Interview With Ortus Obscurum

The following is an interview, Bestia Centauri’s first, conducted with a short-lived Swedish Web ‘zine called Ortus Obscurum.

BESTIA CENTAURI INTERVIEW

Ectonaut: Please introduce Bestia Centauri to our readers. What is Bestia Centauri all about? For how long have you been doing this and for what reason?

Bestia Centauri (“BC”): The public face of Bestia Centauri is a solo electronic music project that I initiated in 1999. By “electronic music”, I simply mean electronically produced music that utilizes modern sound synthesis algorithms. My work has nothing to do with the contemporary rave or dance music to which the label “electronic music” is often misapplied. There are other elements of this project, as well, but they are too personal to speak of at present. The curious reader can get an inkling of these other aspects of Bestia Centauri from the brief and slightly (but only slightly) tongue-in-cheek description of the project posted at www.somnambulantcorpse.com. As for my motivation, I do what I do purely as a source of pleasure and inspiration, and, more specifically, to create music that I would enjoy hearing but have not found elsewhere.

Ectonaut: Tell us something about the tracks on Ubbo-Sathla. Did you work with specific methods when you composed them? Is there a concept behind this release or anything else interesting that you think we should know about Ubbo-Sathla?

BC: The name of the title track derives from a short story by Clark Ashton Smith. Ubbo-Sathla is an interstellar entity who spawns “the grisly prototypes of terrene life”, and to whom all such life must eventually return. The Night Land II is inspired by William Hope Hodgson’s novel of (almost) the same name. The Catacombs of Ptolemais is a phrase from Poe’s prose-poem “Shadow–A Parable”. I intend to wean myself of over-reliance on literary references in the future, but these themes well illustrate various aspects of the “cosmicist” element that Bestia Centauri both represents and embodies. The aim is to create a sense of the numinous, the horrific, and the extra-human.

As for my methods, I work intuitively and spontaneously—at least, as much as software-based synthesis allows—but I do make a conscious effort to use a variety of tools and to make certain that the music possesses a certain flow. As Chris Franke once said, speaking of the music of early Tangerine Dream (I paraphrase), “Sometimes it’s a trickle, sometimes it’s a waterfall, but the music always flows”. I also take care to use, as much and as best I can, the sophisticated software employed more often in “pure” computer music or electro-acoustic music. The use of such tools has been the exclusive province of tediously intellectual academic composers or Post-Modern ironists for far too long.

Ectonaut: How would you describe the music of Bestia Centauri to completely new listeners? Do you feel that Bestia Centauri belong to a certain genre? Are there any bands that you think you can relate to soundwise and conceptwise?

BC: Apart from the general rubric of electronic music, I do not think that the sounds of Bestia Centauri fit into any genre. If pressed, though, I would say that my music falls somewhere between non-rhythmic dark ambient “soundscapes” and electro-acoustic music, with a slight bias toward one or the other in a given piece. Offhand, I cannot think of too many projects like my own. Although what I am doing is rather different, the early music of Tangerine Dream (circa1972-1975) has been a tremendous source of inspiration to me, as are certain of the works of the composer Gyorgy Ligeti (Atmospheres; Lux Aeterna; Lontano). Among much older works of electro-acoustic or tape music, I’m very fond of the music of Tod Dockstader and of Myron Schaeffer’s soundtrack to the film The Mask. As for more recent projects, of course, there’s much that I haven’t heard, but I’ve been most impressed so far by the work of Chaos As Shelter. Robert Scott Thompson is a contemporary composer of ambient and electro-acoustic music whose work I admire.

Ectonaut: What is most important in music according to you? How do you define quality music? What are your musical influences?

BC: I’ve answered the question about sources of inspiration (I prefer this term to the word influences) above. What is most important to me in music, as well as in anything else, is that it convey a sense of something poetic, imaginative, cosmic, Lovecraftian, and utterly beyond the human. “Quality music” to me is most likely to arise when the musician creates it out of a sense of inner necessity relating to the music itself, and not out of the usual social or egotistical motivations: that sort of, “Hey, look at me” mentality that is so prevalent everywhere today, but especially in the United States. I would certainly continue to do what I am doing whether there were any prospects for my music’s release or not.

Ectonaut: What plans do you have for the future? Are there any new Bestia Centauri releases planned? Anything else you would like to add?

BC: I plan to work at my own pace for as long as it gives me pleasure to do so, and to pursue the impossible goal of eventually replicating in spirit “the music of Erich Zann”! A piece entitled The Night Land will appear, I hope, within the next couple of months on an Afe Records compilation entitled No Abiding Places. Another, as yet-untitled, work will appear on a forthcoming Somnambulant Corpse compilation tribute to H.P. Lovecraft entitled The Outsider. There may also be a full-length release later this year.

Thank you for initiating this interview, and for taking an interest in such a new and obscure musical project!

More On The Bestia Centauri Constellation

Cited from Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning (1899):

” ‘. . . another form that men of other days have called the beast.’

Poste’s Aratus.

