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The Divine Profane: Recovered And Restored Tapes 1990​-​92

by Keith Moliné

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1.
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Red And Gone 03:28
3.
4.
To Be Kissed 04:13
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6.
7.
Damned Love 04:05

about

Moliné met up with The Deterritorializer in mid-1990, with the aim of writing songs that owed nothing to any songs that had ever been written. Over the following year, the ludicrous ambition of the endeavour nearly destroyed them, as they attempted to develop an aesthetic that possibly only the duo themselves shared or understood. Decades later, as this work finally emerges, even its creators can barely recognise themselves in it. Who would do something like this? Wait, us?

Dense orchestrations of weirdly hybrid organic/artificial sounds, lyrics full of apocalyptic, dreamlike symbolism and philosophical conceits; incongruous shifts of stylistic register - these were their building blocks. Of course, thirty years later, precedents can now be seen - Walker, Lynch, Cave, Waits, Coil, Messiaen, Ferry, Faulkner, Eliot, Bataille - but the duo’s vision was so consuming that they failed to register this fact at the time. Months were spent obsessing over details; every last musical or lyrical flourish was argued over, a process that went on for many months. Lifestyles and relationships collapsed. Finally in mid-1991 the work was done, and a decision was made to perform it. It wasn’t until that moment of performance, when this utterly hermetic enterprise met the outside world, that it began to dawn on the duo how unsettling the outside world might consider the work to be.

As Moliné laid his dark vocals over rolling, clanking samplescapes, and The Deterritorializer kicked at his screeching guitar imperiously, the first and last performance of The Divine Profane played out to general incomprehension and even hostility. The Deterritorializer retreated into the night, leaving Moliné alone, numb and exhausted. The following year, however, he came to the realisation that while the outside world may have won, he had to lay the ghost of The Divine Profane to rest by completing the recordings himself, if he had any chance of returning to that world. Nobody heard the results for thirty years. It was over, for now.

credits

released December 16, 2022

Voice, sampler, guitar by KM
Written in collaboration with The Deterritorializer 1990-91, recorded by KM in 1992
Recovered and restored using the exciting techniques of today in 2022

license

all rights reserved

tags

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