Month: September 1989
THE MARTIN HALL DOCUMENT (FRAGMENTS 1981-85)
THE MARTIN HALL DOCUMENT (FRAGMENTS 1981-85)
MARTIN HALL
CD
SEPTEMBER 1989
VIRGIN RECORDS (MHCD1)
The Martin Hall Document (Fragments 1981-85) is a compilation cd released by Virgin Records in the wake of Presence, Hall’s highly successful 1988 album. It is a selection of tracks featuring early Ballet Mécanique tracks as well as the complete single album version of Cutting Through. Furthermore a 12″ ep featuring a new radio edit of the song “Crush” was released as a prelude to the album release.
1. Leathern (5:03)
2. Among (4:41)
3. Imagine Focus (5:12)
4. Free-Force Structure (6:41)
5. Network (3:56)
6. Resonance (5:55)
7. Warfare (4:36)
8. Showdown (7:50)
9. Crush (5:14)
10. Cut Off (6:03)
11. Deep Inside Me (10:42)
12. Synthesis (8:28)
LEATHERN
Edges of speaking, outlived of hatred
Could I forgive at all?
Or could sigh be further than I reached always?
Light died, -ly pregnant
Up, killed in your words
Sheet-minded loving was respect as given thought
Of hairy swinelike
Hours of nameless
Of this penetration
Could I still cry for sad?
Tell friend and leech apart?
The fall of the fallen
Unnamed or misused
Lethal hate given
Word castles built in vain
Salute nugacity
Could I feel guilty?
The leathern tenderness
Did you cry lustful?
I can now nevermore give what I wanted to
To feel so leathern
Cry of the stone tears
Kiss of the unsaid
Without these arms to stretch (died in this early grave)
Like passion for unseen (buried before dying)
I seek the guiltful
To feel so leathern
Emotional
Leprous
AMONG
Unheard, unheard
You will fall with the masculine delusion
Tasteless you, traceless you
Beyond the bloodless necessities
Somewhere lies the feel of splendour
How to fight the denial of feel
How to fight this denial of feel
Among bloodless, will I fall
A spastic appeal for unknown ideals
Frailty, your name is strength
Useless wise in all their lies
It lead into this
IMAGINE FOCUS
Just a touch of lost
Burning as always
As it was, as it is
And eventually
Just in trust, nothing more
So suddenly
From beginning to end
While this centreless present reflects itself
In inverted moves of an obsessional stage
In a stream of light from unreachable marks
Something long ago in everlasting terms
In a crossfade of untitled reasons
What it turned out to be
And occasionally
Everything in my hands
So totally
In the heat of the touch
Like the way we were
Beyond love under will
Suddenly away in these only words
By mistakes again into changing links
In this compromise of dependence then
Stage by stage, in exposure
Still so timeless in this life release
Nearness hidden in casual moves
Watch the changes and recall
Touch through another focus
Mark perfection twice
With or without purpose
Still tons against tons
Carefully mistaken in retrospective fear
Restrain it all while I imagine focus
FREE-FORCE STRUCTURE
Forever hidden in the profile
The either-or behind the both-and
Transcend and ascend in the moment that frees
All loving fucked up in tension
Without shadow and without motion
A word like heart
A word like fire
I believe with my body
Believe with my soul
Believe in the eyes before me
Approach and regain
Life repressed to myth
Changing once again
Words sealed with a kiss
Cancel all the pain in these fantasies of realities
Let the fragments shine
Feel me deep within
Let the nearness bind
Feel me skin to skin
Let your flesh and mind fuse to the same thing
Rising from decline
Get up
Reach out
Confront
Break through
Re-set reality
Programme your love
All must pass but presence remains
The basic concepts, the further lies
Of the rituals built on your ism of truth
In this chain reaction set-out
We’re born alone but still I need you
So please don’t hide in self-hate and compromises
Between a desire to be free
And passion made of confinement
NETWORK
Through the rupture to the surface
With the tissue of days laying soft over skin
As white on white
In this reverberation of love
The warmth comes in waves
Guided by nerve
Just like the air covering me
As the light reflects itself
In this change of scenery
A reunion takes its place
Transforming namelessly
Into crystal and cell
Into heaven and hell
