Pyrokinetic Workshop

"The beauty of flames lies in their strange play, beyond all proportion and harmony. Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. The burning transcendence has something of the lightness of great purifications. I wish the fiery transcendence would carry me up and throw me into a sea of flames, where, consumed by their delicate and insidious tongues, I would die an ecstatic death. The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn. Immaterial, death in flames is like a burning of light, graceful wings. Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?"

from Emil Cioran's book "On the Heights of Despair."

I made this playlist last week for my iPod, some really dark continental-European atmospheres (though Non's Boyd Rice is an American of course):

• Gas: the first track from "20' to 2000";
• Ester Brinkman: "Die Idee des Selbstmordes" from "Weisse Nächte";
• Spektr: "Whatever the case may be" from "Near Death Experience";
• Thomas Köner: "Zyklop" from the eponymous cd;
• Non: "Secret Garden, Secret Fire" from the "Blood And Flame";
• Haemoth: "Famished" from "Kontamination";
• Klinik: "Insane Terror" from the nameless black box;
• Sacher-Pels: "Nilehpro" from "Velours".