2022 Re-issue of Cult of Dementia featuring bonus tracks and Grease Trap Soup EP on DIY numbered gatefold, black media CD + fold-in booklet with exclusive notes about Esmectatons and the album production.
Includes unlimited streaming of Cult of Dementia
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
Original Mini-LP 2016 Edition
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Cult of Dementia
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
" ...sounds like a hyperactive Carl Stalling soundtracking classic Looney Tunes cartoons, jumping from genre to genre."
- Andy Cumming (The Wire UK, Sounds and Colours)
"Mind melting constant refresh: if you want to get lost, but not just lost within a single mode, or a single jam, or single space, while simultaneously not denying those elements entirely -- pushing eclecticism straight up (or down) in a corkscrew motion into your person zone, then this is the brain juice that one must enemata immediately. There are elements of everything and new genres that haven't even been created yet, it can't be put in a box, and after multiple listens I've realized its best aspects aren't even that it's bizarre or complex even though it is sometimes both.
It's never just complex for the sake of being complex and it's not just abrasive for the sake of being abrasive, everything feels like it serves a purpose; purposes that range from being fed an assembly line of dopamine, or tactfully jerked out of your comfort zone abruptly, or constantly laughing as hard as you can. At first it feels like nothing will ever repeat, but it does, it's so eclectic that it's not even just constant eclecticism, it sometimes repeats quite a bit which just adds to the overall eclecticism. This is Music for people who do not like boxes or categories, people who see music as how John Zorn sometimes describes as "blocks" of sound, the answer to jam music that creates a space for free improv within its own context, this music instead shifts the context of the entire thing out from under its own feet like the universe coming together and finally realizing itself only to get bored of itself and destroy itself in order to rebirth itself in the same minute."
- Jonathan White (Giant Enemy Cancer Cult)
"I'm not a huge fan of noise but the amount and quality of ideas presented in this album are impressive. Just as you get hooked on something, you're pulled to a new idea and I think it's great- very refreshing."
- Tucker Hux Murray (first bandcamp short review, 2016)
"Now I don't see myself ever listening to this in my headphones, or while I knit chainmail, or build broken motorcycles. This is what I would call "tactical music". You play this when you want to give people panic attacks, or scare your mom. I love it. Gonna be great for scaring tourists out of the pizza shop at night."
- Tim Ostrom (comment at Harakiri Diat early youtube upload of the album)
OFFICIAL NOTES FOR 2022 CD RE-ISSUE
"The Cult of Dementia suite was released in 2016. At the time, I thought it was the best thing I've done. I certainly don't think so nowadays, but I'd still say this album is the most historically relevant piece of my discography, since the production process followed so many decisive musical transitions I went through in life. I grew up in the 90s surrounded by São Paulo noisy soundscapes, living in an apartment full of cheap instruments, (awful) musician relatives, boxes of rock, new wave, post-punk and brazilian music LPs, metalhead cousins, TV and radio bombing us with controversially good/terrible nu metal and hip-hop, and some of the worst electronic pop music ever made. I was always interested in sounds. I liked the SNES and cartoons soundtracks. I liked anything that sounded more extreme. I was always depressed but had this sarcastic sense of humour. My parents were always with a VHS camera, or recording cassette tape messages to send through mail, or taping movies from TV. I started playing with these things soon, I had no idea what I was composing, it was all a joke, I was a kid testing things. I used every opportunity I had to find out about new media and to record and play music. But I used to see it as just part of the alienated world inside my head. They suspected I had autism or something. My self-esteem was crushed from the start and without realizing, life drove me into a cycle. I was addicted to express myself messing up with music and all that paraphernalia, which annoyed everyone even more; not because of what I was doing, but because my skills and interests were not directed towards common expectations. So I had a sense of harsh reality. I never dreamed of achieving anything as a kid, as most musicians and artists say they did. I just wanted to play and do things for myself while that kept me alive although nowhere felt as my habitat.