Into all we’ve ever seen
Into all we’ve ever been
From word to matter
Silhouettes ensouled by the loss
In a vortex of skin
To the centre of the bindings
While you simulate love
The transcendence remains your trauma
As you think in 2D
Think in 3D
In this network
Words reinforced in their turn-back from the walls
And absorbing all your nearness
I breathe in every particle of you
And in memory of you
I’ll connect these worlds apart
I will find all that I need
In the mirror of your eyes
And be breathless by love
RESONANCE
Weakening over weakening
A fire that burns so brightly
Only a shadow cast by yourself
So soft and fading
Wind over body
Shaking each nerve
In curves of freedom
In the hardest care
A baptism in desire and in merciless grace
And in this fusion
Sister shadows compressed to the core
Difference on difference in every framing I make
In display on display
And again
Afterwards
In the beauty of all death
An ultimate reality
Double-lined from phase to phase
From the mother-wound to the scabelon
From one to zero in a circle of ten
Burning cities melt into sunset
The blue light
The white beds
The roaring shapes of love
From stone to skin
Forcing all life
Trapped in this outline
For you alone
This time for all we know
Like a shadow
I feel you near
In all these nights without you
Flickering
From dust to contour
Always there
From the centre to the line
Hermetically closed inside me
For you alone
This time for all we know
Shining through time
Sacred but still so raw
And all the love
Moving so motionless
And even now
As it always will be
In each overload
Affection running tenderly wild
Losing shadow in every move I make
In a flow of warmth
Like blood spreading in water
All alone
Surrounded by time
From displacement to displacement
And in the shadowplay of memory
Closing my eyes
And into the abyss of your love
Trapped inside the heavens of your touch
Felt like this a hundred times before
Still I only need it more and more
I will drink the salt stains from your skin
Kiss you clean from all the violence
Drugs, repression, fantasy and fear
All I need is just to feel you near
WARFARE
In this media of mental translation
In this handicap of alienation
I need more than your model of motion
Than aesthetics of broken hearts
Here we are again
Feeling just the same
In these separate hells
Every word’s been said
Every lie’s been fed
To define ourselves
While your balance is kept intellectual
You’re emotionally ineffectual
A hysteria so perfectly tragic
So unreachable near
I’ve just had enough of neurotic love
Of this culturecide
I don’t need your shit
It just makes me sick
Look into my eyes
‘Cause this is the face
This is the race
SHOWDOWN
As everything changes me
Exploding in start on start
It shines on so hard through you
A crystal of flesh and blood
And caught in the blue of night
In the meshes of your love
A freedom turned upside down
To this point of no return
In your face
In your eyes
In the savagery of how we love
How we die
A fever is burning
Releasing my spirit
In these European schemes
Imprisoned in mind of stone
A system so centralized
Conceptual humanity
The “Arbeit Macht Frei” parole
In rock’n’roll terms like these
You know what it’s all about
But that doesn’t change the need
Through obsession and love
Through the days and the years
And still burning inside
There’s no turning back now
The circle is broken
Feel the showdown
CRUSH
As you fill me again
I have no further questions
Condemned to be free
As I reach out for you again
Nothing is new
But something has grown
Bigger than both of us
Stronger than memory
And much stronger than defeat
I’m gonna crush the worlds we used to know
A seed is sown
I’m gonna let it grow
I’m quite aware what I’ll be going through
There’s no way back
It all depends on you
My destiny
I’ve seen it in your eyes
A love so deep
A stream that purifies
And in your arms
The nature of all death
Is nothing but a touch of timelessness
I’m gonna crush you with my love
I’m gonna be crushed up in love
CUT OFF
Living the change as night closes in
Freezing my moves in each flicker of light
We’re lying so close
Your breath burns my skin
Still feeling alone though you’re right by my side
Nothing lost
Nothing gained
