REBIS
(Self Release, 2006)
 


1. Invocation ov 23
2. Beautiful Lover
3. Anthem
4. Snakeskin
5. Domino
6. Venus in Veils
7. To be forgotten
8. Rebis
9. A Game in the Dark (Revisited)
10. Imposición de manos
11. Vigiliae (3:14 A.M.)
23. ...so as not to wake you

Download full album from The Internet Archive (full release) or Jamendo (no artwork)
Play and download individual tracks at The Internet Archive, Jamendo or Last.fm

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 License.

As you can see, I finally made up my mind and decided to go solo on this trip. No record labels, no middlemen, no distribution, no physical CD. Just download it, listen to it, enjoy it (or hate it), share it, burn it, do what you want with it as long as it's not for commercial purposes (click on the CC logo to see exactly what you can and can't do).

As the music is free, if you want to support me, you can always buy a copy of "The Rebis Deck", a beautiful 30-page, 20x25 cm. book containing the 23 cards in a single volume. Click here to order now!

Oh, all right. You can also donate whatever amount you desire via PayPal if you're not interested in buying anything or if you think it's too expensive:
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"Even the most primitive society has an innate respect for the insane"
(Rumble Fish)
Sometimes it looks like this is going to be the "Chinese Democracy" of dark ambient. It has undergone so many modifications, even I can't retrace its whole history. I remember doing some first demos which were shit, and starting from scrap at least once. The new ideas after that were much closer to what I wanted, and I sent them to a label which agreed to release it; but after some months, when the full album was finished, it was rejected.

At the moment I thought that it was the best work I had ever done, so I added an extra track and kept the CD on ice for a year while I pondered different possibilities for its release. In the meantime, a dislike for a couple of tracks started growing on me; I was seeing the album from a distance and realizing there were weak spots, tracks that just dragged on without any real hook. This was not the album I had wanted to do.

On realizing this, I stopped looking for a label. I suspended everything related to the album and concentrated on other tasks, like the Chaos Condensed split CD. I bid my time, rewrote those two tracks and started a new one.

So, the album is now close to being REALLY finished. Now I really feel it's getting that vibe I wanted: that noir Lynch-esque feel that I associate with sad jazz loops and eerie keyboards, with killers who smile and dance to old melodies, with fainted echoes and the flutter of wings in the night, with smoky hotel rooms and cheap booze;

maybe there's a woman and you're fucking her hard while the city symphony echoes all around you;

or maybe there's not, and the only thing you can hear is the chiming of the ice cubes against the glass, a muffled piano from the hall downstairs and the sound of your own efforts to fight back the tears;

or maybe there's just a voice in the darkness. And what scares you most is that you know there's a smile behind it.

Mix all that general atmosphere with a background of dark ambient and ritual musick, some powerful percussions here and there (can't help it, sorry) and a lot of samples from films, jazz CDs and self-help spoken word records from the 60s and you've very much got the recipe for "Rebis". There has been a lot of collage involved, and I guess it comes from my work with Chaos Condensed as well as from my DJ activities, which have inevitabily influenced the way I work in some aspects.

As for the artwork, well... I was lucky to have so much time on my hands. I learnt how to develop black and white film, how to make and manipulate prints, and last of all, how to actually take photographs. When I saw all the possibilities of it, I went crazy like I had gone in Babylon with sampling: I locked myself up in the darkroom for 8-10 hours a day, experimenting with different techniques and gradually finding my way to the idea of the "Fetish Tarot Deck", as it has been called (even though it's NOT a Tarot!).

In the end, it's all about alchemy. Combining elements. Cutting. Stitching. Mixing. Picking up here and there, stirring and creating something new.

So, it's an ambitious project. You might have already noticed that. Maybe too much, and it's just not meant to succeed. Maybe it's too pretentious and I've overblown my own expectations.

Or maybe it's because since I started working on it, I wanted it to be Morpheus' last album. And maybe something inside me can't cope with the idea and doesn't want "Rebis" to ever be finished.

I still don't know who will win in the end. I don't even know if I'll start looking for a label again when it's completely finished or if I'll give it away for free. At this stage, I don't really think I need a record label: what I need is just to exorcise this.