Siouxsie's 21st Century Emanation

Remember that band Siouxsie and the Banshees? If you do, you probably still listen to and don't need to remember the punk-turned-goth-turned-something else band. They began recording in the late 70s with their LP debut The Scream, and released their last album The Rapture in the mid 90s. The titles of their first and last releases form a kind of bridge spanning their career - the initial Scream of teenage punk youth that was shaped and defined over time into a mystical Rapture that rejects the body in favor of the spirit. Such rapture of course is the signal to stop creating music and let the past speak for itself. Giving into the rapture is to enter the musical collective unconsciousness. Just like with many of the mystics from the Middle Ages and the prophets from before the time of Christ, Siouxsie and the Banshees began and perpetuated a movement (one of aesthetics and music rather than theology) that has now forgotten its Source. I do not intend, in drawing these parallels, to raise the band to a transcendent and "mystical" state, in the traditional sense of mysticism; however, apart from music critic circles and the self-sustaining isolated packets of the 21st century's "goth" or "post-new wave" cultures, Siouxsie and the Banshees is no longer listened to, nor even known about. I won't take the time for specifics, but there is an entire population of contemporary female-led rock bands that owe their existence to what Siouxsie Sioux started with the Banshees. I'd guess the climate is more aware of such in the U.K., but in America there is a pocket of empty space where the Banshees once were.

My point is that, through the matching bookends of "Scream" and "Rapture", we see in the band's career an evolution from childhood to adulthood, from atheism to secular spirituality, from artistic rabble-rousing to artistic humbleness, and lastly, an evolving sense of "expression". Similar to the growth of mystics, theologies, lit theories, and philosophical movements, the band's notion of "expression" was initially that of "unveiling the mask", of exposing the naked body, of shocking symbols, Brechtian didacticism of anti-authority and self-identification. In other words, it was the punk rock's need to distinguish itself from its predecessors by Screaming. By circa. 1996, the notion of "expression" outgrew the small frame of the young Screamer. It now was aware of itself as an aesthetic entity outside of itself and inside of the once-opposed realm of Popular Music. The awareness of one's true self, of being able to look back at its younger self like a stranger, creates an ecstatic state of being - boundaries aren't drawn with black lipstick anymore...they are dissolved. The self fragments and becomes meaningless. Meaningful for others, for the world, but not for the Self anymore, because now the Self has disappeared into the sweet oblivion of the Kabbalah's Ein Sof, of no Ego or pride. I differentiate this oblivion and loss of the Self from the more common, pseudo-Buddhist understanding of it - that it is Death and the loss of Consciousness. Consciousness is different than the Self. The fragmentation of Self actually perpetuates consciousness; i.e., it's the moment when we shed our old skin and mutate into a wiser creature. We fragment the Self so that we can re-assemble the pieces to explore new possibilities of form, voice, and energy.

Hence, the Rapture, an album that isn't really that good. Self-dissolution - your first lover's last goodbye kiss - is never going to be pretty. If there's any beauty in it, it's the Beauty of the tragic hero's fall, the beauty of Hamlet's self-destruction, the beautiful endings of film/books/myths that make us cry and HATE it for ending.

To keep in congruence with Siouxsie herself, I'll stop losing myself in the language of past aesthetics and anachronistic speculation. Siouxsie Sioux is no longer of the Banshees, nor using the last name "Sioux". She has released a solo album under the name "Siouxsie", and the album rocks. It is obviously her, but it is also obviously recorded in the 21st century for new sensibilities and only a slight sense of nostalgia for what she once was.

Here are the videos for the first two singles "Into a Swan" and "Here Comes That Day", and a list of tour dates for the U.S. in 2008.






Siouxie Sioux - 2008 Tour Dates
Feb 8 - Fillmore @ Irving Plaza, NYC
Feb 9 - Fillmore @ Irving Plaza, NYC
Feb 12 - Fillmore, San Francisco
Feb 13 - Fillmore, San Francisco
Feb 15 - Henry Fonda Theatre, LA
Feb 16 - Henry Fonda Theatre, LA
Feb 18 - House of Blues, Orange County
Feb 19 - House of Blues, Orange County
Feb 21 - 4th & B, San Diego

The Evolution of Alice in Wonderland

Below are pictures and videos of Alice's many emanations throughout the world, beginning with the original woodcuts and ending with Marilyn Manson's upcoming 2008 adaption of Alice, Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, which stars Manson as Carroll, model Lily Cole as Alice, and rumors of Angelina Jolie as the Red Queen and a Johnny Depp role (the mad hatter, perhaps?)
Enjoy.

(Original Woodcut) (Disney's Alice





(Japanese Porn)




Jan Svankmajer's Alice (1988)






(American Mcgee's Alice, PC Videogame)







(Phantasmagoria: Visions of Lewis Caroll)

Fans at this Covenant show were randomly handed video cameras, and cameras were also installed in random locations at the venue - this video is the result of that footage. Besides being an intensely exhilirating song, the video is a fascinating look at perspective, distortion, and the medium of collage.