Aleister Crowley - Black Magic (Full Album) 2021
Description: Tales of the Sonic Voyage presents
Aleister Crowley — Black Magic (2021)
Tonight we step into an unusual corner of recorded history with Black Magic, the 27-track collection that brings Aleister Crowley’s surviving spoken recordings together with contemporary musical reinterpretations.
Released by Cleopatra Records on May 7, 2021, the album places a voice from another era inside modern soundscapes before letting us hear the historical material on its own. It is a meeting of archival spoken word, poetry, ritual, and music that fits the stranger side of our Halloween listening.
Crowley was born in England in 1875 and died in 1947. A writer, poet, traveler, and ceremonial magician, he became one of the most controversial figures associated with modern Western occultism. His involvement with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn helped shape his early magical studies, while his later work centered on Thelema, the religious and philosophical system associated with The Book of the Law. Crowley maintained that he received that text in Cairo in 1904 from an intelligence he called Aiwass.
His public reputation often overshadows the range of his writing. Behind the notorious name are poems, essays, ritual texts, and an elaborate body of ideas about will, spirituality, and personal transformation. This collection offers a different encounter with that history: instead of reading somebody else’s account of Crowley, we hear his own delivery. His pronunciation, pacing, and emphasis become part of the experience, bringing a distant and heavily mythologized figure into the room.
The album is arranged in two distinct sections. Its first twelve tracks reinterpret Crowley’s voice through new musical settings, with contributions from Jozef van Wissem, Hawkestrel, Ritualz, Umberto, ∆AIMON, Neoslave, Ainoma, VV & The Void, Witch of the Vale, and Kill Shelter. The remaining fifteen selections present the archival spoken material, mostly identified as 2020 remasters. Hearing these sections together gives us both the modern artists’ responses and the source recordings that inspired them.
The contributors come from different musical backgrounds, including witch house, dark electronic music, and experimental work. Hawkestrel’s “Innavigable Soul” features Alan Davey on synths and strings, Simon House on violin, and Nigel Potter on slide guitar.
Across the opening section, Crowley’s recorded speech becomes the connection between otherwise separate creative approaches. These are contemporary constructions around historical audio, rather than performances Crowley made with the participating musicians.
The original selections include the First and Second Æthyr calls in Enochian and English, alongside poetry and other recitations. Titles such as “At Sea,” “The Titanic,” and the hymn addressing American independence show that the material extends beyond the occult subject suggested by the album’s name. The sequence also includes excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, placing ceremonial language beside literary and topical pieces.
For me, recordings like these belong among the discoveries that make a channel like this interesting. They carry us outside the familiar album format and into the history of voices, ideas, and sound itself. You can approach Black Magic through its contemporary contributors, through an interest in Crowley, or simply through curiosity about what survives when a person’s voice is preserved long after their lifetime.
Track List
1 — The Call of the First Æthyr — Jozef van Wissem
2 — Innavigable Soul — Hawkestrel
3 — The Human Curse — Ritualz
4 — At Sea — Umberto
5 — The Pentagram — ∆AIMON
6 — Rise Above You — Neoslave
7 — The Fate — Ainoma
8 — The Poet — VV & The Void
9 — The Call of the Second Æthyr — Witch of the Vale
10 — The Golden Dawn, Part I: Children of the Universe — Kill Shelter
11 — The Golden Dawn, Part II: Snowdrops — Kill Shelter
12 — The Golden Dawn, Part III: A Nameless Grave — Kill Shelter
13 — Introduction
14 — The Call of the First Æthyr (Enochian)
15 — The Call of the First Æthyr (English)
16 — The Call of the Second Æthyr (Enochian)
17 — The Call of the Second Æthyr (English)
18 — La Gitana
19 — The Pentagram
20 — One Sovereign for Woman
21 — The Poet
22 — At Sea
23 — Fingernails
24 — The Titanic
25 — Hymn to the American People on the Anniversary of Their Independence
26 — Excerpts from the Gnostic Mass
27 — Vive la France
Thank you for spending part of your Halloween season here with me at Tales of the Sonic Voyage.
If this collection caught your attention, please like, subscribe, share your thoughts, and pass it along to another listener who enjoys discovering unusual recordings. Let me know whether the modern interpretations or the original spoken pieces stayed with you most.
