Solid Melts, where have you been? I found that Branches tape somewhere in Portland almost two years ago. And then that Clearing tape showed up in my mailbox, and I’m thinking, “Okay Solid Melts. Okay.” Then SILENCE. Where have you been? “Wait’s over, Top Heavy,” says some little shop somewhere in Chicago (How do you know my name?). “Check out this Josh Millrod tape. SM026 and shit.” Then, I blacked out. That Chicago trip was crazy. I popped the tape in the deck on the drive home, steering with my knee while I read the inside of the J-card:
In some corner, a vestige of the forgotten kingdom. In some violent death, the punishment for having remembered the kingdom. In some laugh, in some tear, the survival of the kingdom. Beneath it all, one does not feel that man will end up killing man. He will escape from it, he will grasp the rudder of the electronic machine, the astral rocket, he will trip up and then they can set a dog on him. Everything will be killed except nostalgia for the kingdom, we carry it in the color of our eyes, in every love affair, in everything that deeply torments and unties and tricks.
Some quote from that Julio Cortazar novel, Rayuela, which, fittingly, reads like two opposite sides of a tape. That part about trying to grab onto the electronic machine stands out. The churn of synthesized swells rise and fall from the magnetic field of the tape head. Faded regal horns wheeze from the tops of broken, stone castles. Shrapnel flags still fly, but the wind has died. I slip the card back into its case and look up. A gate is opening in the distance.
The Seeking the Millenary Kingdom cassette is available now from Solid Melts, of course.
• Josh Millrod: https://soundcloud.com/joshmillrod
• Solid Melts: http://www.solidmelts.com
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