Were you a lonely kid? Did you feel like an alien? What if you knew you could open up a channel to make contact with another alien entity? What if he was so much like you it created an opiated, euphoric like vibration in your body, and together you communicated through a form of alchemical songwriting and expressive dancing? This is the theme of this project. The lyrics are meant to reflect a communication between two worlds.
What is Lam? In Buddhist culture, the word Lam means "The Path" and a Lama is "one who goes down the path." In the 1910's, Aleister Crowley painted a mysterious portrait of what today resembles a "gray" alien. It is one of the first artistic expressions of what would later explode in paranormal culture as the most commonly reported alien sighting. Crowley never said much about the painting, other than that it was "his teacher." He gave the painting to his successor Kenneth Grant, who took over as the head of a controversial branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a secret society formerly ran by Crowley. Grant's branch of the order was came to be known as the "Typhonian" order of the O.T.O., and their focus was more concentrated on communication with extra terrestrial entities. Lam, the alien figure depicted on the cover of the album, is an important extra terrestrial entity and it is not difficult to make contact with him.
Wyatt McKenzie (Etz Hayim) and Kim Lapidus (Carmella Cohen) met each other and fell in love in the winter of 2015. They became so inseparable, they refused to spend time apart from each other. Wyatt was struggling to get his heroin addiction under control, and Kim, having experienced a long battle with pain killers, supported him and gave him a place to stay. His father was dying of cancer, and Kim had just recently lost her mother to complications from Hepatitus C. Both Wyatt and Kim were getting over awful, abusive relationships, and it seemed their worlds were collided for an important reason. Wyatt was somewhat known across the country for his songwriting under the moniker Mother McKenzie, as well as touring with acts such as Jacob Smigel, Viking Moses, Golden Ghost, Teenage Mysticism, Drew Danburry, and supporting acts such as Deertick, Neva Dinova, and Akron Family frequently. Kim was known as a writer among elite and powerful circles. Wyatt fell in love with her writing. He felt there was something mystical about it. He noticed important details she used in her writing, such as spiritual numerology, anagrams, cut ups, and clever stream of consciousness formats. Wyatt felt the one thing she needed was organization, which he supplied enthusiastically. Wyatt had spent his twenties traveling among the indie, punk, DIY community. Kim had spent her twenties traveling among the more hobo, street kid, train hopping crowd. The two began traveling together, sort of mixing methods of road survival. They slept in tents outside on the street, crashed couches, sometimes even slept on sidewalks, but the two found it very important to travel for inspiration. Much of these songs were written on the road. The lyrics were obsessed over. There are thousands of pages of scribbled ideas from which the lyrics on this album were edited down. Also, there are piles of tapes used. Fifty or so.
Do not expect this album to have commercial, mainstream appeal. This album was recorded whenever and wherever possible under any means necessary. Here or there the couple would find an hour or two of studio time, but that had to be filtered through various mixes of overdubbed tape. Wyatt layered Sitar and Tambura over each song, as the original idea was to have the whole project in the same key over a constant drone. Wyatt found the drone to be boring rather than hypnotic as intended, and so he cut up what they had and changed keys as well as time signatures to spice things up. Kim and Wyatt wrote all the chords and lyrics and supplied all instruments. Instruments including sitar, tambura, guitars, synths, synth pads, kalimbas, lyre harps, dulcimers, and tons and tons of tape cut ups.
Cover painting by Aleister Crowley.
Samples and words of wisdom: Sebastian Horsley, Israel Regardie, Robert Anton Wilson, and James Joyce.