Dyer's Pledge by Various Artists

This album is In Memoriam of an occult book and curio shop in Gothenburg, Sweden. Below is an obituary which was written for this release by the proprietor of Vansinnets Berg (Swedish for 'The Mountains of Madness').

Necrologue of Vansinnets Berg

To author an obituary of a part of oneself might seem melancholic, but compared to the lengthy and painful process of amputation which led to the decision to bury Vansinnets Berg, it is pure delight. Furthermore, ending it was a necessity, a question of survival both physically and mentally.
It is customary for a burial rite to wallow in grief and/or hope but I am neither grieving nor am I by some socially imposed reason particularly hopeful.
I do not need to feel sorrow over something that is lost. People remain and I on my part I have squeezed out every last drop I need. Some friends became customers and many customers became friends. I launched Vansinnets Berg for my own sake but it also became a place for us; a sanctuary for those who feel that the world is chafing, where ideas that people scoff at, ridicule, or push aside, may flow freely. But had I not done this for my own well-being, it would have, like many other things that originate in my own needs, not happened.
I know that I have spoken of hope, that Vansinnets Berg could bring other people hope that it is possible to manifest strange ideas but the word hope is contaminated by the notion of God. A god with a plan, a god that wants us well. There is no such god. Perhaps in my weakest moments, at my most pitiful, something godlike appeared. As if ordered by God, You appeared! You who donated books, effigies, possessed trinkets, a couple of extra hands, ideas, lectures, theatre plays, tips, study groups, art, music, the groundwork in my home, free labour in the shop, and god only knows what. Without you, none of this would have been possible. I have been inspired though, and I have inspired. I have met many strange people, with so many tales. Some stories have made the hair on my arm stand out, some have made me unbearably fed up, and many have made me understand that our comprehension of what is real is something that you can bend, twist, and change.
We do therefore not require hope. We only need to know we exist or rather realise that we can exist if we want to. If we feel that we do not exist in the way which we expected, well then we have to invent ourselves anew. We are still living in a part of the world where we have the, albeit cursed, possibility. Because if we do not decide ourselves, there are plenty of people who offer rectified models. Models that frighteningly often resemble cogs.
In all this, I feel a void, a great and continuously growing void. I do not know if one can speak of a void as something that grows stronger but it is becoming increasingly beautiful. It is a particular void, not one that needs to be deafened with medication. It is a void in that it has no meaning, no purpose. But since our meat machine of a body has been infected by the virus we call consciousness, we create a lot of notions about the world. We fill our voids with these notions.
This album is one of the most beautiful contributions to my echoingly empty corridors.

A great thank you to all of you,
Emil Engström, Vansinnets Berg

A mouth of the Dragon

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