ONE LEG ONE EYE + EFRIM MANUEL MENUCK (GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR) WITH MAS AYA AND KHÔRA
One Leg One Eye is the project of Ian Lynch (founding member of Irish group Lankum) and George Brennan, exploring submerged leylines of music and song, drawing on the raw aesthetics of black metal, noise and drone, while also being deeply embued with a sense of history and myth. Debut album …And Take The Black Worm With Me (released on Nyahh Records in 2022) is a slow-burning suite of five expansive songscapes that has found its audience largely by word of mouth. Partly recorded in an abandoned Dublin factory where his father worked when he was a child, Lynch’s harrowing vocals are underpinned by vast pillars of uileann pipe drones, overlaid with effects and field recordings to conjure up a sound that is at once dark, mysterious and ultimately transcendental.
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born 1970 in Montreal, Quebec.
son of a doctor and a nurse.
mother left in 1973.
came back briefly 17 years later,
and then left again.
hebrew day school from grades 1 through 9.
kept kosher
but did not believe in god.
grew up in toronto, and left home at age 17.
only punk-rock from age 15 until 20.
high school dropout at grade 11.
no jobs and no home.
student welfare then grown-up welfare.
first love.
too many drugs, and then a nervous breakdown at age 20.
quit the drugs.
moved back to montreal.
no music from age 20 to 24.
found good people.
pre-internet.
many beers.
started the "godspeed you black emperor!" band at age 25.
started the "silver mt. zion" band at age 29.
drove many miles.
been on the road since 1996.
times have changed.
hate the industry.
hate all industries.
no more beers.
co-owner of thee mighty "hotel2tango" recording studio.
recorded good and bad bands there.
a loudmouth sometimes.
and can be a moody motherfucker
and a total drag.
stubborn.
worried.
out of step.
ezra's father.
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Primordial Mind forms the mysteries and intensity of inner life into eight mandalic instrumentals where Mas Aya and Khôra, artists who share 15 years of music making, orchestrate an inspired, prismatic palette of percussive and melodic sources. Each composition presented stages a vigorous meshwork of colours and textures, contrasting riveting polyrhythms with towering arrangements for flutes, synths, and processed acoustic instruments. Tendencies which the artists trace in their solo practices are amplified, blended, and refracted sublimely in unison, serving as energetic portals to collective awareness. Combining trans-ethnic scaling alongside a heady brew of rhythmic influences and advanced electronic processing, the recordings on this album operate with a tactility that vaults between free jazz, dub, raga, ambient, and ritual music. Assimilated powers of primal drum patterning and psychoactive, ceremonial melodies, invoke fourth world adjacencies with the work of Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Popol Vuh, et al. There is an alchemical, Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu inflection that guides the record’s narrative, formed through dialogue between the artists over lifelong shared interest in spiritual modalities generally and the tantric approaches of the global east in particular. The album title is derived from an unexcelled esoteric work known as the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time or Time Cycles) Tantra and its associated commentary the Ornament of Stainless Light which detail forms of inner and outer transubstantiation within its complex cosmology and metaphysiology. Mas Aya is the moniker of Brandon Miguel Valdivia, acclaimed Nicaraguan-Canadian composer, producer, and musician whose electronic and jazz inspired works creatively interlace Colombian, Cuban, and a wide array of traditional music. Khôra is the name of the occult entity that uses multi-instrumentalist, producer, and writer Matthew Ramolo to pronounce itself. Returning to Marionette following 2024's monumental Gestures of Perception, Primordial Mind reinforces the rigorous and magical approach to creation which defines Khôra’s two decades of sonic output. Brandon and Matthew met back in 2011 and the pair toured around eastern Europe with Toronto band Picastro in 2013, also performing as a duo with Brandon contributing drums to Khôra's opening sets. After a short spate composing and playing in the ensemble Bespoken together, they continued to discover shared inspiration in psych/art rock, jazz, experimental and electronic music, providing a fertile soil for friendship and collaboration resulting in their collaged, field-recorded album Tangled Roots in 2017. Mythic and talismanic, the duo's Marionette debut weaves a luminous tapestry of organic pulses, offering itself as a support for resonant meditation and a motor for lucid action and intuition.
Khôra Spotify | Apple Music Mas Aya Instagram | Spotify | Apple Music