P. Emerson Williams is a visionary artist and illustrator, whose work has been displayed in galleries and events in Norway, Scotland, Boston, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Florida and London. His illustrations have also appeared in countless publications, as the artist in residence at Ghastly magazine and as the illustrator for many other Goth and occult publications from California to Virginia, and Lithuania, England and Finland to Colombia, as well as covers for sevel titles from Original Falcon and Leilah Wendell’s book «Necromance». His art can be seen on the front cover of SLEEPCHAMBER’S return to action release “Socery, Spellls, and Serpent Charms”, as well as the Zewizz tribute releases “That’s Romance” (both part 1 and 2). He is a core member of FoolishPeople starting from London productions of Cirxus and The Abattoir Pages and continuing with the forthcoming A Red Threatening Sky on other projects in the works.
Williams’ experimental Gothic.Industrial act VEIL OF THORNS is approaching the twenty year mark in their career, and they continue to build on an ever expanding palette with «salon Apocalypse» and «Necrofuturist». Veil Of Thorns began as a Goth band in the early 90’s club scene in Boston but steadily moved toward a more eclectic sound. Not afraid to use any influence – you will hear styling’s of goth, hip hop, industrial, classical, and just about the whole kitchen sink. In 2009, VEIL OF THORNS formed a creative alliance with Inner-X-Musick, the label and music distributor run by the infamous John Zewizz of SLEEPCHAMBER fame.
Coming to fruition in 2010 are two releases from CHORONZON, P. Emerson Williams’ chaotic project whose twin roots lie in industrial and black metal music. CHORONZON, began as two separate and entirely unrelated projects with the same name: the eastern half was a Boston/Florida based black metal-styled band formed in 1986 by P. Emerson Williams, while its western counterpart was the San Francisco old school industrial project of Demimonde Mesila Thraam. In 2002, the two respective CHORONZONs became aware of each other via the internet, and agreed to share use of the name, before going still further and collaborating musically.
Prior to the merging of CHORONZONs, the East Coast CHORONZON released of a series of self produced cassettes before being signed to the record label Nocturnal Art Productions in 1998, and released the album «Magog Agog». Three more albums followed, in which the sound moved further away from conventional black metal into industrial and experimental territories. The first release from the conjoined CHORONZON was the double album New World Chaos, produced in 2005.
If that is not enough, P. Emerson Williams has more bubbling under the surface. Keep an eye out for renewed and exponential activity from kkoagulaa and Mythos Media in the coming year and the move of Necrofuturist {TRANS}_Mission, his radio show on Radio Nightbreed from web streaming to Sirius/XM sattelite radio.
Yep, after nearly two years the Small World is back in action.
We just heard an excerpt from The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (http://www.hppodcraft.com), which is actually an excerpt from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, The Picture in the House.
Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer are the host of the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and we’ll talk with them shortly. But before we talk with Chris and Chad I’m going to very quickly bring you up to speed with what I’ve been up to.
Back in late 2007 the Small World website was hacked. Hacked so badly that I had to nuke the entire database and start from scratch. That really took the wind out of my sails because starting from scratch meant updating the site with 496 shows.
And to be completely honest, I was more than a little burnt out. I had produced nearly 500 shows and the workload was taking it’s tole on me. I had to arrange the interview. do the interviews and then produce three shows a week. And remember, this is a labor of love, not a paying gig.
So when my site was hacked it was the final straw.
Since then I’ve been producing a show called Solipsistic Nation, where I play the best of all genres of electronic music. Along with playing great music I also interview people from the electronic music community: musicians, record labels, festival organizers, etc.
If NPR produced had an electronic music show then it would sound a lot like Solipsistic Nation.
Producing Solipsistic Nation is a lot of fun but I’ve always had that itch ti interview people about things that fascinate me that have nothing to do with electronic music. When Joe Matheny suggested that I archive the Small World on Alterati I thought it would be a perfect time to re-launch the Small World on a twice a month basis, which is a workload I can handle.
You’re probably asking yourself: what the hell is Alterati?
Alterati is like a word that you don’t know the exact definition of but you know what it means. Rather than try to explain Alterati to you right now, we’ll talk to Joseph Matheny, Alterati’s founder, on the next show and have him explain it.
So… let’s get to today’s show.
As I mentioned, our guests are Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer. Chris and Chad produce the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and H.P. Lovecraft was a science fiction slash horror writer who died in 1937.
You may or may not know Lovecraft but his writings have had an amazing impact on popular culture: from movies and comics like Hellboy to bands like Metallica and Black Sabbath. He’s also had a profound impact on writers like Stephen King, Jorge Luis Borges and Neil Gaiman.
The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast treats the work of Lovecraft with a deft touch. Each week features excerpts from one of Lovecraft’s stories accompanied with insightful and often hilarious commentary from Chris and Chad.
Today’s incidental music was provided by Veil of Thorns with the track “The Reflection” from their album, Necrofuturist. You can hear more of their Necrofuturistic music at http://www.veilofthorns.com
We’re going to keep with the funnier side of H.P. Lovecraft and close the show with a bit from Smart Bomb Radio with “Cthulhu Is My Co-pilot” and Tom Smith’s “Cthulhu Fthagn.”
