The Golden Bough - Book V: Earth is to Keep Silence

Pro duplicated and full-body printed white-shell cassette
with full-color J-card in clear Norelco cases. 

Edition of 50

Combining features of dark ambient, ritual music, dungeon synth, and various cinematic elements and techniques, Queensland—based The Golden Bough’s releases all focus intently on their respective themes with the aim of temporarily immersing the listener within a new worldview. We share this admiration for Earth & can’t wait to experience it with you!

‘Book V: Earth is to Keep Silence’ is an experiment in symphonic dark ambience inspired by themes of both the passage of time and the mystical concept of keeping private one's spiritual pursuits. At its core, the suite is intended as a representation of the Earth itself as it bears witness to cosmic history, each movement designed to express various chapters of our planet’s silent story. In this way, it was conceived as an avenue through which to convey my profound sense of awe and reverence for the natural world. That awe which can easily leave us speechless.

Writing about the other inspiration for this album —the notion of “keeping silence”— is where I currently find myself tiptoeing across a razor’s edge of irony. In esoteric practices, the injunction to “keep silence” is often associated with the belief that certain aspects of spiritual experience should not be openly shared or discussed. Instead, they must be kept secret, allowing the practitioner to maintain the “purity” and/or “potency” of their spiritual journey. This is all well and good (and maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t), but from my perspective, silence’s greatest utility lies in serving the purpose of dissuading practitioners of all spiritual paths from the act of proselytisation. In a vacuum, spirituality is a beneficial and often indescribably beautiful pursuit, but when disseminated widely, it can all-too-easily become toxic, metastasising into cults, organised religion, and rigid hierarchies.

Compositionally, ‘Book V…’ forms a kind of infinite loop in which the beginning implies the end and the end implies the beginning, an idea influenced by the cycles of the seasons, epochs, eras, eons, and yugas. By exclusively utilising electronic versions of acoustic instruments and at times pushing them well beyond the limits of their analogue counterparts, I hope that I have managed to reinforce the central paradox of this release. That being the inadequacy of language and the limitation of words in conveying not only spiritual ideas but also concepts of time and scale which exist vastly beyond the scope of human experience. This paradox becomes more clear as I write this, choking on the irony of it all: Not only have I attempted to convey the indescribable through music, but I’m now attempting to describe that already inadequate musical representation in this awkward thesis statement. Feel free to laugh at me, I certainly am.

Obviously, some things can’t be effectively expressed by words. Well, not my words, at least. Maybe I should just opt to “plead the fifth” and Keep Silence.

- Nate 

Inspirations: Igor Stravinsky, Hans Zimmer, Philip Glass, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Jonny Greenwood, Leyland Kirby, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, Ramsay Dukes, Jan Fries, Peter Grey.