Spread the music. Keep listening, keep discovering, and enjoy the voyage. Close description
Aleister Crowley — Black Magic (2021)
Tonight we step into an unusual corner of recorded history with Black Magic, the 27-track collection that brings Aleister Crowley’s surviving spoken recordings together with contemporary musical reinterpretations.
Released by Cleopatra Records on May 7, 2021, the album places a voice from another era inside modern soundscapes before letting us hear the historical material on its own. It is a meeting of archival spoken word, poetry, ritual, and music that fits the stranger side of our Halloween listening.
Crowley was born in England in 1875 and died in 1947. A writer, poet, traveler, and ceremonial magician, he became one of the most controversial figures associated with modern Western occultism. His involvement with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn helped shape his early magical studies, while his later work centered on Thelema, the religious and philosophical system associated with The Book of the Law. Crowley maintained that he received that text in Cairo in 1904 from an intelligence he called Aiwass.
His public reputation often overshadows the range of his writing. Behind the notorious name are poems, essays, ritual texts, and an elaborate body of ideas about will, spirituality, and personal transformation. This collection offers a different encounter with that history: instead of reading somebody else’s account of Crowley, we hear his own delivery. His pronunciation, pacing, and emphasis become part of the experience, bringing a distant and heavily mythologized figure into the room.
The album is arranged in two distinct sections. Its first twelve tracks reinterpret Crowley’s voice through new musical settings, with contributions from Jozef van Wissem, Hawkestrel, Ritualz, Umberto, ∆AIMON, Neoslave, Ainoma, VV & The Void, Witch of the Vale, and Kill Shelter. The remaining fifteen selections present the archival spoken material, mostly identified as 2020 remasters. Hearing these sections together gives us both the modern artists’ responses and the source recordings that inspired them.
The contributors come from different musical backgrounds, including witch house, dark electronic music, and experimental work. Hawkestrel’s “Innavigable Soul” features Alan Davey on synths and strings, Simon House on violin, and Nigel Potter on slide guitar.
Across the opening section, Crowley’s recorded speech becomes the connection between otherwise separate creative approaches. These are contemporary constructions around historical audio, rather than performances Crowley made with the participating musicians.
The original selections include the First and Second Æthyr calls in Enochian and English, alongside poetry and other recitations. Titles such as “At Sea,” “The Titanic,” and the hymn addressing American independence show that the material extends beyond the occult subject suggested by the album’s name. The sequence also includes excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, placing ceremonial language beside literary and topical pieces.
For me, recordings like these belong among the discoveries that make a channel like this interesting. They carry us outside the familiar album format and into the history of voices, ideas, and sound itself. You can approach Black Magic through its contemporary contributors, through an interest in Crowley, or simply through curiosity about what survives when a person’s voice is preserved long after their lifetime.
Track List
1 — The Call of the First Æthyr — Jozef van Wissem
2 — Innavigable Soul — Hawkestrel
3 — The Human Curse — Ritualz
4 — At Sea — Umberto
5 — The Pentagram — ∆AIMON
6 — Rise Above You — Neoslave
7 — The Fate — Ainoma
8 — The Poet — VV & The Void
9 — The Call of the Second Æthyr — Witch of the Vale
10 — The Golden Dawn, Part I: Children of the Universe — Kill Shelter
11 — The Golden Dawn, Part II: Snowdrops — Kill Shelter
12 — The Golden Dawn, Part III: A Nameless Grave — Kill Shelter
13 — Introduction
14 — The Call of the First Æthyr (Enochian)
15 — The Call of the First Æthyr (English)
16 — The Call of the Second Æthyr (Enochian)
17 — The Call of the Second Æthyr (English)
18 — La Gitana
19 — The Pentagram
20 — One Sovereign for Woman
21 — The Poet
22 — At Sea
23 — Fingernails
24 — The Titanic
25 — Hymn to the American People on the Anniversary of Their Independence
26 — Excerpts from the Gnostic Mass
27 — Vive la France
Thank you for spending part of your Halloween season here with me at Tales of the Sonic Voyage.
If this collection caught your attention, please like, subscribe, share your thoughts, and pass it along to another listener who enjoys discovering unusual recordings. Let me know whether the modern interpretations or the original spoken pieces stayed with you most.
Spread the music. Keep listening, keep discovering, and enjoy the voyage. Close description