22.10.21

Livros sobre música que vale a pena ler - Cromo #90: Anthony Blokdijk - "The Abrahadabra Letters By John Balance, 1984-1988"


autor: Anthony Blokdijk
título: The Abrahadabra Letters By John Balance, 1984-1988
editora: Korm Plastics
nº de páginas: 138
isbn: N/A
data: 2021
Segunda Edição.






COIL

 

THE ABRAHADABRA LETTERS BY JOHN BALANCE, 1984-1988

Maldoracca, The Hague 2016

KORM PLASTICS

Second edition 2021

 

Introduction

It does the dead no service to leave them mute, buried and gone. Artists in particular are not a category of people crying out to be silent. While obviously we cannot resurrect anyone whole and intact, we can at least commune with them through their words, images, and sounds. In the case of John Balance (aka Geff Rushton, Jhonn, and various other pseudonyms) we’re faced with a prime candidate for such a treatment given the limited quantity of his writings to emerge during his lifetime, as well as the enticing breadth of his interests, particularly across the period 1984 – 1988 covered by this volume.

Most professional musicians, it must de said, are not especially fascinating creatures. In the majority of cases, there’s the usual stock of tour stories, party tales, hard luck dramas and soap operas; supplemented by functional accounts of the logistics and requirements of their specific mode of employment. This is not true of Balance. What made the difference is that, whereas most musicians engage with the practical requirements of earning a living, the independent income earned by Balance’s partner, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, meant that it was only after the turn of the century that touring became a key part of Coil’s income and Balance never had to seek other employment.

 

Blessed with time, Balance’s day-to-day existence was akin to that of the aristocratic writers and explorers of the 19th century. From Coil’s base at 14 Beverley Road in the leafy London suburb of Chiswick, a stone’s throw from the River Thames, he was able to delve into topics of interest and process them intensely until each line that emerged within Coil’s work was a tight knot of visual and intellectual references. While Christopherson was out – often away abroad for weeks at a time pursuing his career as a successful director of music videos – Balance shouldered the efforts involved in Coil as a business entity, and as a conceptual unit expressed via fanzines, mainstream publications, and in personal letters to interested parties.

 

Published as a limited edition volume in 2016, The ABRAHADABRA Letters, sits in the lineage of archival works such as The Letters Of William S. Burroughs that provide a less mediated and more ‘of the moment’ view of an artist’s fixation and investigations. Within these 80 – or – so pages, Balance dashes off vibrant missives regarding the multiple concerns of his existence, everything from the ongoing disruption caused by his (and Christopherson’s) departure from the group Psychic TV; both more and less successful attempts to release new music; Coil’s unwillingness to perform live; his pursuit of artefacts and writings related to various artists and writers; less than satisfactory relationships with the music industry; magickal and ritual practices in his life. It´s a cornucopia of diverting thoughts and snapshots for further exploration.

What is noticeable is Balance’s relatively introverted nature even at a relatively young age – the letters follow his activities from 22 to 27 years’ old. He comes across, to some degree, as hermitic, something of a bookworm, busying himself tracking down Aleister Crowley first editions, Austin Osman Spare’s handwritten annotations, making positive asides on the writing of Victor Neuberg… Then, suddenly, the doors are flung open and gives thrilled accounts of visits to other countries and cultures, all rendered in concise electric detail. As a perfect example, the book ends with a postcard in which Balance displays his talent for seeing the macabre, the humorous and the suggestive wrapped up within day – to – day encounters.

Of course, if one watched only the surface detail of pop culture or our modern social media one might expect significant figures only spend time partying in public – life as a highlight reel. The letters are far more honest portrait in that the time alone and the ways in which that time was filled are vividly portrayed, as is Balance’s more sociable side. Characters as diverse as The Butthole Surfers, David Tibet, and William S. Burroughs crop up as correspondents, old friends, companions on nights out. The letters allow us to see multiple facets of his identity, not just as a frozen figure processioning past a shifting backdrop of events – Balance is interesting because of who he was, not just where he was or who he was with.