"I had already understood what was dissonance when we started playing as a band in school. I had learned about Arrigo Barnabé when my mother told me that infamous Clara Crocodilo performance was the worst gig she ever experienced, and I got obsessed. Had no idea about serialism yet. I was into Voivod then slow internet was already a thing, what led me to find through that about Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, etc; also a review from a magazine moved me to look after ELP and Beefheart; and we moved to a town where there was this band Os Legais: people would say they didn't know how to play any instrument and were just improvising freely - would only really see/hear them (and, eventually, end up playing with the band and work with Gurcius for his movies) years and years later. These absurd things were all my influences though I still wanted to write something I could play with a band, I wanted to feel my weird guitar riffs performed loud and accompanied, and to be a good sax player. I was still much into death metal, hard bop, prog and early math rock over anything. But the way I wanted to mix noise and surrealism, also my cryptic song structures, always turned the band off. Somehow was already hard to meet people interested in playing any music around my age at the time/place. I started jamming with older guys but they were too focused on standard rock/jazz/metal music. I felt I would never be able to record what I wanted. Besides all the quirkiness, I wasn't yet much interested in music recorded in lower quality, since we were far from the demo tape era and nobody cared for shitty lo-fi.
"I led Esmectatons as a group into a more free improv way, or making songs based on playable patterns exclusively thought for each current line-up (performing it as far as I could before disbanding again). I gave up on anything I judged more "serious" as a songwriter and in a moment I was extremely pissed off, I decided I just wanted to have my ideas registered, whatever the way it was. So I started attaching riff memos one after the other with no repetition, then tried to create random arrangements for each. The results were extermely weird and I started thinking of it as a zero budget avant-prog soundtrack for a comic book, frame by frame. In fact, I was always more inspired by books and other art than music, and I kinda shaped my standards after independent cinema. Working that way I was free to explore every bizarre possibility. I thought I was just saving my scraps... now I see this manic cut and paste aphorism collection was the first thing I began to record all alone as a real composer and didn't notice.
"If you think the sound of Cult of Dementia is an overly happy mess, you're not resonating with its core. Randomness can be really funny; however there's real craziness in it. I mean, I laugh a lot listening to some music. Though that's a rare case for me, a record that took me so long to be finished. Of course I don't mean I want you to take all this seriously, I stretched ridiculousness far from its boundaries but during the long creative process I went through really dark stuff and it's all reflected there. I consider it a portrayal of my hyperactive mind. Euphoria, anxiety, overthinking, angst, suicidal periods then laughing at the most stupid nonsense things. It's taking nothing seriously as a way to exorcise, it's projecting seizures and delusional outbursts into media. I guess that makes the suite even more deranged and sick. It's hideous.
"Most of the early Esmectatons material from 2006-2010 was recorded by a friend who studied with me until high school, who had a studio at home since his brother is a well known producer around here. The studio was OK but my friend had no idea how to use it at the time, and obviously his brother wouldn't record my music himself. That explains the quality oscilation from good to terrible present in those albums. Although some of the stuff included in Cult of Dementia was recorded there, as I mentioned, the album was me struggling with myself and is a compendium of music and experiences extracted everypossiblewhere. At home, I had nothing but cheap or borrowed equipment.
"The Cult of Dementia production was finished around 2014-2015, when things were done I've waited some time to press a better CD edition to honour my own effort; but from its confused conception until the final product, took me more or less 8 years. During the lenghty journey, it was difficult but I always found an unusual way to achieve my ideas - which mostly ended sounding even more different than expected. For example, I would go to a music store with a tape and phone recorder in my pockets pretending I was checking instruments to buy; I would do my best to play the arrangements part with each instrument I needed (brass, strings, mallets), then later would edit them to fit the track; if I needed a double bass, I'd tune the acoustic guitar's strings very low, play it slapping and with a sort of tremolo/sliding technique and adding some light flanger (did that more precisely later for well produced jazz tracks and fooled everyone); even invaded one of my clients' house to record with his violin, and it sounded terrible! - imagine how fun if I was arrested for that, would perhaps get famous since the news loves nonsense crap and I'd be living out of doing demented music now. The amount of unpredictable sounds I manipulated to generate something else within this record is countless. I named it 'brainstorm formula' - this technique of recycling aleatory memos overlapped by randomized new ideas. Once a few minutes were OK, I would split and re-shuffle that part again; it needed to sound as a scrambled jigsaw puzzle but with its pieces fixed together, even if forcedly wrong, like a rollercoaster has ups and downs but never lose its flow. I instantly tried using Zappa's xenochrony thing right after I found out about it. When the album came out, it was also released through a breakcore label called Day of The Droids - they were fascinated labeling it as some form of analog/acoustic form of the genre, a mix between shapeshifting electronica/IDM and Naked City madness. Back then I honestly didn't appreciate how the idea was spreading: everyone thought the album was adventurous and over-detalied, exploding with ideas but mainly edited from samplers obtained elsewhere. I was asked many times 'wow, how could you sample so many stuff' when in fact I have recorded 90% of the sounds, instruments and 'samples' myself.
