I am talking about dark endless caverns, chaos, and death. The sound just stays there. Some find sleep here. Some find an endless nightmare. I can only tell you what happened to me and why I never came back. I stayed in there.
A long sustained slow motion horror dream
It is so very dark, I only hear extreme slow motion sounds creating a troubling but peaceful background, exploring most every manner of proper dark creepy themes. Long echoes that overlap and make it sound like the chamber we are in is really big, too dark to see anything, the air is saturated with sustained vague motions in darkness. There are forces at work here, the darkness hides the massive conspiracy. We will die unless we are granted freedom from harassment and asylum. I make demands and shake the walls in the darkness. The sound is something I can only try to bring back here in these words I write to you at this moment. What I heard was a long sustained slow motion horror dream, things happen and you feel the darkness touch you. Time stops and you are lost there forever.
Everyone, including the children, was told to line up. As we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of grape colored liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid contained poison and that we would die within 40 minutes. We all did as we were told. The time passed and we did not die, they said that this was another loyalty test. Apostasy is subject to the death penalty in some countries, enforced most harshly in some communities. The People’s Temple of Jim Jones was all about “apostolic socialism” seeking “socialist paradise” and a “sanctuary” somewhere promised, a paradise or utopia, gradually subjecting its followers to Jones’s sophisticated mind control and behavior modification techniques he said were developed in the wars, using a variety of experimental techniques, such as frequent repeated recorded readings of the news followed regularly by a relentless and vigorous discussion group. Just agree and go along with us and we will save you from the worst evil.
I am talking about dark endless caverns, chaos, and death. The sound just stays there. Some find sleep here. Some find an endless nightmare. I can only tell you what happened to me and why I never came back. I stayed in there.
Circling the endless dark room ::
The first track is “909” (8:32) and it has a video, the tableau is alive, however nothing much happens except the music and time goes along. It’s perfect, timeless. Hopeless. The real action is in your own head. It is too dark, time stops and slowly a divine presence emerges, low pitched voices singing together, a choir of phantoms rising rushing into the air and then…
The Doomsday Glee Club, that is what I might have once jokingly called the dark choir of thousands of husky fellows, clad in distressed monk’s robes, who are setting the tone for this endless nightmare. I can only wonder, when will this madness stop? I am testing the lock. Circling the endless dark room I am feeling with my hands to find a door, or some kind of way. There is no end. Searching in the dark, reaching into the next place.
Everyone called him “Father” or “Dad” by both adults and children and they would conduct those fake suicide rituals, glazed eyes and festering paranoia face to face, to realize that nearly a thousand lives, ours included, were in his paternal hands in the years that followed. After Jonestown came the Branch Davidians, the Solar Temple, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven’s Gate. “Peoples Temple” (7:11), a creepy sustained dark choir, and endless moments just being there trying to find something.
Now imagine “Redwood Valley” (7:23), rising higher and higher, this endless dark Sequoia valley brings tall slow changes. Still, that is when I learned that the end is long gone and we will now all just stay here forever. So relax.
Wait. Some hands found something in the darkness, reaching around, they found “The Box” (6:31). Something singular was found in the dark by bare hands, so big and so long like so, a coffin? No. A box, just a box, solid on top with some barely visible slow rising and falling, very gradual undulations. What if something might try to get out of the box? “The Only” (7:47) shimmering metal surfaces buzz and hum, I am here often. “Down by the River” (7:12) the old choir of phantoms has gathered once again, the mood is slower, higher and darker. You wake up feeling better. But wait. Why is there rivermud on the sheets?
The People’s Temple is Council of Nine’s third album, each of the three focusing on the dark side of mass followings and cults, the first being Exit Earth, the second being Davidian.
“A tiny kitten sits next to me. Watching. A dog barks. The birds gather on the telephone wires. Let all the story of this Peoples Temple be told. Let all the books be opened. This sight … o terrible victory. How bitter that we did not, could not, that The People’s Temple was crushed by a world that he didn’t make—how great the victory.
If nobody understands, it matters not. I am ready to die now. Darkness settles over The People’s Temple on its last day on earth.”
The People’s Temple is available on Cryo Chamber. [Bandcamp]
