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Steven Lugerner
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Steven Lugerner An amazing collection of works recorded by two of my best friends. Oh, and their also my favorite songwriters - Angelo Spagnolo & Anthony LaMarca. Favorite track: I Know I Have Eyes (The Word Of The Cross).
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    Comes with 21 page digital art book by Angelo Spagnolo.
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      $8 USD  or more

     

1.
You and I Men were made In the One Another age Distinct in God Remaining all Consuming fire Alone the slag Will reflect Forever His By the Rock Dirt by love Into Him Union pure Sanctity We will remain Quartered age the devils Members limb to limb Cities by the fire Saints the innocent
2.
Good News 02:54
Good news for a man like me I'm cornered here, not four but three Open wide our conditions here They're necessary for our early years Not quite sure that I'd take it back My enemies and all they lack Threw me down and I stole what's theirs A tragedy for what I've left upstairs The promise I received from You While grabbing hold to all misused Gather modest gifts for you Your arms are open and you're the only one
3.
Him As A Stranger Instead of trusting My own fail me And transform my freedom I must show my Human liberty Natural if he Intelligent light of a gift Glorious strengthen Some who think they Of what make I Profit by abandoning myself
4.
Dig my knees in the floor For my highest love sits near And you breath when you stare Through my back please don't compare Our eyes and all they bare Who's worth the trials that came On an only son to reign? Dig my knees in the ground For my only rest has come Through your feet, proud, we'll dance Even though you, my friends, can't stand Take heart it's a lighter land Not bound by wires and chairs Or attempts to float through air Action life then pure two right May serve in one intention With God Ourselves apart from God outside Resolve action that places in us Satisfying interlude by now They outward Drown the stream More matters Infinite Rare
5.
We are carried over Not in our real selves Not in the froth stirred The impact of beings around us We are warmed by fire, Not by the smoke of the fire My soul is hidden Even from myself I can't see it Even from too close, nor can I see My own eyes, I know I have eyes We are warmed by fire, Not by the smoke of the fire The word of the cross is foolishness For them that perish My soul can also reflect itself Mirror it's own activity Mirror of words and actions My being partly manifests what is seen We are warmed by fire, Not by the smoke of the fire The word of the cross is foolishness For them that perish Words outside myself are dead things Quickly gone the hidden life Quickly accomplished acts outside Much depends on the soul itself remains We are warmed by fire, Not by the smoke of the fire
6.
This time no consolations The driest that we yet know Face with His pure adverting Either without mind without He to love time no longer Means on instants that can last A second from another Movement places in the road Mass however even and Exterior conditions In our own Bodies be for
7.
Admirable in many respects If they fulfill their promises They can do much more for man Never solve his deepest freedom Return to the root Flight that flings Outerspace Isolation Without objective
8.
To avoid They taste, which way Of the spirit. To God, them and us without presumption. Our self denial worse still, although it is true Our self denial is a contradiction Must be more To our own Unless it be guided What is from God Remaining completely Directed to God
9.
This is the time no longer proud To expect in our anything Driest all attention we cannot Pray Man who can face such dryness and Ask nothing but to do His will Here adverting without moving time Love Deep secret movement daily be Silent road meal thoroughfare We recite an exterior as Time
10.
The secret from ourselves And from our prayer We must be detached from our work To plunge into the desire We seek only interior failing If we our hearts avoid preoccupation We proceed with our work Spiritual Fatigue Thought that it’s very will Not to disperse our recollection Strengthened by what it could never find Interior recollection Must seek in vain To die necessary Our last significance Every death of this world of Christ Either in words or for life With more expression Have more many Our poverty is divine Coming face to speak with the eloquence of death For the poorest uncertainties Silence and a conclusion The poverty of death
11.
New Seeds 02:36
Yours cannot share anyone which does matter. Something sick will never be. Simply that God exists.

about

This record was made between 2010 and 2011 as Angelo and I wanted a new outlet for making music that was not The Building or In One Wind. In particular, we wanted something that would push us to write differently, get us to think about putting together a song differently. Around this time we were also both being defeated by a few books by writer and monk, Thomas Merton. Using these books as a catalyst for lyrical content seemed an appropriate way to get ourselves writing outside our own perspective and spending more engaged time with the texts. The books, in particular No Man Is an Island, deal largely with self transformation, which is what we were trying to achieve in this process; letting outside circumstances change our level of comfort and decision making process.

Around this time, Angelo had shared with me artist William Kentridge’s stop motion films; which are created through a process of drawing, erasing, redrawing, erasing… which led me to share Anton Bruhin’s vocal piece, “In Out”, which is made through a musically complimentary process of using a recorder to grab segments of sound and piece them together without attack or decay. These two artists helped us settle on how to go about recording. We figured it would be best to just start recording rather than start by writing the material first. Most started with a simple idea. We would record each part into Angelo’s digital voice recorder, listening to a metronome's pulse coming to us via an earbud. Using this method, we could not hear previous takes or sections when recording. So rather than record in a linear way, we more or less just gathered one sample at a time, which we would later organize and assemble. Everything was done quickly without too much re-consideration. Sometimes the lyrics would be written while performed; improvisations on a few pages from the books. For some, we’d flip to a page and start reading the words out of order while writing them down. In the case of “The Poverty of Death”, the melody was improvised to pre-written lyrics, and each part was layered as it was recorded. In short, the song has 24 voices and took 24 takes to complete. Each time we would work on a new song, the time spent actually playing and recording was only about three hours. However, the editing and arranging of these samples was a much longer, grueling process.

I was sharing some of this music with a friend and he asked how this project brought us closer to Merton’s writing. I had no answer because I hadn’t considered it. Although we had been spending so much time with his words, it seems we were attempting to understand these dense verses by futile means. Taking them out of context, rearranging them into almost nonsense. However, if we were to go to the pages of the source material, I believe we’d find these songs have the same sentiment. The ideas don’t get lost totally, but are translated into this abstract vernacular, which still carries the weight of the original text. But whether or not the text’s integrity is intact or not is not so important I think. The process did draw us to Merton’s work and message. We pushed ourselves to do things that were not natural, not instinctual. Which is what is found a lot in Merton’s books; that our instincts about how to love and our spiritual character are not the only way, just because they are the first or easiest. That level of engagement is a lot of work and is usually counter-intuitive and unselfish.

credits

released June 17, 2012

Made by Angelo Spagnolo & Anthony LaMarca
All images by Angelo Spagnolo

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