"As I was thirsty for learning new things, I got to dive more into completely experimental movements of all kind, also pure noise music and abstract, sound poetry, concrète composers. The more I knew about people working with similar theories and methods, the more I felt motivated. Almost every similar lenghty collage-like track from early Esmectatons (No Sound Is Useless, Genocyber, parts of Slowa, etc) were excerpts I splitted away from Cult of Dementia, for reasons I'll not remember. Of course I started working in the piece soon, and by the end I was already carrying an encyclopaedia of deranged art in my head, though I think if I knew about some of the specific kind of music barely related to what I done BEFORE starting it, wouldn't be the same. Perhaps would even demotivate me by learning how easier would be to do ANY type of art, and my own imagination to reach consumable form if I lived anywhere but here. So I didn't want to fix many things in the album for its re-issue, because even what I consider big mistakes in the mix/master (I had zero knowledge) is part of the history. It was written with blood. I have much to criticize myself but I understand why this was my best selling album and the original CD pressing easily sold out.
"The original CD had a bonus/hidden track I needed to remove, since it was an unauthorized pun - never had any problem with that, but just in case. If you're interested, the track was "Amizades Virtuais", a VERY random track recorded by a brazilian weekend show host. For the new edition I've included another selection of actual bonus tracks: the full version of a power electronics thing released long ago, and the local radio live performance with a more 'no wave' line-up (and the overwhelmingly out-of-place virtuoso Warkentin Burger on synth/keys, who I never know if makes me laugh or bothers the shit out of me!) released as an EP called Grease Trap Soup. Enjoy or not, I don't care, my initial goal was these ideas to exist in any form. I expected nothing - then was able to improve my own production, buy better equipments, and got to meet and hear nice words from people I always appreciated due to this awfully ill-fragmented sketchnote diary. Yeah, I guess it feels alright. That's all folks!"
- L. Borgia Rossetti, 2022
credits
released June 30, 2022
Cult of Dementia (tracks 1-40) was originally released by Esmectatons, 2016.
All instruments, noises and collected sound performed/arranged by L. Borgia Rossetti.
Guests: Lucas Göbel (synth for track 19); Josmir Gozias (guitar for tracks 30-32).
An excerpt of Unhinged (track 41, unreleased) was featured in Esmectatons' split with Black Colibri, 2007.
Performed by L. Borgia Rossetti (oscilator + pedals).
Grease Trap Soup EP (tracks 42-46) was a local radio session performed/broadcasted 2017 and released by Esmectatons, 2020.
Performed by L. Borgia Rossetti (vocals, guitar), Jorge Michael (guitar), Frank Stein (bass), Lucas Göbel (drums) and Warkentin Burger (key/synth).
Obscure, extreme and avant/experimental non-profit label &
publishing co. founded in Japan, 2019 and currently based in Brazil. Enthusiastically working with DIY media - anything rare, noisy or bizarre. GET SKRONKY!...more
The first release on Cacophonous Revival, from experimentalist Samuel Goff, uses avant-garde approaches to get at personal narratives. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 4, 2020
supported by 5 fans who also own “Cult of Dementia”
Amazing from start to finish. Sort of like encountering Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music for the first time, it's like stepping off a spiral staircase into the deep end of a whole 'nother universe of mysteries. "Triptik 2", the closer, is one of the most jaw-droppingly strange/hypnotic collisions of jazz, electronica, psychedelia and WTF I've ever heard - and yet it somehow works. Bought both volumes just on the strength of the first one & hoping there are many more to be issued. rocketmorton
