OUTLET
Black Sun Blogs
April 2006 – I talked with Jesus the other night and let him know that I will not be playing with Black Sun Ensemble in the future. I joined the band in early 2000 and have spent a great deal of time and energy to create a relevant present and future for the band. I have loved Black Sun Ensemble for years and have been witness to the sheer ferocity of Jesus’s vision and guitar abilities. Honestly, I would have done just about anything to join the band at the time, not only because I am a fan, but BSE is truly the most interesting and challenging group in Tucson, perhaps Arizona. While other bands struggle to be a rad punk band or go the often bland desert rock route or the quirky, novelty band route, Black Sun Ensemble has lived completely outside of all of that crap. For better or worse, BSE has practically ignored other genres both locally and historically, creating music that is in a category of one. (I will admit that Jesus has done a fair amount of pinching from Jimmy Noland, Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin.) When asked to describe the music Jesus usually says, “its psychedelic music!” It is definitely not in the model of 60s/70s acid rock per se or is it space rock. To me, Black Sun Ensemble is at its best when I hear its music as a reflection of its surrounding –reflecting the unique spirit of our culture in the desert. Sometimes it goes beyond that, some of the melodies to me are like channels to ancient past where musical melodies were both incredibly dark and exquisitely beautiful but somehow forgotten over the centuries. Jesus Acedo is all of that, and is like no one else. However, the line between genius and madness is often blurred and dealing with less than magical side of the band has become a weight I no longer can carry. Beside, in the end we will have release 4 full length studio Cds and two limited edition Cds of live radio performances. I truly feel like there is no place to grow –I think we have exhausted all of our ideas and tricks. Because of this, I have no
regrets at all. I can only wish the band well from my heart and hope that they make it through another 20 years. -Eric Johnson
January 31, 2006 - A brief BSE history in the form of an email to a progressive rock website.
Hello, My name is John Paul Marchand. I love your website, and it has helped me incredibly with my progressive, psychedelic, and overall weird radio show "Tempest Broog." (91.3 KXCI FM-Tucson, Az kxci.org Monday Morn, 12am-2am, now in it's tenth year! yea!).
I do want to say however your entry for the Black Sun Ensemble (of which I am a member) is very out of date. Your description would be right on if it were the mid 90's, but not now. With the help of Eric Johnson (bass, guitar, banjo,moog and a whole lot more ) Brian Maloney (Sax, and also and a whole) lot more Leila Lopez (Drums) and myself (percussion) we have helped Jesus De Paz (he has not used the "Dagan" moniker in ages...). Eric and Brian have been recording
and playing with Jesus since 2000, I have played with them live since 2001 but was not an official member until 2003. I have played with the band at the South By South West musicfest in Austin the three times we have been invited there. Leila has just joined the band. The first offering from this line up (Brian Kohl on Drums) was "Hymn Of The Master." (2001) I was not on that record. The new band was just getting their footing and it is rough,but not without inspiration. It's almost on the brink of train wrecking all through the album but I like it more than any other member of the band for that reason! Largely because of the vocals, which is all done by Jesus. He can't sing, but pulls it off somehow. It was released on Camera Obscura Records out of Australia, which we are still on. The title track is great, as is Captain Wormwood, 669, The Beast, 999, Love In The Heart of The Joyful, Lamp Lady Vision, and Song for Precious. The band was still getting to know Jesus the madman, and pretty much followed his lead creatively in the early daze. So the sound was very crunchy and aggressive. It was the primordial new beginning for the Black Sun. In 2003 came "Starlight." It is obvious the band has matured with this second offering. Eric Johnson and Brian Maloney took on more songwriting credits, and shared a lot more of the creative decision making. The production and songwriting is far superior. The whole album has a holistic flow and flavor. The opening track "Jewel of the Seven Stars," is a lush trance-inducing number. "Loki's Monstrous Brood" is very reminiscent of King Crimson's "Red" period. "Arabic Satori" has some intense stream of consciousness spoken word by one time percussionist for the band, Joseph Graves. He plays some bass on the album as well. He also reappears on the final title track bringing the album to a great conclusion with style!
"Angel Of Light" is a much like the feeling in "Hymn," but is still more clearly played and executed in every way. The other gems to me are "Mascara Moon," a song which certainly illustrates that this new incarnation is something to be reckoned with. "The Lycian," is also very Crimsonish, which is alright by me, but has that Black Sun drama on it's own right! My two favorite tracks are "I am I was" with Eric on vocals. Eric has a great and distinct style. He has his own band "Sun Zoom Spark" (a more psych-pop band) on his label Slowburn Records-check them out! I also love "Remedios Rising" a Brian
Maloney instrumental. Beautiful. Then came the self released "Live at KXCI" and later
Live at KXCI vol II." The latter is the better offering, for no other reason than the band started to head off to more early waters-sounding much more like the first album than ever before. We had just gotten back from SXSW, and we were very tight. Eric is heard playing Banjo and kick drum at the same time! Then bass. I am on percussion, Brian on sax. Jesus on Electric Sitar guitar.
