Zero Kama - The Origins of Ritual Ambient

By a strange coincidence, Michael DeWitt's year of birth is the same year in which Philips introduced the new musical format of the cassette tape to the world; a physical medium that in the Eighties would become the symbol of underground scenes such as punk and industrial.

He was born in 1962 in the city of music par excellence: the superb, magical, enchanted, icy, unparalleled and romantic Vienna.

Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt and many other great classical musicians and composers were born or lived in this wonderful city. Certainly, the name Michael DeWitt won't mean much to purists, and seeing that name placed alongside those towering historical figures might even seem provocative and irreverent.

In fact, the only two works – because that's what they are – that he left behind, released in the first half of the Eighties, are considered by the greatest music critics to be essential cornerstones of that ultra-niche scene known as industrial and noise music. Musical scenes that, along with all their related offshoots, had already laid their foundations and developed and evolved all over the globe: in England through Throbbing Gristle, Lustmord and Nocturnal Emissions, just to name a few, since the list would be endless; in Australia with S.P.K. (System Planning Korporation), and again in the old continent, in Germany through Einsturzende Neubauten, and in Italy with Maurizio Bianchi.

The brief, intense artistic journey of the twenty-year-old Michael DeWitt begins in 1983, when he releases the album Sensitive Liberated Autistiks, using on this occasion the unsettling moniker Korpses Katatonik. Simultaneously with the release of the record – making it coincide with his first release – he founds the small label Nekrophile Rekords; in its few years of life, and with only eight releases – all strictly on cassette – Nekrophile would go on to become a cult label in the years that followed. Its catalogue came to include bands with a strongly dark and esoteric bent: Coil with their initial project called Zos Kia, Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic Tv, and lesser-known names who nonetheless released albums of great artistic value, such as the Italians LAShTAL and Ain Soph.

The cover art, which recalls "Information Overload Unit" (S.P.K.), certain themes and images almost reminiscent of vivisection or a psychiatric hospital, as well as some tracks by Greame Revell – the leader of S.P.K. – with a darker, less industrial soul ("Despair", "Stammheim Torturkammer"), seem to bring Korpses Katatonik conceptually and musically close to the Australian band. A similar way of writing and the continuous use of that anarchic letter k, which signals a certain distance from conventional conventions, can be found in the conglomerate of sonic "illnesses" in the subtitle: "Subklinikal Leukotomy Aphrenia Spasmophilik Lyssophobo Asphyxia Sinister Lethal Anorex", echoing the terminology used by the Australian band, as in "Surgical Penis Klinik" and "SoliPsiK".

All things considered, Sensitive Liberated Autistiks is a distinctly separate entity from S.P.K.. The only point of connection is that listening to both causes mental collapse and the paralysis of all motor activity. Tracks like "Shatok" burrow straight into the skull; the brain's sensors connected to the outside world are bypassed, trapping the listener in a passive, vegetative state: it's fitting to speak of catatonic bodies here. Life force is transmitted in fluid form through solenoid drips, through which flow massive, hammering doses of proto techno-industrial ("Kcok Transzplant").

Meanwhile, repeated – almost cyclical – echocardiogram pulses try to break through imposing walls of harsh noise: a sort of encrypted Morse code in an industrial key ("Schmertzlabor"). "Kaltfleisch Corporor" offers sulfurous molecules of primordial lustmordian dark-ambient, while "Skarzisko" and "Okzipital Slash" use stinging, abrasive mass to throw open the door to a metallurgic sonic inferno. "Enzephallik Mortuor", finally, with its dark, diabolical, anguished, ritualistic metallic rhythms, seems to anticipate Zero Kama's The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H.

In short, Sensitive Liberated Autistiks can be classified as a trielinic record: it has an alluring, sickly-sweet scent that, combined with repeated listens, can become addictive, and consequently wear down the listener's brain cells.

1984 is the year of the turning point and artistic apotheosis for Michael "Zos" DeWitt: The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H is released on cassette, again on Nekrophile.

The artistic path that led to the creation of this dark and mysterious album isn't all that hard to trace. The reasons are surely to be found in his in-depth knowledge of the controversial and blasphemous artistic movement born in the early Sixties known as Viennese Actionism, but above all in his obsessive study of the literary works of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare: the two enigmatic British writers – and occultists – who lived in the first half of the last century.

The experience of Viennese Actionism – later also lived actively by taking part in some live performances with the master Hermann Nitsch – can largely be felt through those live shows resembling Masonic initiation rituals, complete with lit candelabras and chalices filled with blood to drink.

