Video Of The Day Silver Stairs of Ketchikan
Bristol, UK based experimental multi-instrumentalist, singer and long-time instigator of the West Country trio Thought Forms, Charlie Romijn (guitars, bass guitar, bowl, cello, synth, voice) created her side project, Silver Stairs of Ketchikan, inspired by the Richard Brautigan poem of the same name, as a solitary improvisations/exploration into “the tight spaces between fragility & violence”.
A mesmerizing DIY video for the immersive track “Passager“, taken from last June’s album, “EDEIDA”, through her own label Lava Thief, is ready to break open those tight spaces and forge a new destiny for the solo artist with the help of fellow Thought Forms musicians Jim Barr (wind sound) and Guy Metcalfe (drums.)
Haunting ritual auras spin bowl waves and magnetic ripples of oscillating, buzzing cello drone into a heady, primal excursion behind the powerful beauty of soul-stirring female vocals devoting raw, evocative intentions, amid witchy rattle shakes, intense rolling drum patterns, and visceral bass vibrations to expand unsettling sentience along with the cutting tension of organic stringed instrumentation, sending a momentary spell of elevation into the dark and moody lyrical undertones.
A travelling flow of visual energy uses dizzying double vision overlays to disarrange and transfix streams of unconscious revelations. Hazy orange sunsets blur surreal textures, creating a psychedelic depth defying perception whilst split-screen asymmetry unravels remote, bi-focal viewing sessions into a downward spiral of cathartic pain. An expressive interpretative performance carries red sands of time, with hypnotic gestures, passing thoughts forward at an accelerated pace to extract disorienting and disturbing divinations from the abstract motion. Lights and shadows sway in a nauseating momentum under distorted, glaring skies to enchant a black scarab of death into an abundance of white ray force, shining from the hidden strength of the sun.
Silver Stairs of Ketchikan new album, “EDEIDA”, is out now on LP, CD and digital formats via Charlie Romijn’s own label Lava Thief,
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