1992: A Musical Time Odyssey

I’m gazing at a wolf dog in a barren landscape of dust and sand with some remnants of an old civilisation gone for ever. Pyramids. The dog looks sad but it survived every hardship. The indifference of the universe, only stoned material remaining. Still you can see and feel all that got lost, the missing link between the fierce animal and the ingeniously shaped constructions. Perhaps the best rock album I ever heard tries to fill in the emptiness, tries to overcome the loss, tries to envelop the mystery of what was and is for only too short a moment. Yes, this music is hardy and robust, its gaze is wise and circular, it is vital. And guitars, as no other instrument can evoke and measure the immense sound of emptiness. Emptiness is the heaviest of all experiences. All our words are connected in circles of meaning, and there’s no escaping from the confinement of their thinking, but the guitars keep ringing, searching for new reverberations amidst the circular lexicography of Steve Kilbey’s lyrics. In the spiralling equations of a musical language Priest equals Aura.

The scope of music is never clear. Its construction seems straightforward: a stable percussive base of drums and a keyboard and then the guitars which take you up into the skies converging into a sublime unity of sound. Let’s make this dry land sing, let’s make this lonesome world come to life again through an unconventional act of worship in the here and now, the musical aspirations of a very skilled brotherhood indeed.

A classical example of classic classicism in rock. It connects the paradigm of rock to academic disciplines that study human behaviour in a critical way, aiming to liberate mankind from ideological, stereotypical ways of thinking and acting. It preaches freedom of expression, pride and beauty against prejudice and sterile masks of ugliness, in the form of a timeless neo-classical, enlightened rock fortress. Like a literary tale written in music.

The album opens in a daze of history, hanging around it as a mythical aura. The dawning of a world… with a guitar sounding like an ancient pan flute. In a violent energy of war which eventually turns into a reconciliatory gest of a game of wordy equations; a soft spirit of reconciliation is always at the back of the lyricist’s mind. He makes peace with words, makes an end to the logic of contradiction. The vocal lines are half spoken half sung in an almost unstoppable, indifferent metre of history proceeding, a formal routine of words which can also be found on “Kings”,- again with fabulous opening lines “See history fade, It’s crystal clear – Aurora what you doing here!!” (wow!) -, in a mesmerising, hypnotising effect of an unescapable, self-evident consciousness, dialectics of words and music as if following a necessary, historical or evolutionary scheme, sublime! And the way the guitars pave the way for the voice with the utmost gallantry in “Lustre”, Steve’s voice seems to land on a neatly laid out bed softly cushioned by drum pillows of all sizes and measurements, – the instruments venerate the voice -, such springy, malleable, feathery textures! See you in your sleep…

But this aural time is quite a personal one too. Space and time dimensions are Steve Kilbey’s favourite playground. He zooms in and out of them, takes a microscopic view into his own soul, only to broaden his perspective of a single individual again to the widest historic stage of far away places and times. He likes to visualise the life of one or two on a universal scale, magnifying and minifying, as he pleases, the events of relations, big and small. Chaos ensues and paradoxes, but he’s not afraid of them, he defies them eagerly, it’s his nature and the music is his ally. Together they tame all beasts, on a crusade of a forceful will that will not avoid any confrontation with its past, of a personal or historical time gone by. The music is fearless and determined, brutally honest or sweetly forgiving, understanding of all human weaknesses and failures. And no regrets whatsoever. The music shares in the hubris of a true Homerian Odysseus, a heroic wanderer, shrewd and clever, a space and time traveller, undefeatable. And the goddess-like women all seem to be descendants of the voluptuous Calypso, who knows what she wants… The universe of Priest=Aura has all the proportions of a mythological one: oh how the world stage is so very similar to all what happens in the small personal lives of men and women, personal and historical tales constantly mirror each other in one ruling world spirit. Of struggle and battle, of going separate ways, going your own way, and finally of reconciliation and meeting again along that same old road.

This album is an exquisite specimen of classic storytelling with both odd and familiar characters, irony and wit, like all great authors display them. The delicate Austen – Jane that is -, embroidery of Swan Lake, the hideous Dickensian villain of the Disillusionist, – his ugly voice well portrayed, but the guitars and drums always stay true to their “classic”, highbrow style, no matter how vile and wicked their subject, the instruments always keep their superior elegance of masterful, omniscient narrators -, Anna Karenina, the refined, tragic Tolstoyan Mistress, the sometimes chaotic stream-of-consciousness writing of Joyce, the phantasmagoric stories of Thomas Pynchon, the historical novels of Walter Scott, which unfold like this royal song “Kings”; in whatever day and age, passions stay the same, sensual quests for beauty and pleasure in all their forms … Intriguing reflections of human nature in the perfectly constructed, artificial universe of the obsessive compulsion named Song. At times with a very rationally sounding restraint, as in “Dome” and the perfectly sane and probable-sounding “Paradox”, at others in an irrational frenzy, as in the frivolous waltz “ Witch Hunt”, or the uncontrolled “Chaos”, the weirdest epics and sagas are brought to life. Not in a million years could you capture the journey the human mind and heart make through endless musical soundscapes, but these eminent musicians in this enterprising album certainly tried…

And another thing… My favourite song on Priest=Aura is “Mistress”, with her sweet, discreetly flirtatious piano frill. What an endearing compassion (I have used this word a lot in my writings on this band) and tenderness, and with a sly ironic comment on their own art, to make it all complete. Yes, in their case, life cannot but be induced to follow the path created by their addictively alluring Songs… Just three inconspicuous little words introduce the most beautiful passage for me on this album: “AND ANOTHER THING..” “That halo you wear on your head…” Well, what can I say, this halo, they certainly deserve one, above their heads, these Mephistophelean music saints…

Joke Roelandt, September 2020