So it seems
Still we’re much closer than ever
Like a child in the night
In its dreams
In its return to forever
A dream came true
A nightmare too
And we’re just two out of millions
I hold you tight
As if the night was an angel of death come to take you away
And it feels so unreal
Like there’s magic in the air
And your face in the haze
It’s reflected everywhere
And it burns as it turns
Like a sun that blinds my eyes
Sharpening everything
Through your whispers
Through your cries
We’ve seen it all
The heavens and hells
Questioned each move in the name of the game
Played every role escaping ourselves
Ending concluding we all feel the same
As we were
As we are
We will be
Emotional “Führer der Menschheit”
Time is set
The twentieth century
And everyone knows what it feels like
It seems to be point 93
So feverish a reflection
The children of rejected love
All alone in the night
Fighting shadows of need
In the wind
Dust rising
Forming figures in the air
Night and day blown away
By a memory so bare
Bridges burned
Lives have turned
Slowly growing inside out
Mirrored in origin
In the limits of all doubt
The eyes of a child
A pulse running wild
Releasing this vacuum
A balance so tense
In thought and in sense
Can’t make it alone this time
In this mystery
Of every degree
From here to eternity
So tender and raw
The flame of the core
The hardest surrendering
DEEP INSIDE ME
Like re-running each way
Every aspect of love
Every night and day placed so precisely
Every sacrifice that freed us from our patterns
Guiding us face-to-face to this consequence so essential
And the tender pain that comes with freedom
Connects me to the presence we share
Love’s like a shadowplay
Imagined through survival
We’re here all by ourselves
But nevermore lonely
Nevermore lonely
Watching the lines being carefully drawn now
I couldn’t make it if I were without you
Knowing the ages of every tomorrow
In every turn ever made just a notion
Child on child
Sustain my love
The final triumph
The thirst deep inside and the surface
From crowd to crowd
In these streams of emotions
Watching it all gather to action
And every time we connect with the basis
In the holy name of the transfer
I let you grow deep inside me
With the dignity of my life
I let you grow deep inside me
SYNTHESIS
To my love
Wherever you may be
I’m with you
United in spirit
My life lies in your hands
All power ever been
All power yet to come
Is here now
This instant
Around us
Inside us
Berit Spælling: Harp
Flemming Nygaard: Cello
Janine Neble: Backing vocals
Martin Hall: Vocals, instruments
Michael Karshøj: Drums
Morten Versner: Bass, violin
Nicolay Krogh: Bass
Per Hendrichsen: Treatments, guitar
Stine Hammarlund: Cello
Søren Frank: Saxophone
Søren Jacobsen: Guitar
Thomas Langballe: Drums
Design: Birgitte Wester
Photo: Robin Skjoldborg
The Cutting Through album was also re-released as a single vinyl album entitled Cutting Through (The Re-Release). The new single version of “Crush” was released as a 12″ called Counterpoint featuring additional material in form of a current television soundtrack written by Hall called The Point of No Return.
The Document cd uses the dates of the original recordings as reference points – not the actual release dates of the featured records. This explains the time period given – 1981 to 1985 – although the Cutting Through album was released in February 1986.
1. “Leathern” was recorded with Ballet Mécanique in April 1981
2. “Among” was recorded with Ballet Mécanique in May 1982
3. “Imagine” Focus” was recorded with Under For in January 1984
4. “Free-Force Structure” was recorded with Under For in August 1984
5. “Network” was recorded in January 1985
6. “Resonance” was recorded in January 1985
7. “Warfare” was recorded in June 1985
8. “Showdown” was recorded in August 1985
9. “Crush” was recorded in August 1985
10. “Cut Off” was recorded in August 1985
11. “Deep Inside Me” was recorded in September 1985
12. “Synthesis” was recorded in September 1985
CONTINUUM
CONTINUUM
MARTIN HALL
PROSE POETRY
SEPTEMBER 1989
BORGENS FORLAG (ISBN 87-418-8863-4)
Continuum (“Kontinuum”) is Martin Hall’s third book, a set of writings released five years after its predecessor, The Identity of Alienation.
