Flesh vs. Intangible
Of the flesh: working and living in a begrudgingly growing population that constantly melts the thought “What is norm?” within their general prejudice and hyper self-awareness.
Of the intangible: creating deep relationships with a variety of people living transient and esoterically-driven lifestyles atop of each other within ever-expanding artistic/creative communal layers.
The closer these two bits of the dichotomy interact, the further it alienates mentality while traversing the two extreme sociological situations. Thus, it’s merely a matter of how you can live with yourself around others; the way you express [anything] to someone is initially and finally up to your mental discretion or anguish: self-reflection. And as anxiety gets the best of our agita, within each stomach-acid bubbling moment, it’s a true wonder to behold friends (IRL and URL; real and unreal) that appreciate, harness, and utilize yours and their uniqueness. These people are owed nothing but your sanity’s indebted gratitude. More so, interaction with those who are NOT these people, owe these people.
Prince of Darkness
“It’s dark underground. Spencer Clark is the prince of darkness.”
– Charles Berlitz’s Jakks Pull-Pin Wrestling Doll, 1997
In the Volcanic Tongue column he wrote toward the end of 2012, Spencer Clark divulged to the willing world that he had finally located the Monopoly Child constellation, followed by his inspiration for a follow-up to 2011’s full-color 12-inch book and LP called Fourth World Magazine. As the search had ended, Clark set upon a new adventure, witnessing Pinhead in Fantasia. Admittedly having “recorded in an Open Air theater and in a golden metal box simultaneously” (alone, I imagine), Fourth World Magazine Vol. II continues Clark’s exploration of collaboration (previously with Mark McGuire on Inner Tube and Matthew Mondanile on Egyptian Sports Network), only this time following a more visual angle by facehugging his mind with AR Faust (Pinhead in Fantasia’s companion DVD creator and sketch/still artist for the physical edition). Faust’s contributions accelerate Clark’s previous Soundvisions element to something more directly tangible in thought, including additional collaboration to the magazine’s physical design, something that only Clark had worked on for its first installment. These elements help listeners frame their thoughts around both the character Pinhead (from the Hellraiser series) and Fantasia.
Fourth World Magazine Vol. II also includes a short written piece by David Keenan, titled An Outer Gateway On “Pinhead In Fantasia,” which touched upon the 1980s devouring the 1990s in terms of pleasure/pain, birth canals, and the Dharma within.
“Realistically, Earth is the only place humans can experience the awe and wonder of pleasure and pain, or is it Earth that experiences humans; what will be the immortal integer?”
– Statement on the Back of Leopold Stokowski’s Cigarette Case
Beyond Clark’s dreamweek inspiration, the ultimate initiator of Pinhead in Fantasia was when Leopold Stokowski solved Lemarchand’s box, henceforth shaping Fourth World Magazine’s Gash. Though, the question remains: “When did Stokowski solve Lemarchand’s box?
» During His Departure: around the time Clark was born, Stokowski was claimed to have been taken from Earth by heart attack, after having signed a contract with CBS Records just months before. This contract would keep him active until he was 100 years old, while reciting concert conductor role around 92 years old and continuing to make recordings with handpicked players from the National Philharmonic and various London orchestras. Stokowski’s departure from Earth potentially cursed baby Clark upon entering Earth.
» While Composing Fantasia: Stokowski’s insatiable lust for creation and meddling in new melody brought an immortal need to continue making unlockable puzzles for listeners, long after his Earthly presence. In spite of the modern sounds his generation was composing, he intertwined his idea of composition and beheld the first complete Fantasound piece of music. Once Clark figured out that the configuration to Stokowski’s fidelity riddle (Fantasound) involved the painfully pleasurable sounds of Leviathan, he leaped further into the realm of musical absolution.
Cenobitical Life In Pacificity
Pinhead in Fantasia is Spencer Clark’s “A NEW VISION OF MAN” of Leopold Stokowski; Fourth World Magazine Vol. II is the physical manifestation of Stokowski’s soul desiccation, inhabiting demonic interior within the stolen body of Clark, imprisoning the musician’s soul. This is what makes Clark an EXPLORER cenobite, while Keenan and AR Faust are his would-be ENGINEERS, therefore completing Fourth World Magazine’s Gash (simply known as Vol. II). Within Pinhead in Fantasia, Clark is metaphorically using music as the Lament Configuration to jump from his realm (Portland and Belgium) to the listener’s realm, indulging their patience with extreme musical sensations and converting them to his every key.
To quote the final paragraph of Keenan’s 2014 article Subterranean Homesick Blues for The Wire:
The future of underground music exists in the margins, in the one-offs. It’s time for lone voices, barely decipherable ones, in fact. The underground has disappeared but somewhere out there solitary cells are forming. Next time around, the revolutions will not be liked, retweeted, favourited or followed back. In 2014 the underground is dead. Long live the underground.
The artistic direction in Pinhead in Fantasia is exactly the type of “margin” within which Keenan’s underground dwells. Furthermore, it’s got me doing an insane amount of research into Hellraiser fan fiction websites that are akin to somewhere out there; Pinhead in Fantasia’s initial guise made me want to seek out more into the [personally unknown]. Sound familiar? During a 2014 interview I conducted with Dracula Lewis (Hundebiss Records), Simone Trabucchi divulged that, through a Pagan-art book suggestion, Keenan had indirectly influenced him, his girlfriend, Spencer, and Spenzy’s (now) fiancée into taking an off-trail tour/scavenger-hunt for “10 days driving around and discover crazy symbols in late night museums, churches, fountains, and grottos.” This sort of persuasion is not only the basis of Fourth World Magazine and the general umbrella aesthetics of Pacificity Soundvisions, but also the direct entrapment of Pinhead in Fantasia’s artistic value. A rouse, or guise, or muse, riding close to Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski trying to manipulate the scents on set during the filming of Fantasia; “Where is that odor emitting from? I feel euphoric!”
