This is a visual interpretation of the 25-minute title track from Nekrasov’s second album (reviewed elsewhere on Judas Kiss). It was originally released on VHS video cassette in a tiny edition of 25 copies in hand-made packaging. This similarly limited DVD-R edition came about in response to ‘public’ (well, a few people anyway) demand. I interviewed Nekrasov earlier this year for Heathen Harvest webzine, and he made these comments about this film:
It was just an idea between myself and E. Zile, visual genius and long-time comrade… I had the highest confidence that Zile would really create something different with the track… only 25 [videos] were made as it took ages to put together. They all came in special packaging, similar to the special edition CD release; black spray-painted envelopes with a lino-etched print… I thought the VHS was a pretty good idea. I knew if I heard about it, I would want one! But, yeah, most people were asking, 'Are you going to release it on DVD?'! Ha ha. Soulless DVD fucks… I wouldn’t post it online, it just reduces the quality of this beast to nil. There are some things that I'd like to keep a little 'real'. I'll be cutting my throat and thrusting scorpions into the eye of my penis as I copy them onto DVD-R.
Oh, that Nekrasov! Such a kidder. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if he really meant that stuff about the scorpions. This man suffers for his art. Myself, I settled down on a comfortable, scorpion-free couch to absorb this art.
Nekrasov’s music has always oscillated between raw black metal and ferociously corrosive noise. The Form Of Thought From Beast falls decisively into the latter camp. Even though there are guitar riffs, feedback and stumbling, spasmodic blastbeats in the track, there’s also a great deal of swooshing, cosmic black ambient and eerie chanted vocals. The film completely eschews all the usual black metal visual clichés – it’s much more like an experimental, industrial music video. In fact, there are very few recognizable images of any kind in the film.
The film opens with a bold colour test pattern and a piercing high tone. This high tone, incidentally, doesn’t appear on the album track, and the film lasts for several minutes longer than the album track, so there are evidently some other differences as well. The tone steadily drops in pitch as the test pattern desaturates to grey, and a few images flicker briefly into existence here and there – some kind of Teletubby-like kids’ show, a happy-faced kite, a head-and-shoulders shot of a TV news reporter – but most of the visuals here are composed of various monochrome TV interference patterns, such as snow, strobing herringbone moiré patterns, dancing vertical stripes and so on. It’s a fittingly abrasive visual accompaniment to the brain-melting psychedelic black noise of the track, and it’d be great to see Nekrasov play live with this projected on a backdrop. The whole thing is also as bizarre and creepy as that cursed video tape that the doomed Japanese schoolkids watch in Ring – I was mightily relieved not to get a phone call right after watching it telling me that I only had a week to live.
www.nekrasovsphere.com/nekrasov
www.myspace.com/nekrasovguts
