Red Temple Spirits

Although often associated with the Californian "trance" scene of the 1980s, the Red Temple Spirits were, in truth, a rarer case than most, having achieved a musical synthesis that, years on, still stands as one of the most significant legacies of that era. The band of English singer William Faircloth (formerly of Ministry Of Love), Dino Paredes (bass; co-founder of Psi Com alongside Perry Farrell), Dallas Taylor (guitar) and Thomas Pierik (drums) offered a highly idiosyncratic take on English post-punk (above all Cure and Cult), reread through the lens of the "cosmic" psychedelia of Pink Floyd and embellished with surprising new age openings and ritualistic, tribal torments reminiscent of the experiments of Savage Republic. More than a band, in short, an affront - especially to a music scene that still hadn't fully digested the last gasps of the hardcore era.

A period of finding their feet, spent playing wherever they could, was followed by signing to Independent Project, one of the many small labels based around Los Angeles. The partnership would prove ill-fated, given the label's insistence on releasing a single album against Faircloth & co.'s wish to gamble on a debut double. As it happened, the dispute was resolved by the foresight of Nate Starkman & Son, who accepted the band's proposal, granting the quartet complete creative freedom in every respect. However, given that brave label's poor distribution network, after a while the record ended up becoming a genuine cult object...

This, of course, did nothing to diminish the artistic value of a work as firmly rooted in the past as it was projected toward the future. The work on tone and harmony, in fact, at times seems to foreshadow glimmers of the post-rock still to come, while the "mystical" fusion (via Native American spirituality) of dark-wave and English psychedelia ended up triggering a short circuit capable of generating musical passages of incomparable beauty and otherness.

Released in 1988, "Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon" opens amid the metallic noises, cosmic trails and feedback of "Exorcism/Waiting For The Sun" (7'05"), suddenly turned into a martial dance by its shadowy tread, jagged with shimmering cymbals and acidic guitar trails, over which Paredes' stretched-out bass and Faircloth's exuberant, echo-treated voice climb. "Liquid Temple" (5'44") is, fittingly, a ballad of indefinable, "liquid" contours; a shamanic circularity steeped in dark passion; the slow crumpling of the soul (the exhausting stillness of the rhythm section) before the fire of pain (Faircloth's "imploded" voice).

"Dark Spirits" (4'25"), on the other hand, is (post-)punk violence forced into ethereal structures, recalling the frenetic rides of many early-Eighties tracks. Repeated chords suspended over trajectories of emptiness immediately ignite a superb interplay of muted desperation (bass and drums nailed to an aimless wandering, stubbornly hostile to any digression; the voice clotted in the throat) and panic-stricken lyricism (the guitar's atmospheric soaring, immersed in its own transcendent reverb): this is what defines the gorgeous "Bear Cave" (4'19").

On the "heavier" side sits the relentless progression of "Dreamings Ending" (4'54"), while "Electric Flowers" (5'10") offers a further display of their ability to weave memorable dreamlike atmospheres, set between tribal drumming, guitar swoons, sudden crescendos and equally rapid dives into the darkest zones of sound. The perfect meeting point between their two main musical coordinates (Cure and Pink Floyd) is instead represented by "Moonlight" (5'39"), followed by the pastoral mirage of "Where Merlin Played" (6'00"), which, in its resolving between "highs" and "lows", recalls the most fatalistic moments of "Obscured By Clouds" (Pink Floyd), while its work on acoustic guitar arpeggios briefly opens a window onto the more fairy-tale-like lands of Canterbury.

The obsession with the band behind "The Piper At the Gates Of Dawn" returns intact in the early-hard-rock splendor of their glittering version of "Nile Song" (3'26") (from "More"), whose rough edges are further sharpened. In "Lost In Dreaming" (4'55") the drums pound against a backlit, impenetrable backdrop, while the bass climbs the twisted, psychedelically dazed lines of the guitar. It's one of the highest peaks of their art — an art capable of merging cosmic yearnings and premonitions of a physicality bordering on the evanescence of spirit into a single, magmatic flow.

The closing, sprawling "Light Of The Christ/This Hollow Ground" (13'37") perfectly sums up every element identified so far, ultimately standing as the absolute climax of this forgotten masterpiece. The track can be divided into three sections. In the first, guitar chords stretch out, fade and then re-emerge from a gloomy landscape, where ambient noises and a soft hail of bells can be heard. In the second (the longest), while, as expected, Pierik builds an insistent polyrhythm and Paredes encircles his field of action with dark, regularly circular notes, Faircloth and Taylor keep pushing the track's boundaries toward inflections that retain only a few indistinct traces of psychedelia and post-punk. Both voice and guitar undergo a kind of "dis-location" treatment: the former, filtered so as to sound like a distant echo on the verge of dissolving; the latter, growing ever more like a thread-thin oscillation, leaving behind countless traces of its passage. In the third part, everything sinks into a nocturnal stasis, amid tolling bells and pouring rain.

Such a prodigious balance could hardly have found further, adequate developments. And so, after releasing the decent "If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa" in 1989, the "spirits of the red temple" began to be spoken of only in the past tense. A past that keeps giving them back to us more timeless and unforgettable than ever.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

06/11/2006