The book consists of short notes, a line of reflections written in a continuum of a 24 day journey through Europe. The release, however, should not be mistaken for a travelogue. Continuum is a poetic examination of how the journey affects the traveler, not a picturesque description of sights and places.
Although the tone in the writings is considerably more calm than in Hall’s earlier releases, the imagery throughout the book remains shadowy and ambiguous.
Genre: Prose poetry
Pages: 38
Design: Martin Hall
“And the first words fell. A little about a lot, fragments and panoramas. A 24-day continuum in a Europe of these days.”
”Beautiful and frightening poems from Martin Hall … very, very authentic.”
Politiken (the Danish equivalent to The Guardian)
“A nerve-wracking mosaic that gathers in luminous moments reflecting the essential artistic relationship between language, the world and identity.”
Berlingske Tidende (the Danish equivalent to The Times)
COUNTERPOINT (THE POINT OF NO RETURN SOUNDTRACK)
COUNTERPOINT (THE POINT OF NO RETURN SOUNDTRACK)
MARTIN HALL
12″
SEPTEMBER 1989
VIRGIN RECORDS (MHMX1)
Counterpoint (The Point of No Return Soundtrack) release was a 12″-ep featuring a radio edit of “Crush” from Martin Hall’s 1986 album Cutting Through. The 12″ was issued to promote the compilation-cd The Martin Hall Document as well as the re-release of Cutting Through on Virgin Records in September 1989.
1. Crush (1989 Edit) (3:43)
2. Point within Circle (4:00)
3. Counterpoint (1:24)
4. Dome (1:30)
5. 8 (6:26)
6. Erosion (4:33)
CRUSH
As you fill me again
I have no further questions
Condemned to be free
As I reach out for you again
Nothing is new
But something has grown
Bigger than both of us
Stronger than memory
And much stronger than defeat
I’m gonna crush the worlds we used to know
A seed is sown
I’m gonna let it grow
I’m quite aware what I’ll be going through
There’s no way back
It all depends on you
My destiny
I’ve seen it in your eyes
A love so deep
A stream that purifies
And in your arms
The nature of all death
Is nothing but a touch of timelessness
I’m gonna crush you with my love
I’m gonna be crushed up in love
Flemming Nygaard: Cello
Martin Hall: Vocals, instruments
Design: Birgitte Wester
Photo: Robin Skjoldborg
The Counterpoint ep also contains the complete soundtrack to a television film called “The Point of No Return”, five pieces of newly recorded instrumental music written by Hall. The videos covering these tracks are included on the VHS-videocassette Audio-Visual released in 1990.
All titles featured on the Counterpoint recordings are available on the Catalogue box release from 2007.
THE HALL OF MIRRORS
THE HALL OF MIRRORS
MARTIN HALL
MC
SEPTEMBER 1989
MIND AND MEDIA (MM888)
The Hall of Mirrors is the only one of Martin Hall’s music cassettes that was released through an actual distribution. Issued in a limited edition of 888 – all individually numbered copies – the tape offered a refreshing new way of working as far as Hall was concerned: Using a line of guest vocalists on the various tracks, the tape had a more sketch-like production to it, something that suited both the project and its main artist.
The Hall of Mirrors also features Hall’s first collaborations with both Irma Victoria and Aud Wilken, two performers that would later be highly featured on his Mind and Media label. The cassette was the label’s first release.
The track “Song for Someone” – one of the recordings on the tape that Martin Hall sings himself – is included on the Catalogue compilation box (2007).