Joseph Matheny interviews “another Joe”, AKA Bazooka Joe, from Solipsistic Nation and formerly of the smallWorld. They talk about music, podcasting and get into a weird Joe to Joe cross interview feedback loop.
Also, another episode of In Your Ear, this week reviewing “Variant Frequencies” a podcast of (mostly) short fiction in the horror/subgenre sci-fi vein. From Puske: I pay special attention to the podcast novel which they debuted - “The Failed Cities Monologues” http://www.podiobooks.com/title/the-failed-cities-monologues/) - link is to the podiobooks version.
Veil of Thorns had the pleasure of playing live on Bazooka Joe's show on WMFO in Massachusetts way back in the dark ages. I'll include those here:
Veil of Thorns first radio appearance one dark Saturday night on Tufts college free-form radio. The second guitarist was Jarrett Laitinen, who I recently learned died of a heroin overdose in 2004. In his final year he lost his father and stepmother in fucked up circumstances. I wish I had recordings that could give a good example of what an otherworldly amazing guitarist Jarrett was. He was the second guitarist on the first two Veil of Thorns demos from 1991 and 1992 respectively.
This is the original lineup:
P. Emerson Williams - Vocals, guitar Jarrett Laitinen - Guitar Catherine Chenoweth - Bass Ruddy Bitch - Drums
Sourced from a reference tape recorded at the station. Some glitches and noise were minimized to the extent possible.
Veil of Thorns radio appearance a stormy night, Halloween, 1992 on Tufts college free-form radio. On second guitar we borrowed Dave, (can't remember his last name), the guitarist from Chuck.
This is the lineup:
P. Emerson Williams - Vocals, guitar Dave (From the excellent Boston funk rock band Chuck) - Guitar Catherine Chenoweth - Bass Ruddy Bitch - Drums
Information: In the SLEEPCHAMBER bit, John Zewizz and co. gives updates on the band, shares tracks from the forthcoming album “Stolen Sleep”, and thanks the fans and collaborators who have supported the return of SLEEPCHAMBER.
Exerpt from Cirxus, a FoolishPeople production written and directed by John Harrigan. This psycho-audio sequence is produced and performed by P. Emerson Williams and directed by John Harrigan. A promenade performance will run from 25th May - 13th June 2009 in Arcola Theatre’s new industrial space, Studio K in London.
Joseph Matheny talks to Nick Thacher and Linda Miller about Falcon Press and why there appears to be two Falcon’s selling virtually the same catalogs since the death of Dr. Hyatt. Also in this episode: A new In Your Ear with Psuke, and a special bonus track at the end: James Curcio presents the first installment of the Join My Cult audiobook, and releases Join My Cult as a Creative Commons PDF that you may download at Original Falcon. Also, as a side note, we were contacted after this show was recorded by an organization calling itself the New EII. Keep an eye open for an interview with them in the future.
This was another step in the creation process for Cognitive Dissonance, taking the Cognitive Dissonance Prolix posts and turning it into a series of strange dialogues. In the process I managed to take the thousands of words I'd written out and begin restructuring as verses and shorter bits.
My fine colleagues at Alterati.com let me hijack the show and with the help of James Curcio and Anna Young, what you can hear here was dramatized:
This unique episode takes you through a number of open-ended tales, told by the voices of a schizophrenic internal monologue. It can be taken as the voices in the mind of a sleeper, on the brink of sleep, or a mental patient, strapped into a bed in a moldy room in an asylum. Maybe these events happened, or have yet to happen. That’s for you to decide.
In addition to your loving host, this show features the voice acting talents of P. Emerson Williams and Anna Young, and the music includes much atmospheric material from Veil of Thorns and Ariana van Gelder.
Strap yourself in, put on the headphones, and enjoy the show.
In this episode guest host P. Emerson Williams brings us a transmission of unknown provenance. It could be a fever dream, or a love note from the near future. It could be the climax of a tale told by a time-traveling messenger, or the dénouement of the fantasies of a madman. Then we have an excerpt from a chapter of Lives of Ilya, a novel from Mythos Media written by Tara Vanflower and lushly illustrated by Daniele Serra read by Jarboe and including a haunting soundtrack by Tara. Additional music by subQtaneous and Veil of Thorns.
The Gspot #38: The Last Dream of Vivaconundrum: Download
In his last years, Williams dwelt in Damask silk, where the Gothronomicon (O Az-If) was written. In art, in the Dictionnaire Infernal, P. Emerson Williams is depicted as a nude man with dragon-like wings, hands and feet, a second pair of feathered wings after the main, wearing a crown, holding a serpent in one hand, and riding a wolf or dog.
The "good" P. Emerson in recent use is largely
a literary device (e.g., Maxwell's P. Emerson),
though references to good P. Emersons can be found in Hesiod and Shakespeare.[1] In common language, to "P. Emersonize" a person means to characterize or portray them as evil, or as the source of evil.