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The Rime Of Memory

by Panopticon

supported by
M Elliot
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M Elliot The variety and variations, along with the exceptional track lengths, means you will need to listen to this at least a thousand times in order to pick up every aspect and nuance of the album. The guest appearances - and instrumental diversity - are also a true highlight. This is part of what makes this recording so enjoyable: with each subsequent listen, a new and interesting aspect of a track commits itself to your memory.
Ben Perry
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Ben Perry Hell yeah: Pan to the Op to the Con!

Cedar Skeletons recalls Mogwai's "Helps Both Ways" with the background found sound heightening the grand melancholy Favorite track: Cedar Skeletons.
Bart
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Bart The culmination of the growth of Panopticon, where the meshing of black metal and Americana instruments really fell into place. I love the early material (Bodies Under the Falls is a particular favorite), but now the music seems truly integrated. Nothing like this band, and a must for all black metal fans. Favorite track: Winter's Ghost.
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1.
A few words about the inspiration of this song: As the Loon flies south and changes its feathers to a new shade, so our colors fade in our autumn years. . . . And with those hues, go our elders, whose places we will soon be seated in. This song was written to lament the loss of the elder generation of Scandinavian immigrants and their now elder offspring during the years surrounding the pandemic. Their journey to Minnesota became a quintessential part of the culture here and a distinct part of many Minnesotan’s identities.
2.
Part I: Hiraeth: (Instrumental) Part II: Hjemløs Memory in dissipation, like the hoarfrost’s delicate cling… The supplemental envelopment of winter’s prosthetic embrace. In exchange for the fire’s warmth, I delve into memory... Nostalgia replaced hope as reality replaces dreams. The spruce, snow weighted, As my troubled heart succumbs to burden. The saplings crushed beneath the snow fall as my recollection is obscuring. In white wash I’m saturated and satiated by its allure The nothingness drowns out the loss known before this frozen world. This dormant slumber In peace and waiting Laid in repose For breath abating. In stillness seen And frigid fingers, where aspiration is frozen And memory lingers... Crystals cling upon wintering larch. Roots encased in a tomb of snow… The shrouds of ice in a world of stasis, Where green has faded and will not grow. The haunting spectres of life and love lost break the crypt of the past, To roam free the frozen world, to roam free at last....
3.
All that remains is grey. What grew once sacred and plentiful beneath the sun withers in decay, only preserved by the cyclical freezing of the northern winter... Its beauty long engulfed in the fade, Wilting, wilting, but an echo, all that remains: The lightless skeleton of hope’s glimmer. The sheen of ice, it’s apocryphal shimmer. This life fades, but the flesh persists. Enjoyment stripped by the passing of time. Suffering banality for an irreconcilable end... The wilt of foliage and the melting of rime. As the heart beats fast and the fear sets in, all is still beneath the winter sun. As nauthiz is carved into flesh and bone What exists in the soul speaks when alone. As the heart beat slows and hypothermia sets in, all is still beneath the winter sun. As isa is carved into flesh and ice what exists in the heart will come to the light. “Nuestra patética existencia agrega demasiado peso. Lo que una vez fue sagrado. Ahora no tiene verdades. Nuestra residencia temporal Causando daño permanente. El corazón de la tierra se desangra solo quedan eskeletos” (lyrical contribution and guest vocal by Victor Sanchez) The only constant is change The gears continue to grind with the hand of man’s aid. Only we are to blame for the treasure we bury and lose, for pride painted over the shame... ...And the mire’s death is suspended til the coming of spring, ....And the song bird flies south and continues to sing, ....And the warmth resumes the rot that we know it will bring, The horror is knowing our endeavors will not amount to a thing.
4.
Dragging an urn full of snow with me on every path I tread. The stench of decaying memory and repeating thoughts of dread… The rot of reminiscence is just like the picking of a scab. The acid in the vomit bares no resemblance to the meal that was had. On pathways storm obscured Where orange blaze peers through, The pleasure of a taste of poison before illness must be endured. Thumbing through memories of times long passed. The sweetness long faded, only bitterness will last. “Kalde tårer faller ned fra himmelen en vinternatt. de skjaerer inn i bevisstheten som glasskår sårene vil alltid forbli åpne med den smertefulle sannheten at vårt bilde av paradis er knust.” (Poem written and performed by Patrick Næss) These memories thought immortalized, melt into disfigured visages of the truth. The mad prophet’s scripture forever lacking proof. The ever changing world unsure of all we’ll lose. The autumn snow brings no solace in a world we know is doomed. Nothing cold can stay. In the world of rot and decay. The end times underway. Nothing cold can stay.
5.
Any distraction will do. Anything to ride out this gloom. The lugubrious weight of the present. The cumbersome pains of the past. Precipitous symphony, of crystals falling: So much louder in memory than when it’s trumpets were calling. In hues ever vibrant, recollection lies to the eye, through the mind’s romanticism and the ever running passage of time. The allure of the unknown, as goddesses depicted in splendor, in actuality may be more haggard than the brush stroke’s render. By truth and horror none shall be spared. Left to embrace the phantoms of those who once cared. So if it is true the sun also rises in hell; I’ll applaud the hope in this world and keep none for myself. Forgetting the pain, the fear and the doubt. beseeching grey skies, enduring the snow drought.
6.
The nostalgia in waiting. The yearning relief. In blanketed branches, after skies unleash… and winds blow through rendering skies ever blue… Glistening frost light. Transitory, shining bright. Is this so sacred because we can’t keep it? Do we only love because we will lose? If life was ever lasting would we need it? Is loss what we would choose? Autumn’s beauty withers to grey; Does that make it more desired? Winter’s tranquility melts away Either by spring or by fire. Either by ice or by rot. This life is all we have got. We have nothing else to lose, as we make a home of our tomb. For all love we deny, for all the poison we imbibe. For all memories lost to time Another part of us dies. Running ever slower now that a limb is gone. Blind eyes still perceive the beauty of the dawn. Beyond all sunsets and into the dark of loss, The snow greyed and the sky dimmed for it’s cost. The phantom limb heart for the soul weathered numb, The celluloid dances for the dead and succumbed. The symphony plays forever on into the abyss. The messages screaming to those who will never hear this...

