Neurot Recordings & Atlas Obscura Present a Recording of Janaka Stucky Live in Seattle With Special Guest Lori Goldston
Neurot Recordings & Atlas Obscura present a recording of Janaka Stucky live in Seattle with special guest Lori Goldston
Published in 2019 by Jack White's publishing imprint, Third Man Books, Ascend Ascend was written over the course of twenty days, coming in and out of trance states brought on by intermittent fasting and somatic rituals while secluded in the tower of a 100-year-old church. Rooted in the Jewish mystical tradition of Hekhalot literature, which chronicles an ascent up the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to witness the Merkabah, or “chariot of God,” this book-length ecstatic poem drafts a surreal, mythological landscape in which maximalist language shreds the natural world. Light becomes rainbowed sex. Intestines tangle into an aria. The sky is gallowed. At the center of this apocalyptic devastation stands the speaker of these poems, asserting: I explode. I shall love. I ascend. Equal parts Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” Ascend Ascend makes us both passenger and witness as we participate in the ecstatic destruction of the self through its union with the divine.
We’ll be releasing a live album of Janaka performing Ascend Ascend in Seattle with cellist, and long-time Neurot friend, Lori Goldston. To celebrate the release of this record, and a 2023 tour sponsored by Atlas Obscura, we’re partnering with Janaka on a Kickstarter campaign. The record will happen no matter what, but this Kickstarter is an opportunity for us to celebrate its release in a very special way by creating all sorts of exclusive items like art prints, colored vinyl, digital downloads, ritual candles, and special VIP access to a new round of live performances around the country that Janaka is planning with Atlas Obscura in 2023!
The artwork for the record is by David V. D’Andrea, who has created album covers and tour posters for musical acts such as: Sleep, Earth, OM, and Godspeed! You Black Emperor. Meanwhile, the record itself is being expertly pressed and packaged by Third Man Pressing—the record-manufacturing division of Third Man Records & Books, who published Ascend Ascend.
Support the Kickstarter and receive all sorts of exclusive items, from special colored vinyl to special VIP access to the new round of live performances of Ascend Ascend happening next year.