Vheissu by Nightmare Frontier

"'...on camel-back over a vast tundra, past the dolmens and temples of dead cities; finally to the banks of a broad river which never sees the sun, so thickly roofed is it with foliage. The river is traveled in long teak boats which are carved like dragons and paddled by brown men whose language is unknown to all but themselves. In eight days' time there is a portage over a neck of treacherous swampland to a green lake, and across the lake rise the first foothills of the mountains which ring Vheissu. Native guides will only go a short distance into these mountains. Soon they will turn back, pointing out the way. Depending on the weather, it is one or two more weeks over moraine, sheer granite and hard blue ice before the borders of Vheissu are reached...'

'It's not as if it were unusual in any supernatural way. No high priests with secrets lost to the rest of the world, jealously guarded since the dawn of time, generation to generation. No universal cures, nor even panaceas for human suffering. Vheissu is hardly a restful place. There's barbarity, insurrection, internecine feud. It's no different from any other godforsakenly remote region. The English have been jaunting in and out of places like Vheissu for centuries. Except...The colors. So many colors. The trees outside the head shaman's house have spider monkeys which are iridescent. They change color in the sunlight. Everything changes. The mountains, the lowlands are never the same color from one hour to the next. No sequence of colors is the same from day to day. As if you lived inside a madman's kaleidoscope no Occidental ever saw. Not real shapes, not meaningful ones. Simply random, the way clouds change over a Yorkshire landscape...'

'...as if the place were, were a woman you had found somewhere out there, a dark woman tattooed from head to toes. And somehow you had got separated from the garrison and found yourself unable to get back, so that you had to be with her, close to her, day in and day out...'

'And you would be in love with her.'

'At first. But soon that skin, the gaudy godawful riot of pattern and color, would begin to get between you and whatever it was in her that you thought you loved. And soon, in perhaps only a matter of days, it would get so bad that you would begin praying to whatever god you knew of to send some leprosy to her. To flay the tattooing to a heap of red, purple and green debris, leave the veins and ligaments raw and quivering open at last to your eyes and your touch.'

'No data ever got back, either to F.O. or to the Geographic Society. Only a report of failure. Bear in mind: It was bad country. Thirteen of us went in and three came out. Myself, my second-in-command, and a civilian whose name I have forgotten and who so far as I know vanished from the earth without a trace.'"

--Hugh Goldophin describes Vheissu to Victoria Wren (V. by Thomas Pynchon)

An electronic meditation inspired by this passage in Chapter 7, with a dash of Klaus Schulze, and a squeeze of Sunn O)))-baked Tangerines.

The music follows the contours of the story, painting a sonic landscape to trek across, duly scrambling your souvenirs before the return home. Please Enjoy Loud.

A Cincinnati based music label with a mission to bring forth the musical output of underdog weirdos everywhere. Specializing in digital, cassette and CD-R

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