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Available in Europe via Season Of Mist

THIS ALBUM RELEASES NOVEMBER 29, 2023


The Rime Of Memory:

It is such an ugly thought that we all will taste death. Many of us do our best to kind of push it to the back of our minds, so we can go about our daily lives, but just before sleep, it runs its fingers down your spine, resting warmly at your hip as you embark upon a dream, just to be startled with the reminder of your own impermanence.

Life is short…and gathers speed as it falls…slowly rolling down hill until making its plunge into the abyss, only to abruptly end at its highest speed…the days flying by like minutes, with each wrinkle in our increasingly fragile hands until we simply stop breathing….for what ever reason.

So we make occasions of mile stones…erecting them to acknowledge the ages we pass through. Every traveler stops to pay their respects and be reminded by those who long ago visited those mile stones…16….18….20….21…25…30….35…40…50….and so on…each milestone further apart than the last, each one less attended… less flowers at the foot of the stone crumbling into oblivion….and then the milestone is a grave….weeds growing around it, seldom seen and then forgotten…

Along the way we grapple with it as best we can…desperately holding on to our youth (some of us)…engaging in outlandish behavior to attempt to rediscover our passion for life, or revitalize our youth…but it’s pointless…you are what you are. And with each day you become more and more that.
It is the natural cycle of life. Be born, grow, die, be born, grow, die.
Our planet has such cycles as well. But along the way, our desperate attempts to halt our own cycles got in the way of the planet’s cycles. So desperate to evade our inevitabilities…we will harness and destroy the very life force we thrive from to just have one more day of youth and ease…we will desecrate the sacred cathedrals of the wilderness, the havens of all life just so that we can have a simpler existence, with more abundant resources for a privileged few…

…And then it comes. The well dries up. The forests burn. The smoke filled air choking our lungs…the dust billowing around our homes, our bellies crying out from food scarcity, dry eyes and parched throats seeking shelter from ever violent weather, cowering in the ruins of our landscapes, between walls, huddling in fear of collapse… we look in the mirror and we see:
We look old. It all served us nothing. There is no escape from death and grief and loss…So why did we do this? I guess we just couldn’t come to terms with the end…so we encouraged it.

This album has 2 meanings. You can see this album solely as a rant about the climate crisis and wilderness advocacy. Or you can see this album as a coming to terms with the aging process…Or, as I do, you can see it allergoricaly about both.
I wrote this album in my years of 37 to 40. It’s strange to remember my parents at my age and think about how different it feels…raising my own children…having my own career…my own priorities…my own struggles. They did too. Passing by their mile stones, we begin to humanize them… they stop being the distant untouchable monoliths, towering over us…and we begin to see the cracks in them… just as we begin to crack, ourselves. Every time I go home, I drink a beer or two at my old man’s grave. His final mile stone… One day, my boys just may drink a beer at mine.

Each day is sacred as we slowly march towards the end. Don’t forget to enjoy the beauty you see, smell, taste and feel along the way. It won’t last forever…so enjoy it, cherish it… protect it.

Don’t let the fire burn out.
Austin

credits

released November 29, 2023

Panopticon is: A. Lunn: Screamed and Sung Vocals, Acoustic and Electric Guitars, 4 and 12 String Bass, Drums and Percussion, Keyboards, Pedal Steel, Lap Steel, Accordion, Flutes and Whistles, Singing Bowls, choirs, samples, Recording, Square neck Resonator, Choir and String arrangement.

Also appearing in significant performance, writing and arrangement collaboration:
Charlie Anderson: Violin (Electric and Acoustic), String composition and Arrangement
Patrick Urban: Cello, String composition and Arrangement

Treasured Guest Performers:
Echtra: Screamed Vocals on “Winter’s Ghost”
Victor Sanchez: Screamed Vocals on “Cedar Skeletons” and Additional Lyrics
Patrick Næss : Poem and Reading on “An Autumn Storm”
Jan Van Berlekom : Screamed and Sung Vocals on “Enduring the Snow Drought”
Johan Nilsson : Piano on “I Erindringens Høstlige Dysterhet” and sung vocals on “The Blue Against The White”
Nina Nilsson: Hardanger Fiddle and arrangement on “I Erindringens Høstlige Dysterhet”.

The North Woods (International) Choir:
Austin Lunn, Andy Klockow, William Seay, Patrick Urban, Jan Van Berlekom, Andrea Morgan, Bekah Lunn.
All Choir Arrangment was collaborative between members.
A special thanks to Andy and Andrea for their significant arrangement contribution.

Mixed and Mastered by Spenser Morris
Photography and Art Direction by Bekah Lunn.
All photography taken in Minnesota’s beloved North Woods
Illustrations and Layout by A. Lunn

Thank you to my wife, Bekah and my sons Håkan and Rune, Jan, Marty, my live band brothers,
Grift, Falls of Rauros, Afsky, Fauna, The Glorious Dead, Exulansis, Vemod, Primevil Well, Obsequiae, Dämmerfarben, Aerial Ruin, Nechochwen and Waldgeflüster. And of course: thank you.

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Panopticon Ely, Minnesota

All instruments,lyrics and compositions by A.Lunn unless otherwise noted.

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