Composure In Underground Sustainability
Roughly two years ago — before he began touring Europe and moved to Belgium, and around the time the Pacificity Soundvisions website went live — Spencer Clark and I had several phone conversations, resulting in hours of recorded material and ZERO written content to show for it. A small part of these conversations involved his thoughts on the audio quality differences between LP and cassette recordings; he said he listened to LP recordings because they sustain more quality when there are only two (or maybe three) audio tracks being played. This is in contrast to the layers of audio from his previous Black Joker, Monopoly Child, Vodka Soap, and Skaters tapes. Coinciding with the pain and pleasure motif of the Hellraiser series, Clark pairs uplifting synthetic orchestration with maddening, mind-altering sound effects and vocal warping to create the minimal recorded effect on the Pinhead in Fantasia LP. It’s almost as if the sounds of Fourth World Magazine Vol. II were originally a movie that was directly transferred from VHS tape to pure audio. This includes intricate chamber and minimal orchestral movements shaping the movie’s scenes, montages, and climaxes, while also including sound effects, alien tongue languages, and mind-gore.
The aforementioned “maddening, mind-altering sound effects” actually portray an atmosphere frequently used within Clark’s works through Soundvisions, which he underscores in the label name. However, aside from the visuals in Fourth World Magazine Vol. I (which excluded specific characters/locations within pop culture), Soundvisions has not been as noticeable until Pinhead in Fantasia. By directing listeners to these visual elements, he draws a more familiar mindset, but also distracts listeners. Yet, with a brushstroke of words, the world is presented in music as follows:
» “A NEW IMAGE OF MAN” Soundvisions the potential of a man birthing into an imitation world he can only perceive, enlightened by crackling drums, contracting bursts of new sound, and the orchestration of a new day in horns, rife with new languaged “Woops” and “Hollers” and potential direction from another life force.
» “LAMENT CONFIGURATIONS IN WALT DISNEY” Soundvisions a tapestry of Fantasia solving the Lament Configuration and opening up an entire new dimension within; as the depth of Fantasound are exhumed at the hands of Spencer Clark, the romancenobite lurks a symphony of synthetic sounds.
» “FEMALE CENOBYTE’S DESCENT INTO KOMODO GARDEN” Soundvisions a gaggle of delicately tip-toeing FEMALE CENOBYTES down stairs heightened by the tango of flute and horn, accentuating the importance of grace with bursts of noise and distant drumming, while the KOMODOS lash out tongues and squirm in pits of water-dirt.
» “BUTTERBALL CAPRICCIO” Soundvisions the BUTTERBALL cenobite chilling with a bit of the old strong cocktail, turning an arm of a box that appears as a meat grinder, with its intricately-carved bones scraping against razor-sharpened combs, likening it to a music box. Yet it’s powered and accentuated in speed and volume — as BUTTERBALL likes taking pleasure in extremes — and backed by the base of his belly that the box rests upon.
» “CHATTERERBOX INTERMEZZO” Soundvisions the image of CHATTERERBOX feasting on what was once the “BUTTERBALL CAPRICCIO” by waving its blueprint into thin strands of pasta and chopping it up bit-by-bit into the never-ending void of them chompers; it closely resembles the “That’s a spicy meatball” commercial, but with human entrails and fingers as fine dining.
» “ALLEGRO FOR CD” Soundvisions less of this ALLEGRO to be FOR CD, but for CD to mix upon his Boiler Room stage amid the most gruesome transitions, from speeding razor-blade combs of BUTTERBALL’s music box, to CHATTERERBOX chowing down, to the creeping NEW IMAGE OF MAN crawling back to the Leviathan to which he belongs.
» “THE FANFARE OF THE ASCENSION OF THEE FACEHUGGER” Soundvisions the birth of new evil, by way of clawing at the old with twangs of new sounds canvased across the old, like stretched skin that had been torn where it was sewn, and the NEW IMAGE OF MAN suffers the agony of restitching this hide — FACEHUGGER swallowing his face — only to adorn his masochistic master’s new vision of demon.
Pinhead in Fantasia
Spencer Clark IS Pinhead in Fantasia. Not just because Pinhead’s human name (Captain Elliott Spenser) is similar to Spencer Clark’s human name, but also because he is the embodiment of this world, these characters, this full vision of sound. He is the sole representative of the Flesh vs. Intangible dichotomy. He is the one who directly and purposefully “alienates mentality” by creating something so familiar yet so drastically different that you’re unsure of what you’re hearing/seeing/feeling. The only thing left is your own mentality and how you perceived it: How did it compare to other modern musics? Were you delighted by its careful orchestration? Do you wish to dive further into Clark’s Lament Configuration and find out what’s really going on?
You are the devil of this Earth. You are Pinhead and Dracula and Mickey Mouse. You are Lemarchand’s box and Walt Disney. You are Stokowski. Become yourself within alienation of self. Find who you truly are through courageously out-riddling life. Conduct your confidence. Compose. Flow the Prince of Darkness into a brand new being. Follow a friend.