The influence of Spare and Crowley's writings, meanwhile, makes The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H. a magical, mystical, ritualistic, pagan, occult, esoteric, alchemical and satanic work.

From reading Spare's book "Zos Speaks" and from the witchcraft cults related to "Zos Kia", Michael DeWitt chose for himself the nickname "Zos": a moniker he still carries today. It is the writings of Aleister Crowley, however, that provide the strongest points of reference: that ritual magic of chaos and the inspiration toward grim, satanic themes. The same goes for the album's title, where the acronym "L.A.Y.L.A.H." (Love Alway Yeldeth Love Alway Hardeneth) is in fact one of the many magical phrases used by the English occultist.

One might ask: why is this such a singular, one-of-a-kind record? The reason — as also noted in the cassette's booklet — lies in the fact that it is played entirely on human bones and skulls. These unusual, certainly not run-of-the-mill instruments lend each track a magical touch, and give the album as a whole a macabre, funereal ritual-ambient quality.

The cavernous, corpse-like notes reeking of rigor mortis on "Death Posture" sit alongside the repetitive, harrowing cannibalistic rhythms of "Atavism Dream" and "Night Of Matter": one wonders how they'd sound in the soundtrack of some Umberto Lenzi film ("Cannibal Ferox" or "Eaten Alive").

The divine, celestial sounds of "Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome", evoking Osiris and the whole Egyptian pantheon, blend with the hypnotic trance of "Love Alway Yeldeth". "Azure-Lidded Woman", on the other hand, draws on ritual sounds meant to accompany tantric sex performance, sitting alongside the warm, Middle Eastern pulses of "Hassan Sabbah". The voodoo rituals — complete with doll and pin — of "Winged Eye Hadit" make for the perfect intro to the psychedelic, hallucinatory, extrasensory tones unleashed by "Love Alway Hardeneth".

It's not a certainty, but one could venture to say that modern ritual-ambient was born with The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H; a shame that this record is remembered solely for its use of that outlandish instrumentation.

A seminal record. Many artists have drawn on it, achieving excellent results among other things: in the very first years after its release, Germany's Cranioclast; in the mid-Nineties, the cursed work of Norwegian female duo Aghast ("Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finisternis"); and finally, in the very recent past, almost every release by the musicians on the roster of Finnish label Aural Hypnox (Arktau Eos, Halo Manash, Aeoga, Aural Holograms and Zoät-Aon).

After years of silence, in 2008 the historic French label Athanor rescued Zero Kama's "Live In Arnhem 1985", and paired it with "Goatherd And The Beast" — already released in 2001 — putting them out together in a double digipack. Unlike The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H, these live recordings offer a more pronounced ritual-ambient approach, with the industrial and dark elements accentuated, but above all it's the addition of cavernous, penitential vocals that makes the difference, making the tracks sound less exotic.

Some tracks are not unreleased: they had already appeared on the only two compilations in the Nekrophile catalogue: "The Archangels Of Sex Rule The Destruction Of The Regime" and "The Beast 666".

On this release the references to Crowley and Spare are clearly visible: for instance, the opening track — itself an acronym — "V.V.V.V.V." alludes to the famous Crowleyan motto Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici; the lyrics of "Prayer Of Zos" are based on passages from Spare's book "Zos Speaks", while "Liber Al.I.13" contains verses from Crowley's "The Book Of The Law".

There's no shortage of tracks with strong spiritual ties to non-Christian religions: the sounds of "Seven Nights Of Tantra" are reworkings of original Hindu tantric rituals, or Tibetan ones, as in the case of "V.V.V.V.V.".

In March 2012 the Viennese label Klanggalerie — as if to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Sensitive Liberated Autistiks — reissued Oevures Complétes in a run of just three hundred copies, on a plain CD and with different artwork. It's a record that can be seen as a sort of well-deserved retrospective, since this fresh release also includes the track "Choronzon", which at the time had been released separately on a compilation.

Michael "Zos" DeWitt left the music scene in 1988 after producing just two works, closing down Nekrophile Rekords in the process: some titles from its catalogue were reissued on CD by the Staalplaat label in the early Nineties.

Soon after, he began his initiation into the Illuminates of Thanateros: a kind of secret masonic order devoted to the study of mystical and magical texts. Shortly thereafter he would turn with passion to painting and sculpture, always retaining that dark, diseased nature of his.

In his solitary home amid the Austrian Alps, he still creates his works today, which are exhibited at various modern art shows around the globe.

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