Fallow

 

Wait, what's this!? A Pool of Siloam blog post!?

Ok folks, I am guilty of being one of those people that starts a blog, writes about 2 posts, then has no commitment to the cause, and never again...…but, here I am - back to try again! 

I never forgot about Pool of Siloam. I've just been a little busy. I've been busy working on releasing an album you see! And I wanted to tell you all about it because it might hit the spot for some of you who first started reading. It might not but hopefully that doesn't put you off Pool of Siloam as I hope to find some time amidst album promotion, gigging once again, and taking a break (!) to get this blog back in action. 

So, what's this album I've gone and made then? 

Well, I've already been releasing music under the guise of Liana Condor for a few years now and I've been sitting on a fair amount of material, but it wasn't until a global pandemic hit that I was incredibly fortunate to have some time to make an album. I was placed on furlough for four months in April-July 2020 which allowed me to basically be paid to do what I love - making music. It was a strange time because all the while no one knew quite how long this would go on for and whilst having lots of free time and still being partially paid was really quite wonderful, after months of this, it was easy to forget this fact and days would blur into weeks. But it wasn't forever. Which was great. Except it meant I had to go back to work and spend so much less time trying to get this album over a self-made, ever-changing finish line. Hence, it's been a while since I last posted here.

If you've not listened to any Liana Condor before, I describe it to people as a one-man band exploring faith, doubt, emotional fragility with a loop pedal. I draw inspiration from the worlds of acoustic pop, worldbeat, cumbia, and math rock to create what Analogue Trash described as "some mesmerising sounds". That was really nice of them. 

This album that I've gone and made is a collection of the songs I've been working on over the past few years all riddled with an an angst-ridden call for us to reflect, debate, and lament upon emotional fragility, religious belief amidst doubt, and humanity’s destructive tendencies. I wrote a poem to go alongside the album. It goes like this:

Today I walk on fallowed ground
Scorched and bruised till kingdoms come
My soul in wake for just a sound
To beckon in that sacred hum
Of work to be done 

I may try
(Lord, don't we try)
But when my heart was rushed to beat
I lost the rhythm and felt the heat
Of hell's burning greed 

So sit me down and ask me when
Did my soul become so high
That I dare not rest? 

Sit you down and ask when
Did your soul become so high
That you dare not rest? 

Today we walk on hallowed ground
Fallowed earth by Kingdom come
Now in rest without a sound
To beckon in that sacred hum 

Of rest to be done

Amidst the pandemic, I think we've all had much time to reflect and the biggest reflection I've had is that the speed at which we have lived our lives is not sustainable. For ourselves. For each other. For the earth. The sheer pace of modern life leaves us with little space to stop and be present. And most importantly, to rest. And I mean actually rest. Not just spending a day binging Squid Game (which I thought was fine. But Battle Royale did it all before).

Rest is one of those biblical commandments that post-industrialised Christianity struggles to take seriously. Churches are obsessed with events. Those in leadership are on the edge of burnout. And those in the comfy cinema seats look to "convert" people fast enough to keep the doubt at bay. I find myself stuck in all this madness, perhaps deconstructing, perhaps trying to find an out from capitalism, perhaps losing my faith. Whichever way I go, I'm confronted with new questions, even if I have found an answer to the initial problem. 

All around my place of tranquillity - my mustard tree, my faith, that spirit of peace - there are gods a plenty calling out for my attention. None of them are necessarily some sort of evil either. But all that noise is cause for concern, and it's about time we allowed ourselves to be fallowed; allowed ourselves to give up striving and as Richard Rohr puts it, fall into divine grace. As I've tried to put in the song Fill Me Up:

I worked and prayed every day

But nothing came, it stayed the same

So I came away with little faith

A mustard seed in need of rain

So is it your ambition to alleviate attrition

Or do you make it rain to laugh at our condition

So fill me up, fill me up with your love

Give it up, give up to above.

Fallow is my response to all of this. It's my call to the church, to the modern world, and probably most importantly, to myself to beckon in that sacred hum of rest to be done.

*****

If you have found this interesting and would like to support my music, please do consider buying a copy of the album! You can do this digitally or purchase a limited release CD using any of the links below:

Amazon

Apple Music

Bandcamp (Limited Release CD)

Here are some lovely reviews of the album so far (mostly in Spanish so get your dictionary out):

Hidoux:

"One-man-band live-looping extraordinaire" Liana Condor comes out swinging with his debut album. Fallow draws you in with the opening salvo of pretty laid-back, joyous songs, then slowly shifts to reveal a darker underbelly to the album. Frustration and anger are palpable in White Lies, whilst Screaming Endless Whisper acknowledges the arrival of the storm. Created pretty much exclusively with acoustic guitar, there's ne'er a dull moment or lack of propulsion. Made In Magnificence, indeed."