Elsewhere, there’s a glimpse at the top of one letter of Balance’s intense approach of word-play. Just a few lines long, he twists and connects phrases, sounds, ideas, letting them unspool as simultaneous insight and nonsense until he might extract a golden thread of thought or phrase. I’ve seen this some approach elsewhere, a full page in which every last white space was filled in with sentences that crested and crashed in great sways and curls. A further bonus, we also see examples of Balance’s likeably naïve sketches something rarely seen in his lifetime. For me, The Abrahadabra Letters are akin to Coil’s many-pointed Chaos Star emblem, a compact centre exploding outward in many directions that one can choose to follow.

 

Anthony Blokdijk, like Balance, had gone through his own awakening courtesy of Throbbing Gristle, than a brief involvement with Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth. After departing TOPY, Blokdijk’s continued friendship with David Tibet led to him visiting London and encountering Balance. Bonding over a love of books, Balance helped track down Austin Osman Spare works in London for Blokdijk (undoubtedly fuelling his own burgeoning interest in Spare across those years, very much the icon who replaced Crowley as his guiding light), while Blokdijk hunted for Salvador Dali-related items in The Netherlands to support Balance’s fervent fandom.

The book’s title, The Abrahadabra Letters, stems for the Dutch periodical Blokdijk ran for 14 issues between 1985-1990. Focused on esoteric and magickal topics, the first three issues come with cover imagery drawn from Egyptian mythology, after which the magazine shifted to feature a specific theme per issue: sex, conspiracies, Technology, Spare, Crowley. An initial burst of energy in 1985 – 1986 saw five issues per year after which it became sporadic: one in 1987, two in ’88, the last in 1990. Clean production values, quality artwork, and the depth and specificity of its content made Abrahadabra a late peak in the era of self-produced zines.

At the same time, Blokdijk lobbied and negotiated with interested parties in Holland to try to arrange the release of a Coil single. He was also writing for a range of Dutch music publications and was able to get Coil highlighted in various locations (specific articles are included herein). A recording of an extensive interview conducted with Balance, with contributions from Stephen Thrower and Peter Christopherson, is still in Blokdijk’s possession and, by the time you read this, I hope you may had opportunity to hear or read it. Blokdijk also published an official translation or William S. Burroughs’ influential text Electronic Revolution to which Christopherson contributed artwork, while Balance gave a foreword. This is significant to scholars of Balance’s work as one of only three places of extended prose he published in his lifetime – the others being as essay on ‘The Exploration of Sleep’ – excerpted in the Peyrere compilation of 1986, then in full in the magazine Hang Loose With Coil in 1987 – then ‘AOS: Artist, Occultist, Sensualist’ from the exhibition catalogue of a Spare gallery showing in 1999.

A regular guest to Threshold House – the nickname of Coil’s Chiswick residence as well as of their record label from 1987 onward – a visit in late 1988 caused a permanent rupture. As recounted by Blokdijk, Balance was in a manic state brought on by a significant level of amphetamine consumption, spent the majority of the visit trying to source a further supply, and refuse to share which left Blokdijk – also no stranger to chemical stimulation at the time – fairly grumpy and keen to head home, especially given a pointed and sharp non-farewell from Balance. Heightened states, a period of over-indulgence, unresolved mental health issues, it’s understandable why small snubs led to the cessation of communication.

In that sense, the book is a memorial marking the end of the relationship, however, more positively, what is recorded in the pages is both individuals’ desire to create, regardless of reward or recognition, to place their energies behind things they loved and appreciated – including each other. In that respect, I can imagine no better home for The Abrahadabra Letters than with Frans de Waard. De Waard’s father, a classical music lover, dubbed his son’s taste ‘Kapotte Muziek’ – ‘broken music’ – and De Waard paid defiant tribute to that dismissal by using the phrase to christen his first musical project. This gave early notice of a lifelong commitment to independence visible in his music-making in all its guises, in his magazine Vital Weekly which promotes some of the most uncompromising sounds imaginable, and his label Korm Plastics which has helped spread the curious and unique visions of numerous artists.

 

Wise words from the departing, remember to say ‘thank you’. Thanks to John Balance for his appetite for knowledge and to Anthony Blokdijk for allowing this glimpse of a rare mind.

 

Nick Soulsby

 

Second Edition

Korm Plastics

Website: http://www.kormplastics.nl

E-mail: info@kormplastics.nl

© 2016 Maldoracca & Anthony Blokdijk

© 2021m Korm Plastics & Anthony Blokdijk

Design: Alfred Boland

Printed in EEC






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