In the 1920's, Edgard Varèse, the "Father of Electronic Music" began working on a grandiose work that has become known as L'Astronome. Although the work was never finished, it's plot focused on communications with the brightest star in our night sky, Sirius. Varèse's libretto would ultimately be provided by the playwright Antonin Artaud. We are almost certain there is documentation of Artaud being an acquintance of Aleister Crowley (we will update with the exact reference when we rediscover it).
Crowley had received The Book of the Law in Cairo (1904), a book which contains the line, "Is a god to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us." (Sirius is also known as the 'Dog Star') He later went on to draw a portrait of a praeter-human intelligence, Lam, around 1917 that bore an eerie resemblance to the descriptions of grey aliens that would later become a fixture of close-encounter accounts.
Jump forward to the early 1970's and Varese's biggest fan, Frank Zappa is releasing album after album. Meanwhile, author/philosopher Robert Anton Wilson starts communicating with an intelligence he attributes to a being that resides in the vicinity of Sirius (He would later attribute the phenomena to his own nervous system).
John Zorn, the inimitable composer/saxophonist, has since released a series of albums featuring his 'Moonchild Trio' (Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn & Joey Barron) which is dedicated to Varèse, Artaud & Crowley. Their second album in particular, Astronome, deals with what might have been had Varese completed this masterwork.
Our personal favourite Varèse opus is Ameriques, written from 1918 to 1921 as a response to his moving from France to New York. Monolithic skyscraper shadows tower over the composer as he navigates the bustling streets, the sun flashing between them. Life crawls over itself, trying to secrue a foothold. Everywhere are microcosms of people, intricately manipulating their destiny, the sum of which snowballing into a chaos of unstoppable forces. America: all discoveries, all adventures....the unknown!
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