In his cheek, where the flesh had rotted to expose his teeth, Fred felt something hanging in the fibrous tissue. He reached to find a lump stuck in its webs and pulled it away.
Susie Q scampered across his palm, her legs more fit for walking, though her body still held its translucent glow. The color would come in time. She was ready too.
“You have to go, little darling. Daddy can’t come with you.”
Susie fluttered, her shell twitching where it wanted to open and reveal her newly forming wings. It might be days before she flew but it didn’t matter. She’d survive on her own.
The flashlights were getting nearer. With his flying children gone, the noise of the world rushed again into his ears. He heard men yell over the dogs, saying they’d found him.
“Go!” Fred tossed Susie over his head far away from him. He saw her white skin glisten in the lights for a moment as she sailed through the air, then she vanished, far away from harm’s way.
She’ll be fine, he told himself. She’s alive. He’d done his part.
Fred looked down at the ruin of himself. No feeling came from anywhere any longer. His body refused any command to move. It didn’t matter. What he needed to do was done.
The sudden loss of so much tissue made his hunger boil. His brain shifted, the plague blurring all else save its survival. It fought to preserve its life too, Fred thought.
He resisted the near-overwhelming urge that threatened to wash over his conscious mind. It was a reflex. His body had no recourse but to act on the impulses, yet his fear of finally meeting the end refused to be silenced. Some part of him was still human after all.
I’m afraid.
“Of course, we’re afraid.”
Fred heard his wife’s voice penetrate the blur. He saw her—her grave giving way to their marital bed, her belly ripe with their child. He remembered the image, from when she’d finally wiped away her tears and tried to tell him their daughter would be okay… before she fell asleep for the last time… though too late, his mind already made up…
“None of this matters, Fred. In the end, it will be and that’s it. From dust we come. To dust we’ll return,” she said and touched her stomach, “but between comes the miracle. It’s not our miracle anymore. It’s the world’s.”
Fred watched her without saying a word, both in the now and in the memory. She turned off the light and lay in bed, waiting for him to join her, waiting for him to understand she hadn’t given up, waiting for him to acknowledge the decision was not their own anymore.
If only she’d known he heard her words but never listened. Not until this final night.
“Sleep, Carol. Your child has been born.”
The image vanished, replaced by howls.
Lights surrounded him. Their rays focused on his face to blind him.
Fred smiled. The lights fell off him, perhaps out of revulsion, perhaps out of confusion. Dogs snapped on their leashes at his heels. Some found his toes and bit them off.
His eyes cleared. He saw one of the hunters step to the head of the bunch. Fred recognized the face. It was Carol’s brother, Lou.
“Is that him?” one of the mob asked. Lou nodded, but said nothing.
Fred didn’t hate any of them. In a different world he’d be standing beside them. They were the survivors, much more here in the recesses than the clustered cities, where people forgot what it meant to be alive. Life would come from them. When the plague died, the children of these men would return their race to the world.
“Kill it!” the mob said.
“Looks dead already.”
Life came from this flesh, Fred whispered to his memories, to Carol below his fingers. From our flesh.
Someone handed Lou a revolver. He moved toward Fred and lifted the gun to Fred’s forehead.
Fred heard the worms moving beneath him. The beetles scurried for a last embrace against his thigh, then scuttled into the night. Above, the flies circled in wait for any spare part of his body that may be left for them to devour in one final communion.
The hunters would drag him away to be burned to keep from desecrating her grave with his ashes. Their children were in no danger. He had nothing left to see to the end except these last few seconds of redemption. For that, he was glad. And his wife lay beside him.
Fred’s mouth hissed at Carol’s brother, the plague snatching control of his flesh for one final attempt at life. Nothing more than his jaw moved, his body failing too fast for anything to stop. He didn’t care.
From dust we came and to dust we return, but between comes the miracle.
The barrel touched his skull. Fred saw tears on Lou’s cheeks.
Lou’s face twisted and he screamed, though Fred heard nothing until the flash of light.
Between comes the miracle…
INCIDENT AT THE GEOMETRIC CHURCH
David McGillveray
Souleater Promotions presents:
We The Resonators
LIVE at
The Geometric Church
Venue and nightclub
London SW14
21st December
Tickets £16.50 adv
***
This isn’t just music; it’s a total immersion experience, like virtual reality or something. It drills in through your ears and reverberates round your brain and it stays there, bro. If I put them on in the morning I can’t shake it all day, can’t concentrate on a thing coz I’m, like, somewhere else, maybe even someone else, and that’s no bad thing. You should try living with my fucking family. WTR make me see things, hear things that aren’t even on the records. Sometimes I feel a cold wind on my skin and when the track ends I look down and my skin is all goose bumps. Listen late at night. Forget cheese, this is what you need for dreams that will freak you out. I can’t wait to see them live. Resonate!
