[CP 047-072 CD] Ruth White; 7 Trumps from the Tarot Cards, Flowers of Evil

2018 reédition, compiling both of Ruth White's towering Limelight-label LPs onto a single disc (this time presented in chronological order) housed in a gorgeous metallic/pearlized 6-panel booklet with detail from both LPs.

[CP 072] Yet another follow-up; actually in this case a precursor to a prior Creel Pone, Ruth White’s “7 Trumps from the Tarot Cards • Pinions” (LS 86066) - originally released just eight notches before her “Flowers of Evil” (LS 86058) in the discography of the now-legendary Mercury Limelight series - in between, Pierre Henry’s “Mass for Today • The Green Queen” (LS 86065), the Percussion of Strasborg’s “Signals” (LS 86064) , Fifty Foot Hose’s “Cauldron” (LS 86062), “Response: Electronic Music from Norway” (LS 86061), and Pierre Henry’s “Variations for a Door and a Sigh” (LS 86059) - good company if there ever was such.

Notably absent are ms. White’s terrifying deer-in-the-headlights vocals, but this only leaves room for all kinds of late-60s Psychedelic Electronic treatments, ranging from atonal Clavinet stabs to all kinds of home-brew & Modular Synthesizer glorp & even a bit of proto Drum-Machine wrangling - of course with tons of Tape echo and Reverb on everything, yielding a murky fog of dissonance that’s just right for your evening seance - a superb and stultifying set of mood pieces.

[CP 047] Back again after last week’s mishap (don’t ask) with an absolute corker of a Creel Pone - the setting of a set of poems by Charles Baudelaire to electronic instrumentation & vocal treatments, as realized by Ms. Ruth White in mid-1969.

A sampling of any of the included texts should tip you to just how creepy & dark the vibes emanating from within this record are exactly. Ms. White’s possessed monotone-through-echoplex-through-VCLFO’ed-gate throughout is just bone-chilling, her howling synth & noise backdrops so perfectly capturing the “Southern” essence of the text that it’s hard to believe that these poems weren’t conceived in the era they were realized here - the just pre-Altamont “Downer” hippie apex - but in fact in the middle of the 19th century.

Certainly a Creel Pone more on the Psych-end of things, but nonetheless a bizarre and terrifying vision into futures / past-futures that should speak to the inner satanist. Those who felt the “Doomy” waves warping out of the Warner Jepson Creel Pone should follow suit herein.