Now we have completed "Bolt of Apollo," soon to be released on Camera Obscura once again. Oddly enough, it is the current NEXT album "Across the Seas Of ID (The Way to Eden,") that is more like what the band currently sounds like live. "Apollo" is all instrumental, with Ernie Mendoza as a guest (an incredible drummer) on kit. I will not go into these two albums all that much, but I will say both offerings we are very proud of, and Jesus is playing better than he has in years. Which is why I am writing this, because he has been playing amazingly well, and has been incredibly creative these past six years, overcoming great odds. I am in the band, but I do not write this because I want to brag about the band I am in. I am writing this because Jesus is one of the greatest guitar players I have ever heard. Playing with him has been like a shamanic experience at times, especially lately. With two new albums, very good albums soon to be released, he and the band deserves a better entry within your awesome web site. If you can offer this email to other web sites that might have a similar entry I would appreciate it. I first heard the band when I lived in the NYC area, in
a record store called "It's Only Rock'n Roll." They were playing on the speakers (Lambent Flame) and I was instantly captivated. I was too broke to buy the record (a common malady for me) but stayed for the rest of the record. I did not forget the band's name and I didn't even know they were from Tucson. I then moved out here, and after meeting Eric was shocked to realize I could go see them! Now I am in the band, and it is an honor. I was barely a musician when I first played with them, but now I can call myself one, simply because playing with Black Sun isn't easy, it's an education, and it's a fucking trip!
Respectively,
John Paul Marchand Percussionist for BSE
aka Cozmik Jon on Tempest Broog
"May 25, 2005 -- Its incredibley hot here in Tucson, I think around 106 degrees, which is a bit premature even for the desert. It always seems like we wait till the summer kicks in to begin recording every time. Last night, while the temp outside was a stuffy 97 degrees at 9pm, the indoor temperature at Slowburn Studio hovered in the low 90s. We have a series of fans, which we need to turn off because of the noise when we are recording. The swamp cooler runs nicely but needs a new pump for the water so no help there. Such is life in the desert. Times like these you kind of question if humans really belong here. Anyway, we began the process of completing the next BSE record "Across the Seas of Id: A Way to Eden." More of an acoustic project then the all of the releases we have done since 2000, "Seas of Id" looks like it will be much more reminiscent of BSE's mid to late 80s acoustic work. We are planning to include new songs as well as new acoustic versions of older songs. Last night we began with a new version of Sky Pilot Suite, adding sax and tampurna. Thats all we could take working on in the heat so we called it a night. -Eric
April 29, 2005 -- Been spending the last few nights in the studio remixing a few songs from the rock opera we did called Twitch A Rock Opera from the Earth. John Paul Marchand, creator and film maker, showed me some lengthy clips for the movie version of the opera a couple of months ago. I was inspired by the progress and the quality of his work to go back to the archives and redo a couple of things that I didnt do so well the first time around. Because of my lack of gear and experience in the studio back then, a couple songs really needed to be reworked. "She Enters the Dream" is one that needed to be tweaked primarily because of the complexity of the tracking. Back then I only had an 8 track so most tracks had 2 or more instrument parts on them, which makes it really hard to mix something complex without automation. The other song was the "Stone God Awakens" track featuring Jesus's super bizarro guitar solo. The solo was recorded back in 2000, during the "Hymn of the Master" era, which is rather foggy in my mind now but do recall that Jesus was playing thru that horrible Crate amp and insisted on using a variety of pedals like the Phase 45 and I think even an old DOD Flanger we had lying around. The resulting track was series of noise that seem to emulate either the buzzing of a swarm of bees or the song of a whale who was very unhappy. Jeez. I knew that Jesus would be very unwilling to come back in and do a new track for this because he would rather take the path of least resistance in all things. So I cleaned up the other tracks, isolated or eliminated other stuff that was just adding to the chaos and I was left with Jesus track. Because of its overloaded sound, it just would not sit comfortablely on the rhythm section so I first put it through the Joe Meek compressor. It sounded a little more under control, but still was wierd. Actually the song is pretty wierd to begin with. There is crashing and machine noises, didgereedoos, Moog, the whole psychedelic enchilada. So I also ran Jesus's track through the Line 6 delay box thru the reverse setting and added a interesting complexity to the barrage of notes Jesus spit out that day. This extra step seemed to do the trick, I was able to control the amount of effect throughout the song. Now if John Paul ever finishes the damn movie, you will get to hear what I am talking about. -- Eric
on Black Sun Ensemble.