My initial reaction upon hearing The Boy Who Spoke Clouds’ Secret Corridors Lay Outside the Walls was the urge to strip down to my skivvies and dance around a fire. Maybe smear some face paint on and drink the black liquid from that mysterious bowl that’s being passed around. As the elixir takes effect, I start to drift off into parts unknown, but everywhere around us…. Ok. I’m back now.
Recorded live to tape by Adam Casey without any tricks of modern-day smoke and mirror, Secret Corridors Lay Outside the Walls is essentially a near 40 minute experience cut into three tracks. (Note that this is my take on the album. Nowhere in the press info is it stated to be taken that way). ‘His feet bled as he climbed to the temple’ starts out as the sun rises. You’ve long walked in the desert, you're tired, and you pass out in the blazing sun. You wake up surrounded by villagers who speak no language you're familiar with, but they’ve given you water and food. In the night you’ve joined them for their ritual (here’s where the bowl of elixir is handed to you). As they gaze at you, they begin to sing and chant in ways you find haunting and slightly disturbing, but powerful. As the chants continue to become stronger and faster you eventually go black.
‘The earth moaned & snapped at his dancing heels’ finds you suddenly awake in the middle of the desert, again, in the blazing sun. How you got here you do not know. But you must get up and get moving. To where, you're unsure, but you travel the way the wind guides you. Eventually you walk upon a village that seems familiar, but you cannot put your finger on where you’ve seen it before. Before you know it you are taken by men with spears pointing at your throat. Do not resist, it would be foolish. As they bark orders and demands at you, your pride has taken over and you risk trying to strike one tribesmen. Within seconds you feel a mind-numbing blow to the back of your head and everything goes dark.
As your eyes open you are not sure what happened, but the desert has vanished and all around you is a glowing sea of vibrant light, light of thousands of colours flowing around you and in your hands. You don’t know if you’re ‘Drunk with the angels’ but that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is what you feel, and where it takes you, no matter where that may be...
You can grab your copy of Secret Corridors Lay Outside the Walls on The Boy Who Spoke Cloud’s and Natural World Records’ Bandcamp pages, right now. I see no reason not to, you might find a passage or two that you didn’t know was there.
"He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,
die slowly."
Pablo Neruda, 'Die Slowly'