- From The Void Forums, We The Resonators fan site
***
If debut album The Greatness Without was a flirtation with prog and Gothic rock styles allied to a pounding, insistent dissonance that made many sit up, or in many cases get up and walk away, at least with that record there was some reference made to conventional song structures and instrumentation. New long-player The Final Key sees We The Resonators veer further into bizarre experimentation with noise and tone and, apparently, abandon all pretense that what they’re actually making is in any sense music.
Impenetrable, obscure and difficult, The Final Key nevertheless has its charms. The startling off-kilter beats, chanted intonations and noise-scapes do, well, resonate with each other. There is a clear interplay between the percussion, at times arrhythmic, at others driving and insistent, and the programming and crazed ululations of Joshua Heberlen. There is emotion here, but it is difficult to understand what those emotions might be—anger, yearning, misery, exultation, approximations of all the above? Who knows? These sounds do not represent the feelings of boy meets girl, that’s for sure.
Tracks such as “Branewave” are almost wholly percussive, with only Heberlen’s muttered chanting breaking up the beats, drifting in and out of the mix. Indeed, the staccato, repetitive nature of the vocals on this and “The Unbearable Light” are almost drumbeats in themselves. It is the rhythms lying beneath the music which makes it so disturbing to listen to—there are no metronomic patterns, no easy beats to nod your head to. The percussion on “The Call Into Silence,” for example, seems entirely designed to remove all of the subtle musical comforts brought by a regular time signature. It made my limbs jerk and my head ache.
Other tracks, such as the bizarre “Catalyst” and the twelve-minute epic “Love Us We Are Nothing” are constructed from apparently random components, none individually coherent, but when looped and layered together there are hints at something almost symphonic. Half-recognised sounds surface from the maelstrom before submerging again—the crazed, frantic screeching of a demented violin, the distorted songs of whales, the roar of interstellar static, the deep pulsing of arterial blood—all wrapped in what can o
nly be described as the rending of metal and bone.
This album is not for the sensitive ear or for those who feel they might be teetering on sanity’s edge; it may just push you over. But for those with an interest in discerning meaning from madness, or for taking a step into unknown sonic realms, The Final Key may be for you.
- PostRockPurgatory.com
***
I saw them on the Greatness Without tour and they were INCREDIBLE! Joshua is so amazing. He makes it seem like you’re the only one there, his eyes just seem to bore into you. He kind of glows. And Karel pounds those drums like he’s possessed. Seriously, he’s relentless. The sound washes over you like a shockwave that never stops coming, it picks you up and you’re tumbling in it, lost somewhere dark and scary and wonderful at the same time. It’s like forever and it’s not long enough. I cried when it was over. Seriously. It was like the worst hangover ever. I’m not lying, it was as bad as when my brother died. But when you’re there and they’re playing and even your blood’s dancing and they’ve got that chemistry going on and everyone there is linked, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. See you down the front!
- From The Void Forums
***
Formed by German vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Heberlen and Czech percussionist Karel Prochazka, experimental duo We The Resonators have achieved a degree of cult international success unusual for European acts. The two musicians first met while studying in the ancient Romanian university town of Oradea in the late 1990s[4] and played in various student bands before pursuing divergent postgraduate studies on several continents. Heberlen, the scion of an ancient aristocratic German family, spent several years in the libraries of New England, USA, although the nature of his studies remains unclear.[citation needed] Prochazka specialised in research into ancient languages and cultures in Cairo and also, it is rumoured, in Iraq, although any time he spent there has not been officially documented.[5]
Hooking up again in Berlin in early 2007, the duo resumed their musical interests together, initially forming affiliations with the city’s underground electro scene before beginning to release their own recordings under the name We The Resonators.[6] The band never signed a conventional recording deal with an established label, instead releasing their early work through MySpace and their own website The Void. However, as awareness of and demand for their music spread, mostly through word of mouth, Heberlen and Prochazka started their own imprint, SoulEater Recordings, in order to release their output. Souleater in turn signed a number of international distribution agreements with third parties, allowing their music to reach much wider audiences.[7]
Accounts of early live shows around Berlin point to extremely raw and chaotic occasions, with drug use and an abandoned hedonism constantly in the mix. Prochazka in particular was known to regularly lapse into a near-catatonic state on stage. As they honed their craft and became more committed to their musical vision, however, We The Resonators began to make a name for themselves around Germany’s incestuous alternative music circuit.
It wasn’t until the release of their first album, The Greatness Without, and their incessant touring in support of it, that the band began to really achieve any significant recognition beyond their very close-knit circle of devotees. Their stage shows in particular, though coming from humble beginnings, have evolved into events in themselves, with fans travelling hundreds of miles to see them.[8] Indeed the fervency of their core following is almost religious in its intensity.
At the time of writing, the band are finalising the recording of their second album, tentatively titled The Key.[9]
- Wikipedia
***
Due to a combination of the economic downturn, declining congregations and the changing demographics in the borough, All Saints Church on Duke Street is closing its doors and merging with St Mary’s in the neighbouring postcode. A spectacular modern church built in the 1990s, All Saints was constructed to a controversial octagonal design by German architect Klaus Kane and has become something of a local landmark. While the closure of the church will be a loss to the borough’s Church of England community, the building will not lie empty. It has been leased by a German consortium of developers and promoters and is to be reincarnated as The Geometric Church, a five hundred capacity venue for live music and dancing. So although the church will no longer play host to hymns and sermons, it will remain a place of worship—of the gods of rock!
