The Church - Priest = Aura

The incredibly prolific and dreamy Aussie outfit The Church have very few peers, really. They've been active since 1980 and are still going steady - and have released 23 albums to date. Here's my favourite Church record, 1992's 'Priest=Aura', a hypnotic, dissonant masterpiece of rock music. Here's a lovely and ever-cryptic blogpost on the record from Steve Kilbey himself.

ya see
now im working for ya
i respond so much quicker to yer ree-quests n dee-mands
and a very pithy commenter yesterday
was saying c'mon kilbey stop complainin'
you were in it for the money n fame etc
and yes my perceptive friend
thats a given
i still am, if it comes my way
but that dont mean working with idiots aint painful
in fact
does it have anything to do with it at all?
kinda.....
i guess
i confess
i thought you all knew
i want(ed) to make beautiful music AND lotsa money
after all at what i do im one of the crem de la crems
a crem de menthy
i see no real contradiction
one does not cancel out the other
im a master craftsman of songs in the melancholy school
of course i wanted reasonable remuneration (a fortune!)
and pear group recognition (divine fame!)
baybee who can ever realy say what their motifs are
i wanted the glory the money the lurks n perks
n whatever else they was givin' out
but that never cancelled out my desire for lovely music
can ya understand this important distinction?
i hoped for the cash
but i never delivered you trash
(beginning of sk rap?)
i bet michaelangelo gotta fortune for the cistine chapple
he should have
just like me baybee
i did score big
for the greatest melancholy album ever made
by anyone anywhere
thats right
p=a
i got 125 grand publishing advance on that one
my one big kahoona ever
1991
wow
the xyz conglomerate
coughed up a hundred n twenny five gees for my next batch o songs
and they got their moneys worth too
these are great songs especially for the times
everything i'd ever wanted to do
i finally did on this record
the fucking widescreen cinematic wraparound
the walls of noise
the snaky bass lines
the infinite varieties of guitar sounds
i loved gavin mckillop
a producers producer
a funny clever shrewd warm hearted scotsman
he n i made a great team
we both wanted to make the same record
marty n peter both firing in top form
jay dees excellent n inventive drumming
+ his calmness and voice of reason
unfortunately i was in the "honeymoon" stage of opiate addiction
it was like ye olde devil sittin' there waiting
till i finally cashed in a little
and he calls in the demon handling my case
an' he says
ok now break out the heroin
i also was smoking eating drinking opium
anyhow anyway
you can hear it on this record
the ponderous slowness n depth
the warmth n sickly sweetnesses
the disconnected voice
turning dark words
its a masterpiece
rolling stone said at time its rotten
rolling stone in new encyclo says its brilliant
masterpieces arent easy to swallow
fucking hell!
some people buying a cd arent even looking for a masta-peece
they just want that tune they heard on telly
and maybe some more like that
they dont neskaserrily want the rise n fall of western civ.
as described by a rocknroll band
we wrote it easy
i was indeed connected into some opium universe
its like a mousetrap
i mean
a mousetrap kills the mouse
but it DOES have some cheese, right?
so for a very very few months
the opium n smack filled my head with ideas
new ideas
ideas i cant articulate or i woulda actualized 'em
sammy tailor collaridge type ideas
grandiose vistas
whole lifetimes in one opium dream
most is gone upon awakening
but the poet can struggle to recount
a tiny reflection of the vision
this then
was
p=a
what more is there to say?
i wrote the lyrics in feverish trancelike states?
yes i did
i snorted white powder off a black piano
and i wrote n wrote n wrote
i was like a receiver of messages from somewhere else
it all came whole
i didnt write it
i dreampt it up
the six string bass lines
the keyboard lines
dripped from my fingers like i been playing em forever
the other guys all brilliant too
they were high by osmosis
they were picking up
on this thing we were stumbling into
i smoked joints full of opium
a new way to get high
i saw the pot as the treble
the opium as the bass
the opium was playing my white six string bass those sessions
now my mother will say
why oh why sun all the drugtalk?
because thats the thing about this particular record
i paid a terrible horrible price
i still am
no one gets off scot-free from the gear, the scag, the stuff
but nonetheless
jesus
its an english tradition
poet + opium = good(for a short time)
sorry
thats how i saw it
i dont now nessacelery
its half true
please keep yer indignant antidrug comments to yerself
i aint glorifying it
or am i?
i cant tell
you'll have to be an adult n decide for yourself
if you think im being foolish
thats ok
im just an olde olde rocker
spinning a yarn about some stuff
that happened a long time ago
some of the other people involved
occaisionally indulged
others like jay dee
were dismayed when o.p 8
reared its very ugly heads
but thats the biz
drugs booze women plane crashes greek mythology
i wrote swan lake for my new twins e n a
it got some good reviews
someone wrote in mm or nme or sounds
that the record would have all the shoegazers
running to their mummies to ask for new fx pedals..
ha ha
i liked that
p=a is an effected record
its cavernous reverbs
its pre-echoes that suck up to your earline
backwards things swoosh by
fizzy percussive zit zit zit tshhh!
the guitars!
mayhem n delicacy
these guys finally emerge as themselves n no others
pk paints huge backdrops n delicious melodic neo-classical
mwp screaming hovering howling pretty
jay dee bang bom boom boom boom
bass goes throb a throb a throb
can you hear the whammy bass?
thats the six string bass high up on beginning of olde flam
i felt sure we'd made a marstabiece
it seems
however
the world in 1992
did not want
an opiated pre-raphaelite swooning album/poem
but it wanted pearl jamb and
i oh i oh oh im still alive
and stone temp-hill pykelets
and wait till the dogzza found her...
so boy we copped some bad reviews
and boy
did that confuse me
i'd gone n done it!
we'd gone n done it!
me embarking on junkiedom n hard times
mwp embarking on all about eve
pk embarking on solodom
jaydee embarking back to other gigs
g mc k embarking on to other gigs
i still reckon its brilliant
its my berlin
its our #3 record
its our diamond dogs
our systems of romance
the fact that it flopped enhances its appeal
you gotta love it more cos no one else did or could
it deserves your love
its a nice record
its cool
dig it
if
you
can

sk

x "

Buckle like a wreck in the cold green sea