Lupus, the Wolf, is the Loup of the French, Lupo with the Italians, and Wolff in Germany, an idea for the figure said to be from the astrologers’ erroneous translation of Al Fahd, the Arabian title for this constellation, their Leopard, or Panther; although Suidas, the Greek lexicographer of 970, is reported to have called it Κνηκίας, a word for the wolf found in the fables of Babrias of the century before our era. The Greeks and the Romans did not specially designate these stars, and thought of them merely as a Wild Animal, the Θηρίον of Aratos, Hipparchos, and Ptolemy; the Bestia of Vitruvius; Fera of Germanicus; Quadrupes vasta of Cicero; Hostia, the Victim, of Hyginus; Hostiola, cited by Bayer; Bestia Centauri, by Riccioli; and Victima Centauri.

The Wolf reappeared as Lupus in the Alfonsine Tables, and as Fera Lupus in the Latin Almagests, while Grotius said that Panthera was Capella’s name for it.

Bayer also had Equus masculus and Leaena; and La Lande, Leo Marinus, Deferens leonem, Canis ululans, Leopardus, Lupa, Martius, — wolf being sacred to Mars, — and Lycisca, the Hybrid of the wolf. Belua, the Monster, is found in early works.

The Arabians also called it Al Asadah, the Lioness, — found by Scaliger repeated on a Turkish planisphere and cited by Bayer as Asida, — and Al Sabuʽ, the Wild Beast, Chilmead’s Al Subahh. But the Desert astronomers seem to have mixed some of its smaller stars with a part of the Centaur as Al Shamārīḣ, the Palm Branches, and Ḳaḍb al Karm, the Vine Branch.

Zibu, the Beast, of Euphratean cylinders, may be for this constellation; and Urbat, the Beast of Death, or the Star of the Dead Fathers, is a title for it attributed to the Akkadians.

Caesius said that in Persia it was Bridemif, but Hyde, commenting on this from Albumasar, asserted that the word should be Birdūn, the Pack-horse, and was really intended for the Centaur.

Aratos wrote of it, ‘another creature very firmly clutched,’ and ‘the Wild-beast which the Centaur’s right hand holds’ as an offering to the gods upon the Altar, and so virtually a part of the Centaur; but Eratosthenes described it as a Wine-skin from which the Centaur was about to pour a libation; while others imagined both the Beast and the Wine-skin in the Centaur’s grasp.

Mythologists thought it the animal into which Lycaon was changed; Caesius, that it was the Wolf to which Jacob likened Benjamin; but Julius Schiller saw in its stars Benjamin himself.

Although very ancient, Lupus is inconspicuous, lying partly in the Milky Way, south of Libra and Scorpio, east of the Centaur, with no star larger than 2.6 magnitude, while the few visible in the latitude of New York City — γ, δ, λ, and μ — are even smaller than this.

Gould enumerates 159 naked-eye stars, among which is an unusual proportion of doubles.

α, 2.6, seems to be unnamed except in China, where it was Yang Mun or Men, the South Gate.

On the Euphrates it probably was Kakkab Su‑gub Gud‑Elim, the Star Left Hand of the Horned Bull, said to have been a reference to the Centaur that was thus figured in that valley.

It culminates on the 14th of June, nearly due south from Arcturus and north of α Centauri.

β is the Ke Kwan, of the Reeves list of Chinese titles, a Cavalry Officer. This is a very close binary, of 3 and 3.5 magnitudes, both yellow, 0ʺ.25 apart, the position angle being 90°.

α and β are below the horizon of New York City.

Other Chinese asterisms appear within the boundaries of Lupus, all bearing titles pertaining to military affairs, and so of the second period of their star-naming.”

KUNM-FM, New Mexico, Radio Playlist

As you can see below, Bestia Centauri found itself in some interesting and unusual musical company in 2003, especially for a so-called "Dark Ambient" project.

A Note On The Self-Immolation Rite

As detailed in the accompanying booklet to our version of The Self-Immolation Rite (SIR), the project originated when a pseudonymous person who claimed to be a member of a so-called "Traditional Satanist" group contacted Bestia Centauri. He asked whether we would be interested in re-mixing the original version of the SIR. We considered the request, and then counter-proposed an entirely new version of the SIR. Our interlocutor replied enthusiastically. So, off we went to work.

On the other hand, even then, in 2003-2004, we had strong reservations regarding this particular group's underlying seriousness and integrity. For that reason, we kept a wary distance from it. The basic idea of the SIR, however, seemed a worthwhile theme to explore musically.

Our point now is simply this: Had we known then what we currently know about the group in question, we would never have agreed to have anything to do with them, or to blend our name with theirs in any way. At most, Bestia Centauri and these "Satanists" used one another in furtherance of their respective aims. That is the best that can be said of this particular collaboration.

Today, Bestia Centauri does not wish to be associated in any way with this or any such group. We have nothing to do with the "occult" or with pseudo-esoteric "Orders", except to use them on a thematic level--which is, as a rule, all they are good for. 

We also have no regard or respect whatsoever for most of the individuals that that particular group of so-called "Traditional Satanists" comprises, and we prefer that the thematic aspect of our SIR be viewed for the purely historical artifact that it is. We will, however, allow that these people are clever gamesters. But Bestia Centauri has its own game to play, and plays strictly by its own rules.

In that vein, and as to the music of The Self-Immolation Rite itself, it should stand or fall on its own merit.