Inner-Sense and Experience: Drone Music, Esotericism and the Hieroeidetic Field

Drone music invariably attracts mystically-loaded hyperboles such as ‘transcendent’, ‘ecstatic’ – and even ‘tantric’. But, moving beyond journalistic cliché, how might the process of creating and listening to such music be said to constitute a genuinely esoteric artistic practice? To explore this question, we will further develop the concept of hieroeideticacy, in order to isolate particular ‘building-blocks’ by ‘reverse engineering’ one of Versluis’ historical case studies, the painter Cecil Collins. We will then explore the work of sound artist Kim Cascone through a hieroeidetic lens, with particular attention to his concepts of auditory ‘grain’ and ‘subtle listening’. From here, we will take a reflexive turn, to explore how an initiation into Cascone’s work has affected my own recent collaborative musical work. Finally, we will discuss the implications of musical hieroeideticacy, with particular regard to notions of authenticity, experience and the formulation of ‘ritual drone’.

https://voidfrontpress.org/portfolio/sustaindecay/