1. Mind (4:13)
2. Fragment (1:17)
3. Brainwash (feat. Aud Wilken) (2:44)
4. Compression (feat. Henrik Möll) (1:44)
5. Box 1 (3:20)
6. Song for Someone (3:10)
7. Intermission 1 (0:21)
8. Heyl (3:45)
9. The World (Chanson D’Amour) (feat. Ken Rivad) (3:10)
10. Memorial (feat. Irma Victoria) (3:52)
11. Box 2 (2:54)
12. Reprise (1:32)
13. Intermission 2 (0:58)
14. Tension (Focus of Unity) (6:18)
15. Box 3 (3:56)
16. Got a Feeling (4:32)
17. Finale (0:51)
MIND
”What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow; our life is the creation of our mind.”
(The Dhammapada)
Never mind = no matter
No mind = never matter
FRAGMENT
”Everything has its tides – the pendulum swing to the right is the measure of that to the left – rhythm compensates.”
(The Kybalion)
BRAINWASH
“The mirror is not to be confused with the reflections which appear in it.”
(The Cycle of Day and Night)
I can’t help this feeling
I don’t think it’s mine
I think I need cleaning of brain and of mind
Brainwash
Wash it all clean now
Brainwash
Take it away
Brainwash
The ease and the dis-ease
Some like it hot, and some not
Not at all
And I don’t need no doctor
I just need myself
The melodramatic is going to hell
COMPRESSION
”If thought precedes action, what precedes thought?”
(The Living Qabalah)
Give me your name
Give me compression
Give me your name
And give me your mind
BOX 1
Fragments of an interview:
It’s very often that people take kindness for weakness, which is a shame, because it puts you in a situation, where you need to be hard before you can be soft – you need to somehow show people the disciplines and tensions, before you can actually deal. And that’s again just a symptom of, well, the whole 20th century basically, but particularly about, well, people’s attitudes and mental arrangements, towards themselves first of all, and secondly to others.
Things are what they are, regardless of how much we disagree about them, and having emotions about something is stupid, unless it’s got a purpose – I mean, unless you can use that emotion as a fuel to change.
I mean, that’s the whole thing, that it takes one to recognize one, and what you see in others is merely a reflection of yourself.
But the question remains: What are you going to do about it – because, well, it might be that you actually are the one martyr of this world, but then if you really are, that just puts a much greater job on your shoulders than sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself. And it comes into a situation, where there’s very little escape from what is real; it comes into the scenery, where you begin to become not just responsible for your own life, but actually becoming the architect of your own, well, actually destiny, if you want to put it like that.
SONG FOR SOMEONE
”Without struggle, no progress and no result.”
(Views from the Real World)
So your cynicism is your new religion
Where your doubt allows you no devotion
It makes you feel secure ’cause they can’t say you’re wrong
And that’s right ’cause you’re close to nothing at all
So while you’re fighting blinded in your mirror land
You run against the size of your own little box
In a two-mask nightmare theatre
You live what you call your life
I call you slave of guilt
I call you sick-sick-six
You know my name but you don’t know me
In the stupidity of mass identity
Your self-fixation won’t set you free
Now analysis is very easy to offer
Help is a quite different feature
I wish you’d come down to the basics
I wish you’d begin to surrender
INTERMISSION
“Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently with much sagacity.”
(The Smaragdine Tablet)
HEYL
“That garment is made up of tales and stories; but we, we are bound to penetrate beyond.”
(The Zohar)
THE WORLD (CHANSON D’AMOUR)
“O then come hither, and lay my book, thy Head and Heart together.”
(The Pilgrim’s Progress)
Got the world in my pocket
Got the world in my hand
Got the world in my singing
But I don’t understand
What came first from the big void?
What came first, hen or egg?
It’s too strange to consider
So I love it instead
Sometimes when I think about the great buildings in this world, I feel proud – I don’t know why, but I feel proud. And when I feel proud, I also feel love. And when I feel love, I want to sing. And when I sing, I sing a “Chanson d’Amour” … And if you want to sing a “Chanson d’Amour” too, then sing along with me now:
La-la-la, la-la-la
God bless you …
MEMORIAL
“It’s a matter of observation, not learning.”