Somos Grandes:

"El cantautor inglés Liana Condor va filtrando tradiciones y folclore latino a través de la autonomía de los loops. La percusión minimalista y el riff fundamental parecen conjurar en el ritmo una cumbia sutil, llevadera y espaciosa. Debido a la naturaleza cíclica de los loops, hay una estructura y ambientación hipnótica quasi chamánica. La estructura de las letras adquieren una cualidad tipo mantra pues se mantienen dentro de una misma métrica y dicción durante la mayoría de la canción. El color peculiar de flautas peruanas amontonándose una encima de la otra, meciéndose junto a las armonías vocales y la fluidez del solo de guitarra proveen un desvío de la repetición."

Indie Criollo:

"Nos gusta que Liana Condor sepa honrar nuestras raíces. Lo hace con una mezcla ligera de su voz y detalles andinos que se sienten como una mezcla de magia y llamados para encontrarnos con la tierra y todo ese lamento luego de robos y desparpajos en nuestra historia. La ligereza de esta obra nos lleva a un instante grave de melancolía y deseo por sentir que todo se nos puede acabar en un instante mientras más entramos en el vacío de Liana, llamado Lamen for Atahualpa."

Thanks for reading and getting this far. Hope to be back soon to tell you about some more eye mud. 

Anthropomorphic Trumpet Stompers - The Best of Experimental Christian Music (Part 1)

Today I am writing the first of what I hope to be many posts in a series I am entitling: Anthropomorphic Trumpet Stompers - The Best of Experimental Christian Music. Hopefully, this will be an on-going feature even if the words experimental, music and Christian don't usually go together. You can find a taster playlist I've put together of all the artists mentioned here (and I'll continue to add to it as the series goes on).

I'm looking forward to introducing y'all to some absolute gems whilst also discovering some for myself as we go along. So without further ado, let's dive in to our first look at this week's Anthropomorphic Trumpet Stompers...

DANIELSON

The Original Trumpet Stompers

Mad, experimental, musically compelling, and full of beans, Danielson is exactly the reason I started this blog. Think early Arcade Fire meets the Fantastic Mr Fox soundtrack with a large dose of weird. The band is mostly made up of one family and there's something refreshing about their unabashed embrace of their kindred weirdness but also their unashamed Christian faith. This makes them not only one of the more original Christian bands out there, but also one of the more faith affirming - they are who they are and believe what they believe but they're not going to jam it down your throat but they're also not going to apologise for believing in Christ - a rare quality.

Obviously their weirdness isn't everyone's cup of tea and sometimes Daniel's falsetto vocals can be a little grating but (as Mark Kermode always says), I'd far rather someone try something new and interesting and miss the mark slightly than make something nice and polished but completely unoriginal and boring.

The group's outfits do look more at home on a Mormon airline though...

SOUL-JUNK

Is that a millipede or a salamander?

I feel like Soul-Junk are one of those bands you discover at 3am and listen to until the dawn light appears at which point you decide to fall asleep and awake late into the afternoon with no idea whether any of what you listened to really existed, was just a fever dream, or simply the sounds of a broken record frying in a church crematorium during the organist's audible panic as the demo button on the electric keyboard they have on loan from the local youth group is stuck on repeat and all that anyone can do is repeatedly press the tempo increase button to drain the keyboard batteries dry whilst the fumes from the crematorium slowly fill the room and choke everyone to death.

It's really quite captivating stuff.

I mean what do you expect from a band who released 26 records between 1995 and 2015 entitled consecutively from 1932 to 1961 and tried to put the entire Bible into musical format? It doesn't get more trumpet stomping than that does it?

Also fun fact, not only does Danielson and Sufjan Stevens feature on some of their records, Soul-Junk were also featured on this 20th Anniversary Shrimper Compilation (the very same record label The Mountain Goats started on) which sent me down an absolute musical rabbit hole...and also featured the next artist I'm going to talk about.

AMPS FOR CHRIST

Felt tip pens - remember them?

Oh man. Where to start. I don't know if this guy is a hermit, a wizard, or an anthropomorphic banjo. Known outside of music as Henry Barnes, Amps for Christ is his lighter and more bagpipe oriented music project. Alongside Amps for Christ, Barnes is more well known in the experimental/hardcore world for his powerviolence project Man is the Bastard where much screaming and much noise can be heard - much of which is levelled at the 00s Bush regime and anger at the destruction of the natural world (he also did an album with none other than America's most well know death row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal).

