On Zapo De Ray’s IN EVERY WEED A WOUND, IN EVERY CHORD A COSMOS
The hum of the spaceship slides in, staining the strange skies
Above us. Chords like thumbs pressing the controls of the craft
Become guide. A smear of synth taints the ominous glass
Looking at us, as CONATUS claims us, leaving no place or port
We can hide. The pattern ascends as eyes spark horizons.
The stars are sharp. The black bristles under Zapo De Ray’s influence.
We can hear a voice in this mix, as if words were paint, thin
And watered, and light, detail and shadow finally gained congruence.
There is also shape to this sound, as the wounded field yields
Weed flowers; for these are the scars of departure
Wrought from the path deep within. Which this music unlocks,
As if it were the soundtrack for soul spillage, or the companion
For what either dread or dream might begin. HEAVY D pins this down,
It’s insistence spears and sparks static. This is the craft itself elevating
And slicing now solid air. The siren of screams which are doused inside
It’s cold chorus, as if vessel itself and those charting its cosmic course
Destroy care. The sound swelters. It holds. A hand on the throat,
Soon mutating what it grips, as if Jodorowsky and Giger had got
To complete their own Dune. You can hear Baron Harkonen’s glare
As his particular victims suffer; as this piece provides us with Sci-Fi
Effect and death’s tune. The sustained chord is space containing
Within endless patterns. The drone and sound splinters are just part
Of the deal the dead make. The heaviness presses in; song as star,
Folded over: a black hole pulling patterns out of the light
For whose sake? Not God. Not us. And the extra-terrestrials won’t be telling.
OM AH HUM holds the answer as it is the language and code of those far.
Zapo De Ray sings for them, intoning at last this strange syntax; murmurs,
Dark mutters that seek to describe each shunned star.
This is the universe talking back when you speak your dreams to it.
This is the sheen and the shatter of the glass and the gas that fuels space.
The mantra long made by primordial forces; a zen beyond ken
And the common, transporting song spieling towards another realm,
And dark place, where light slices like steel and wildlife grows
As explosions. Colours ejaculate from buds blooded and the fallout
Is one where ash soothes. PIKHAL concludes this soundtrack
For the unrecognised past and far future. It has Villeneuve and Ridley
Scott in it, Vangelis, Shulze and a muscular Popol Vuh. As Zapo De Ray
Journeys on, planting his chaos course straight from Peckham,
Out to the reaches where nothing you’ve touched remains true.
The music powers you, and frightens too. Feel is forcing (you)
Out through dimensions where London and Earth itself are mere flecks
In some strange being’s eye, who has seen and endured our trespasses,
And who has sealed the wound we inflicted by imbibing the weed
To Star Trek – away from wars and Death-Stars, Chronicle and care,
Moons and madness. This is the sound of that travel,
as the Astronaut spirals now, into dark. This is the stream of air
Through his suit. This is the ravaged face felt through sonics.
This is sound as chrysalis caking the fallen flesh that fate marks.
David Erdos 24/3/23
https://zapoderay.bandcamp.com/album/in-every-weed-a-wound-in-every-chord-a-cosmos
.