Hrönir- The Secret Acetates of Uqbar

by Myndflower

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of A Lone Bloom Bloomed Outsyde: Solo Guitar Vol. 2, Infrequency Modulations, Hrönir- The Secret Acetates of Uqbar, When The Sky's Below, Mistaken Prophecies of the Orange Sunshine, Kromodelic Visions, Sometymes Why, The View From Here, and 29 more. , and , .

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about

This record brings together a few fascinating, and seemingly disparate, influences that have been burgeoning for nearly two decades now.

The first, and the one that this record takes its name and concept, is Jorge Luis Borges' short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," which to me is this iconic author's quintessential story. A multi-layered, labyrinthine amalgam of philosophical erudition expressed narratively in few words, the story beckons the imagination to open, and step through, the windows that lead directly to infinity, but can also trap us in a world that is banal or atrocious, to paraphrase the author. Uqbar, an imaginary land that serves as the original root of the story, is a land somewhere in an unknown Middle East where philosopher George Berkeley's idealism is not limited to perception and knowing, instead taking on a different meaning with the inhabitants of this initially imagined land able to conjure objects from beyond the scope of known terrestrial reality into something concrete: at once terrifying and incredible. Among the names given to these objects is hrönir, which gives our album its title, the music being a manifestation of my own idealistic will of creation.

Uqbar, Tlön, and the eventual Orbis Tertius are the creation of a secret society of erudites whose contributions come together in a 40-volume encyclopedia detailing as many aspects of this world as possible. The fabric of the universe is torn when the impossible objects, languages, and thinking of this imaginary world incur into what is ostensibly our own--forever changing the course of reality in the process.

Read on a political level taking into account it was written at a time when fascism seemed unstoppable, it is a warning of the power of manipulating information, history, and truth, corrupting the world into something unrecognizable--the labors of dictators and fascists throughout history and working its way into the minds of too many around the world today once again.

The second is the Secret Museum of Mankind series and the efforts of the reissue label Mississippi Records of compiling a wide range of 78s from around the world, preserving and presenting a history of music that would otherwise be lost. Beyond the fascinating musical contributions of the many artists put forth by those records, there is the feeling of hearing something from truly another world, of spirits long gone, of a reality that, were we in it, would feel almost completely disconnected from the paradigms we've grown accustomed to entering the middle of the third decade of this strange and backward twenty-first century. Part of the fascination is the alternative fidelity of the sound: the crackle, the noise, the distortions, which among other things give these 78 recordings their charm, their spirit, their ghostliness, and magic. I am hesitant to call it low fidelity for any number of reasons, this time being that the different and varying qualities of the recordings themselves are part of the story, part of getting the music to exist, taking a record-cutting recorder to the furthest reaches of the world to capture a minimal snapshot of a culture and its spirits.

The third is Can's "Ethnological Forgery Series" which appeared on their 1976 compilation of previously unreleased material Unlimited Edition, where the band mimics or invents "ethnological" sounding material, but owning up to the fact that it is, indeed, a forgery, something that is their creation passed through the sieve of their own experience in an exercise of pushing their own limits as artists and musicians.

With all this in mind, this record is an imaginary journey that visits some of the places and things mentioned in the original Borges story, through a process organized in thinking of it as "The Secret Museum of Mankind: The Non-Traditional Music of Uqbar," realizing that I am not committing forgery of anything but intending to create an unheard folk music while seeking to reproduce some of the qualities that make 78s from around the world so haunting through the alternative fidelity, the crackles, the noise, the distortion, the untreated acoustic instruments--a tribute to those ghosts from the past whose spirits re-emerge when the needle touches the vinyl of the records through which they very much live on.

Both my mother and my father met and chatted with Borges at different times. In 1977, I shook his hand myself and sat in a large auditorium hearing a long lecture from which I understood nothing whatsoever (I was not even 7 years old yet). One thing that my father always repeated was how Borges' own appreciation of music always seemed lacking. That, I don't know, but it is never mentioned in his work. Why not contribute to the legend of Uqbar giving it a sound within the infinite possibilities of what it could have been.

So, should you choose to listen (and you've made it this far on this write-up), think of these as acetates found or conjured up in the sands of that unknown desert where reality meets irreality in Uqbar.

credits

released March 4, 2024

This is an archival release, Kromodelic Arkivo 033006.
Compiled 2010-2023.
Assembled at the House of Light, Camarillo.

Special thanks to Eduardo Forastieri, Brian Forés, and Craig McIntosh for their contributions both direct and indirect.

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about

Myndflower California

Hear the kromodelic sounds of Myndflower.
Myndflower blooms becoming the many colors of psychedelia past and present. As Myndflower, the sounds of multi-instrumentalist composer Javier González have reverberated from various home studios since 2009 seeking to find a place outside of the continuum of time, at once familiar and exotic, at once strange and known. ... more