Amps for Christ is probably the most out there I'll go and there is a steep entry curve to some of Barnes' work but a good place to start is the album The Beggars Garden which is probably the best work of Amps for Christ in my opinion. There is a palpable tension in amongst the peculiar squeaks and hums of his bagpipe-come-guitar as he mixes the worlds of folk music and noise music without ever going too far in either direction.

There is a great interview with Henry Barnes on the Low Profile with Markly Morrison (see above) where he talks about his spirituality and faith, including an interesting discussion around right wing Christianity, the kindness of Satanists, and why he's unashamed of being a follower of Christ. He's no theologian and there's problematic aspects of a lot of what he talks about but there's such a soul truth coming from this guy; it's very refreshing.

Half-Handed Cloud

This video is super cute. Watch it even if you don't like the music.

I first heard about Half-Handed Cloud on the You Have Permission podcast (see below) where they were talking about Christian music which was less CCM oriented. At one point they mentioned Half-Handed Cloud as this more experimental artist and Dan said it was a little too out there for him. Ironically, they're probably the least experimental on this blog but they get an honourable mention because they do push the boat out as much as they can.

You Have Permission · "Christian Music": John Van Deusen (#94)

It's a little too banjo/twinkly for me and can sometimes feel a little heavy handed with the Christian themes, but as one reviewer on their bandcamp puts it, "The Bible deserves weirdos reinterpreting it & putting it in new context & disobeying song structure & warping tapes to perfection." I've included them as their mention on the YHP podcast partly inspired me to start this blog as a way to showcase and discover more like it.

That's all for this week. More to come where these came from. Onward Christian Trumpet Stompers.

Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus

Where to start? The name? The reference to a terrorist group in the Spanish-French film Ese Oscuro Objeto del Deseo (That Obscure Object of Desire)? That they've existed since 1985 and only popped out 5 albums (3 of which were in the last 6 years)? That half their songs are in French/Italian/Latin/Portuguese but the band is just a bunch of Liverpudlians called Jon, Paul (note: they are not a Beatles side project), Dave, Sue and Les. That they perform live once in a blue moon and when they do its laden with scenes from Tarkovsky films?

RAIJ are quite simply one of the most distinctive music groups (let alone Christian music groups) I have ever come across.

Think Dead Can Dance meets Orthodox Priests meets those ridiculous recordings you made in your bedroom when you were 14 and only your mum ever heard. And I mean that as a compliment. One minute you're listening to gothic folk excursion interspersed with Italian excerpts about the sanctity of life, next minute you're on a 12 minute journey of ethereal and haunting beauty, juxtapose with industrial noises more at home on a Nine Inch Nails record. What better place to start this blog but with a celebration of such music.

RAIJ are a refreshing and beautiful escape from the homogeneity of modern life and the religious institution of Christianity. They are an invigorating and effervescent soul cry; a melancholic and sombre dance of divinely inspired art; a celebration of the mysterious and unsearchable nature of the Divine that Paul writes about in Romans 11. 

Alongside all of this, what I love about RAIJ is that they really are the definition of underground music. Interviews and videos of the group are few and far between - potentially because they started back when the internet was but a meagre fledgling - but also because the group appears to live and breathe the enigmatic nature that they present in their art. The group has been resistant to ‘explaining' what they're about - their own Bandcamp says that they “have confounded musical classification and studiously declined every invitation to explain their unique form of musical and artistic experimentation."

This may beg the question for some as to what they actually do believe. This article on the Church Times gives you a good feel for what the group are all about:

“Christianity is a shared position for the RAIJ, and beyond that there are different forms and shades of personal commitment. The shared position is that Christian ideas and experience are a vocabulary for the pursuit and rediscovery of the sacred.

“In particular, we have been influenced by the Orthodox tradition and its understanding of restoration. For the Orthodox, the icon is not a representation of something sacred: it is a sacred object; it’s a fragment of glorified nature, a moment of eternity framed in a finite space.

“The Eastern Churches have always stressed God’s immanence and the active agency of the Holy Spirit. This is an idea that has appealed to us. There is a beautiful quote from the Orthodox writer Kallistos Ware — ‘Man’s purpose is not to dominate and exploit nature, but to hallow and transfigure it.’ This is the perfect imperative for the artist. Our creative methodology, how we go about identifying and collecting the sources and fragments that are part of our compositions — to us this is not about deconstruction: it feels like restoration. We are trying to reassemble and reconnect things in a way that reveals a deeper truth and a more elusive beauty."