(Assume Power Focus)
Wake up children
The day is near
Wake up children
I feel so weird
I can remember
I can forget
Sometimes it all seems like a dream in my head
Wake up children
I can remember
Hey-hey, hey-hey
I can forget
Tra-la-la-la
BOX 2
Fragments of an interview:
Well, it’s easy to know about something, but to actually understand it, that’s something else. I mean, if you really understand something, it’s going to change your life – because otherwise it’s just an intellectual commodity that you carry around in your head. But, I mean, true understanding, I don’t think that that is a matter of information, or just dumping more information into your brain – I think it’s more a matter of actually getting rid of nonsense in yourself.
I’ve had enough of emotional hysteria. It’s quite stupid to produce this massive emotion about feeling not understood – because after all, when you take into account, that you’re actually dealing with something like six billion emotionally and mentally handicapped people, then the big issue about being personally misunderstood, it’s a bit grotesque.
Well, I think it’s a bit weird, that what’s most easily obtainable in this world, is what people identify themselves most heavily with – a thing like common emotion, getting angry about something, or feeling something, is what people somehow make their ultimate identity, and in the light of the fact, that, as I’ve said, it’s the most easily obtainable, it becomes a bit bizarre, that people turn it into their religion.
REPRISE
“What is now proved, was once only imagined.”
(The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
INTERMISSION
”You do not question or worry about your wisdom. You just do whatever is required. The situation you are facing is itself profound enough to be regarded as knowledge. You do not need secondary resources of information. You do not need reinforcement or guidelines for action. Reinforcement is provided by the situation automatically. When things must be conducted in a tough manner, you just do it because the situation demands your response. You do not impose toughness; you are instrument of the situation.”
(Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism)
TENSION (FOCUS OF UNITY)
“Opposition is the source of all growth.”
(Tao Teh King)
Tyranny of ignorance
You will know who you are
As the mask of identity falls and breaks on the floor
Tension grows in the focus of unity
Tension grows in the still of the night
See the pain and the pantomime
20th century erosion
In the blood print of stimulus
It takes more than a dream
BOX 3
Fragments of an interview:
Personally, there’s a lot of things that I’d like to rewrite in myself, and there’s a lot of things that I’ve done that, well, I’d do it differently today. It’s very difficult for me to forget things, and, well, that’s been quite a struggle in a way, to overcome this weight of the past. But the strength to actually change comes very much, I think, from a superior viewing – because a thing like all the time bringing your past into your present is wrongful according to, really what a life is. And, well, let’s take an example like bitterness, I mean, it’s a thing that most people would find quite easy, to actually surrender to the feeling of bitterness, because there’s so much evidence in a 20th century life of, well, pain and resistances. So it, unless you actually take a stance against it, it’s a bit like a ghost that tries to take you into the shadowplay of self-solemn martyrdom, and really, the only way to avoid all these aspects that are so dominant features in, I think, every person’s inner life, you really need to add up up what you’re in, what you’re doing – because in the end, you’re stuck with you.
In the end, you’re going to die alone, so what you’re doing is really between you and you, all the time. And in that context, it’s, well, it’s different to live, because what you do is between you and you, and you need no justification or “forgiveness” from any outer world.
GOT A FEELING
“The standard of the physical plane is strength; the standard of the astral plane is beauty; the standard of the mental plane is truth; and the standard of the spiritual plane is that of right and wrong as we understand the terms; therefore there is no ethic except in terms of spiritual value; all else is at best expediency.”
(The Mystical Qabalah)
Got a feeling in my heart
And it makes me wonder why
Wake up in the morning and it’s there
I feel it inside me
Everywhere
FINALE
“The nature of reality is to liberate.”
(The Book of Tokens)
Stronger than thousand suns
Zero equals one
Two reveals unity
As all things to be
Aud Wilken: Vocals
Henrik Möll: Vocals
Irma Victoria: Vocals
Ken Rivad: Vocals
Martin Hall: Vocals, instruments
Design: John L. Christensen
Photo: Ken Rivad