Ian Stonehouse – Voyage En Kaléidescope

Ian Stonehouse’s first solo release for The Lumen Lake is an album that he recorded at home on odds and ends of borrowed equipment, “in a dewy corner of Whitmore Reans, Wolverhampton & later in rainy Hackney, London, as the result of some unpleasant premonitions” (1992 to 1995). It’s purportedly one of many that lurk in dark corners of his flat, mastered to media of varying degrees of obsolescence, waiting to see the light of day once the designated maturation period is complete.

With all that in mind, and all that we otherwise know of Mr. Stonehouse’s work, we at The Lumen Lake expected this to be a special release. The music of Voyage en Kaleidescope surpassed our expectations nonetheless. Extraordinarily vivid sound collages are woven here from found sounds, field recordings and samples, then subjected to processes that gradually, patiently pick them apart again. Each track employs a limited palette, but in every instance the constructions are so much more than the sum of their parts that it feels like there’s some strange magic happening somewhere under the surface or in the cracks between the sounds.

“… and argues that alchemy’s true importance lay in the esoteric discovery of the unconscious… [Alchemists] were sectarians, the problem children of medieval society, and their contemporaries were ever hesitant about deciding whether to regard them as pure sages or sacrilegious imposters. Those who pursued the ‘royal art’ to the point of dropping-out found that an elaborate subculture had been constructed for them to drop into… [Cornelius] Drebbel constructed a primitive submarine, which in 1621 sailed from Greenwich to Westminster, witnessed by King James I and countless Londoners. Drebbel had learnt how to make oxygen ('aerial nitre’) after visiting Sendivogius in Prague around 1610… connects to the alchemical tradition of 'The Divine Androgyne’, a potent symbol of the 'Perfected Work’, pictured as a figure with two faces. Yet such visualtrickery (real or imagined) is another part of the alchemists’ schemata - the playing of practical jokes, adoption of false identities and concoction of disinformation… sound and meaning are paramount, meaning is knot. This phonetic cabala, the 'green language of France’ (green being the Sufic colour of the initiate) is common amongst minorities… theorist Jabir Ibn el-Hayyan (c. AD721-776) was known in the West as 'Geber’ - the sheer unintelligibility of his writings gave rise to the derisory term gibberish. When alchemical writing appears nonsensical it is held to be at its most apparent and serious, and vice versa.”

Excerpts from an article first published under the title 'BUT… BUT WHO WAS FULCANELLI?’in the music fanzine T’Mershi Duween (#58, May 1997, p.10-11; Chesterfield, England).

Ian Stonehouse is also a member of improvising experimental rock band Rutger Hauser (The Lumen Lake). Other recent/ongoing collaborations include Ingrid Plum, Vicki Kerr, Burning Harpsichord Ensemble, and the Association of Musical Marxists.