I grew up in an evangelical protestant context where the words ‘Orthodox' and ‘Icon' would send shivers down the spine of even those who were actually allowed to read Harry Potter and Rupert the Bear (I swear I wasn't allowed to read the latter due to the elves. My mum adamantly denies this). So, naturally, my probably post-evangelical self was drawn immediately to the RAIJ.

I think the form of Christianity I had been overly saturated in had certainly blinkered my outlook on spirituality and what God is/isn't. My discovery of RAIJ came at a time when I really needed to discover a different side of the Divine - one that was far from the paralysing perfectionism that pervades Western culture (and thus, the Western church). The music from RAIJ may not fit some people's high production value standards but it certainly meets a level of creativity and sacred searching far greater than most.

I've placed a few of my favourite songs throughout this blog post but you can listen to their first 4 albums on Bandcamp and download the entire catalogue for just £22.40. Bargain. Their social media presence is minimal and they are not to be found on Spotify (which makes them all the more exciting).

Their first 3 albums (The Gift of Tears, Mirror, beauty will save the world) are their best work imo but their latest album, Songs of Yearning, is still very good, just not quite as experimental as the first...so naturally everyone else will enjoy a lot more than me. You can check out a video of a single they released a couple of years ago at the bottom of this page.

I'll leave you with this quote from an interview they did with Bandcamp:

“I think we think of ourselves as confused individuals, stumbling around in the dark, trying to find some recognizable landmarks. Trying to find our way home."

What is Pool of Siloam?

“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 'Go,' he told him, 'wash in the Pool of Siloam' (this word means 'Sent'). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing." (John 9: 6-7)

Pool of Siloam is a music blog for the alternative and experimental side of Jesus-themed music. Born out of both a love for the weird and wonderful, and a frustration at the lack of Jesus-themed music with an experimental, angsty, intense, and playful twist.

The purpose of Pool of Siloam is to showcase and celebrate some of the lesser known, more underground, and more thought provoking music which explores Christian themes. The music I share on this blog is not restricted to those identifying as Christian and some of the music may surprise/challenge/offend you. Many have had a far greater understanding of the wisdom and nature of God than those proclaiming to be Christians. From Roman Centurions crucifying Christ to the prophets of our day like Johnny Cash and Kanye West.

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

The Pool of Siloam was the location for the story of Jesus healing a blind man. In the story Jesus rubs mud in blind man's eyes and tells him to wash in the Pool of Siloam (a pool built back in the 7th Century BCE by Hezekiah and although it has undergone several developments by the Romans and Byzantines, it still exists today in modern day Israel. I was lucky enough to go there a few years ago and see the site for myself). It's a less than conventional way of healing and probably not advised by most medical professionals.

I've named this blog after this story for two main reasons. 

Firstly, because God does not work by human wisdom of how things should be done. I have always struggled to connect spiritually with God through the more conventional ways of worship and prayer, and have often opted to find God in the weird and wonderful, particularly through more experimental music which is not always theologically watertight and perfectly produced. But my experience of God and the God we see throughout the Bible, is that he/she/it/they are mysterious and cannot be tamed by human thinking.

Secondly, I want this blog, like the story of the blind man, to be a story of healing for myself and those reading/listening. I have often been frustrated by the church and by other Christians for neglecting - or even discounting - the angsty, melancholic, and sorrowful side of Christianity. I have found myself tied up in knots trying to explain why I struggle with much of Christianity, the religion. And I have particularly found CCM (Christian Contemporary Music) lacking and severely disappointing in its scope and depth of the musical spectrum. I do not however want this to be a CCM bashing blog - there is nothing inherently wrong with the CCM sound. However, as CS Lewis puts it in The Problem of Pain, to be a follower of Christ, we must embrace the diversity and difference in our world:

“Surely each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? This difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another. If all experienced God in the same way and returned [to God] an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony...the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others - fresh and ever fresh news of the 'My God' whom each finds in [God] whom all praise as 'Our God'"

This blog is my way of celebrating the music I love and saying no to any condemnation that may have come my way for connecting with God in less conventional ways. I do not want to blame others or be angry towards the 'church' or 'Christians' for this will not be fruitful - I will recognise the hurt and anger but I also want to heal from it to allow myself and others to flourish in all of our weird, wacky, and wonderful beauty.

Thanks for getting this far - now let's go listen to some awesome music!!