomancy-specific audio grimoire that hosts all related episodes, with an emphasis on them and future Haunt Manual writings being distributed in analog cassette form. Think of it as primarily an analog podcast, or a broadcast-ed cassette series of the Hauntomancy ouevre.
The first HAUNTOMANCER “HEXKASSETTE” is of The Dimming Room Tapes’ “EX-HEX KASSETTE”—the very hauntomantic birth-totem into this foray as I had constructed and produced the entire episode on my 4-track cassette recorder, a vajra (or magickal talisman) that is a hyper-link to the Somatick magicks I was reared in. The cassette tape itself being another vajra, so it was only right that these totemic “spectre sceptres” reach those who seek their full intention:
I also released the prime Haunt Manual audio chapter, “NEITHER EITHER OR”, on a totemic cassette. One side casted with the audio chapter, the other with the very Dim Session audiomancy that scored the chapter. The third and final thrust of magickal musickal ephemera casted to cassette is a split between my “doom gaze” project with Frater Perseus, DIMtZUM, with the MOON REVEL E.P. that was released to support Moon Division and Revel Rosz’s Eclipse Tour last year:
Again, I recorded quite a bit of footage concerning the rough and tumbles, sighs and eurekas, through the heavy process of conjuring the HEXKASSETTES (Somatick Media specific cassette tapes), The HOLLERS, and ephemera. But yesterday, this long-toiled recalibration to further the tethers of intentional creation and connection was made real through the shipping of over 15 packages of assorted Somaticks.
From 4-track late-night bedroom opus creation and makeshift tape distribution, to high(er) quality cassette Dimming Room opus creation and high(er) quality cassette production—with 20 years of languishing in the wallows of the internet in-between! However, this is no regression, like all hauntomantic works this conjuration is adverse to the poison of nostalgia, but mired in the sentimentality and communion with the past to be utilized for something new and closer to the heart/will.
Stay tuned for a full episode and document of this Somatick conjuration.
Happy Halloween and HAUNT ON,
R∴K∴R∴
10/31/24
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