- The East Sheen Gazette, May 2007
***
I’ll be going with a pocketful of magic. They’re enhancers. Pop and drop and you resonate with the Resonators. They do it themselves, every show. I know someone who’s spoken to Karel about it. Karel says they’re trying to hit the universe with a tuning fork and when it rings it opens your mind. The pills get you harmonized right from the first note, the music and the drug. Believe me, I’ve seen inside reality from my bedroom, just me and the stereo. Doing it with the Resonators right there on stage is going to take me to see God.
- From The Void Forums
***
It was a capacity crowd, although I hadn’t heard of the band. Not my sort of thing. The bar wasn’t that busy either. I think a lot of people were on something else. You can tell those crowds; they buy lots of water and Red Bull with no mixers, don’t talk much while they’re waiting. Anyway, the band came on at ten on the dot, it was a late show, and started playing. You could tell the punters were really committed, really into it. Not rowdy, though, more respectful. They listened to the songs in silence as far as I could make out, clapped between, not much shouting. It was all a bit odd.
I don’t mind telling you I thought they were bloody awful, a right racket. It sounded like someone torturing cats to me, but then I don’t like a lot of the stuff they put on at the Church, indie metal stuff. I’m more R’n’B, you know what I mean, a bit of soul. Anyway, this lot were loud even by the venue’s standards, some European weirdos with tattooed skulls, man. They weren’t singing in English, that’s for sure. The drums were making the air throb, making my teeth hurt. The venue’s got really good acoustics, that’s what the boss says anyway, reckons it’s the shape or something. Whatever, the whole place was ringing like a bell.
I tried to ignore it and get on with my job. We were one short that night so even though not that many were drinking there were a lot of glasses to clean and stuff. I remember the singer announcing they were going to play the new album from start to finish. I remember saying to Sian that I hoped it was short, but it wasn’t. It went on and on, putting me on edge. And then the crowd started chanting along. Bloody wrong, I tell you.
It must have been about five or six tracks in when the light started changing in the room. I remember it feeling colder, too. I looked up and there was something happening on stage, like a ball of light hanging in the air near the singer. I thought it was part of the light show at first but the guys on the mixing desk didn’t seem to know anything about it. Then it expanded, must have been ten feet high, the shape of an eye turned on its side. Most of the crowd stopped chanting then, but the two guys on stage were like in a frenzy, spinning round and waving their arms and clawing at their equipment and screaming. I think they were laughing.
Then there was a power cut. The lights went off and the sound system packed in. But there was still that glow from the stage filling the room. The eye-thing just kept expanding. I couldn’t keep my own eyes off it. I swear there was movement inside it, like shadows, different shades of light coiling and curling, reaching out into the room like an octopus. And the music hadn’t stopped. It wasn’t the band. The more I think about it the more I’m sure. It was a sound like the wind through leaves, like whispering but nothing you could make out and a bass throb so deep you could feel it. The whole place began to vibrate. A spotlight fell from the ceiling. That’s when people began to freak out.
The crowd started stampeding towards the back where the exits are. It was pretty scary, like a mob with people suddenly screaming and falling and
trampling over each other. And those weird whisperings were getting louder, getting more and more intense and the light on the stage was getting so bright you couldn’t look at it. I was still behind the bar but Sian suddenly legged it and I decided that was a pretty good idea. We had to fight to get out. People were panicking. I got an elbow in my face and lost Sian. I was caught in the scrum by the back exit when I felt the flash go off. It was so bright I saw the world in negative. But it was silent behind me, like someone had flicked off a switch.
I lost it a bit then. It took me a while before I could see again even though I’d been facing away from the stage. The screaming started up too, at some point. I was outside on the road and people were lying down, hurt, crying. My head hurt like something was trying to crack my skull from the inside. I’ve never felt anything like it. I thought I was going to die. I think I passed out.
- Witness statement of Mohammed McBride, bar manager at
The Geometric Church on the night of December 21st
***
It’s that difference they have, and, yes, the wrongness. Even though it’s unsettling when you listen—Christ, I’ve been physically sick listening to them before—there’s something right in the wrongness. It’s as if they can peel away all our masks and tune into what’s really there. I know they’re telling me the truth.
- From The Void Forums
***
A suspected explosion on the evening of December 21st at the former All Saints church, now a music venue, has to date left a death toll of fourteen, with a further twenty-nine hospitalised with severe injury or trauma. It is one of the worst accidents of its kind in recent memory.
The cause of the explosion as yet remains unknown. Emergency services are investigating and have not ruled out either a gas leak or arson, although sources close to the venue claim the damage is inconsistent with both these possibilities. While the building remains closed off by the police, witnesses on the scene report no signs of external fire damage. Forensic work is ongoing.
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