Hermetic Brotherhood Of Lux-Or - The Sardinia of sound and mysteries

I get the impression that your records are an indictment of the process of civilization, and therefore an attempt to give vent to a cathartic primitivism.

More an indictment of the process of human involution currently underway! 90% of the population undergoes the technocratization of society while remaining in the dark about the mechanisms underlying the scientific and technical process. This truly represents man's primitiveness, since he performs repetitive mechanical gestures like turning on a light, getting in the car, using a PC, a tablet, a handheld device, without possessing any real knowledge of them, nor being able to replicate the existence of the object. The human journey that led us to these discoveries is everyone's heritage, but control over it is reduced to the hands of a few who exercise control over the masses. If, for whatever reason, we were suddenly deprived of technology tomorrow, few of us would be able to survive, to light a fire, for instance. Ours is therefore an invitation to reclaim our ancient knowledge, while at the same time trying to carefully penetrate current technology, not living it passively, seeking within ourselves the mental and spiritual resources that made progress possible. Forward into the future, aware of the power of the knowledge that lies behind us.

So how does technology fit into your musical discourse?

Technology today is comparable for us to other elements under human control, such as fire, water, air. The approach to using them remains archaic and primitive. Despite the medium's apparent coldness, it actually conceals something uncontrollable. That's the side we try to investigate, just as a primitive man who has just discovered fire learns the technique through empirical study of its thousand applications. Using technology as a club, as a plow, as a spear. That's what interests us. Carving music onto hard drives like cave paintings.

Speaking of your previous releases (Saint Lux, Urano 1 and 3, Humungus Fungus), are those also anthropological investigations into Sardinia, or is there a different concept behind them?

Our anthropological research can never disregard our culture of origin, but its most relevant characteristics can be traced in the most disparate human cultures, and perhaps even in some extraterrestrial ones. “Saint Lux” was born as an incubation ritual inside a muristene (a pilgrims' shelter) of the countryside church of San Lussorio in Borore, and dedicated to the White Goddess. “Umungus Fungus” as a mycophagous ritual inspired by sacred foods. “Urano1” and “Urano3” as cosmic journeys, carrying Sardinian sounds like on a space ark exploring our symbolic planet. The planet of Aquarius.

“Saint Lux”, as well as the two volumes of “Ethnographies”, were reviewed by Julian Cope on his website. How did you come into contact with him? And since Cope is passionate about Nuragic culture, did you get a chance to explain to him the anthropological foundations of your project?

I heard from friends that he often visited Sardinia to study our megaliths, and that he was writing a book about the SS131 highway, the core of the story unfolding right in Macomer. On top of that, I knew his reputation as a music critic and shaman. Too many coincidences... So one day I simply put the record in an envelope and sent it. A few days later, the first enthusiastic review came out. At the moment I still haven't had the honor of exchanging a few words with him. We communicate by me sending him our work, and so far the message has gotten through. Maybe we frequent the same astral planes.

I saw one of your performances online with Simon Balestrazzi — can you explain the meaning of it and of the masks?

I had been working for a while on a ritual to perform at the archaeological site of Tamuli, where there are three giants' tombs and six betili, three of which are breast-shaped. I titled it Rebirth Invocation.

Among its great sacred values, the giants' tomb holds the symbolic and structural meaning of the maternal womb, which welcomes its deceased children for eternal sleep and, through the energy catalyzed by the earth, returns them to the universe in a deeply spiritual natural process of birth, death and rebirth. Its shape recalls both the bull, a symbol of fertilizing power, and a woman's body in the act of giving birth. It represents a perfect fusion of the masculine and feminine principles and reminds men that every ending is always a new beginning. For us twenty-first-century Sardinians, it's a call to start again by reclaiming our millennia-old origins, in order to rebuild, on the corpse of a failed modernity imposed on us time and again throughout our history, a new path of tradition that finally creates a harmonious entity between the deep past and the immediate future. The spirituality of our ancestors can give us the momentum we need to project ourselves into the world to come. To the earth and to our ancestors, to what they wanted to communicate to us across the millennia, we dedicate our invocation through that extraordinary medium that is Music, as a wish for fertility and rebirth for our Mother, our Earth, now suffering so dramatically.

As for the Boes and Merdules of Ottana, they are symbolically similar to Mamuthones and Issohadores, but more archaic, because there's an inversion at play. In Boes and Merdules, the former represent the animal world and the latter the humans who try to dominate them with the soha (the lasso), but in a continuous exchange of roles. Mamuthones and Issohadores represent a world closer to us, that of Spanish domination, in which the Issohadores (the masters dressed in seventeenth-century clothing) dominated the Merdules/Mamuthones, who dance in an orderly, controlled manner. It's a mutation of the original rite.

I firmly believe, to put it in Turner's terms, in Social Drama, that is, in performative practices aimed at a critical redefinition of reality. It seems to me that the cultural breaking of norms is the only possible form of conflict. As “anthropologists of performance,” do you feel invested with a function that is in some way political?

There is no political weapon left except that of our real behaviour. The performance, or as I prefer to call it the ritual, is that structural framework which allows us to speak the truth about our lives in an explicit way. It is the expressive medium par excellence, and it always has been. Before theatre, before any art form whatsoever, ritual was the place of trance, of liberation, of revelation. Its social importance goes back to the mists of time: it's not some dusty recitation learned by heart, but the dramatic exposure of real life freed from every superstructure. Only by wearing our ritual masks every day can we still leave some mark on the great human community. The unveiling of identity through the means of ritual masking is the political paradox of change: the great art of contradiction.

After the second volume of "Ethnographies", what's cooking?

We have material for at least two more volumes of "Ethnographies". Personally, I'm about to start recording my first solo album as MSMiroslaw, dedicated to my sacred horse skull... with HBOL we've recorded, using our own methods, a session with Simon Balestrazzi, who has entered our world beautifully and we his, and we're considering whether he'll agree to release it soon. Back at Trasponsonic HQ, there's a lot of material on hold that I plan to release as soon as I have a bit more resources. In any case, we're always immersed in our magical world. Thanks for the wonderful chat. See you soon.