Who?
Austere.
What?
Mindscapes: ambient soundtracks for altered states of mind.
When?
Since 1998.
Where?
Somewhere in the Pacific Wonderland.
Why?
Because we like to.
How?
We're not so sure ourselves.
The Austere Manifesto
- Revisions:
Written / Copyright © 1998; revised 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008.
- Trademark:
Thanks for Listening.
- Motto:
Art will always come before money, sales, or popularity.
- We are working together to produce musick for the pleasure of creating and
enjoying it. We will continue to work as long as this continues, and if a
time comes when we both agree that is no longer the case, Austere will end.
- As much as we like Sex, Drugs, Booze, and Rock-n-Roll, we are interested in
making musick for the sake of Art. As such, we will remain as anonymous as
possible, in an attempt to avoid "The Cult of Personality" that surrounds
even the most inept, uninteresting, void musickians.
- We are not interested in financial gain nor do we expect it, rather we will
likely lose money creating Art, but that is a price we are willing to pay
to be able to express our interest and creativity in musick.
- We are interested in every aspect of Art, not just the musick but the
packaging and presentation as well, and will strive to make our releases as
unique as we hope each one will be, even if "unconventional packaging"
causes problems with marketing or distributing our musick.
- We are not interested in playing live, particularly not in touring. 99% of
touring spent loading in gear, driving, packing out gear, setting up &
sound-checking, waiting around hoping for some food and drink, then finally
playing, usually the same exact songs in the same exact order in the same
exact way night after night, then packing it all out and hitting the road
again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- We have no interest in becoming overly proficient in any instrument or
sound-generating device, and as such, will not refer to ourselves as
"musickians." In many ways, we will try to "unlearn" as much conventional
training and knowledge of musick and instruments in order to approach both
in the most naive, innocent way possible, as through the eyes of a child.
- We Respect All Musick. While we might not like some, might believe there
are faults with some, might think that the artist(s) involved have done
better work in the past, ultimately the Art of Musick deserves Respect.
- To quote our good mate Sean Williams (Process, The Mystery School Ensemble,
Artifacts Records): "You can either
go out to buy and listen to and see live musick, or you can make yourself stay
in the studio and make musick - but it's nearly impossible to do both." When
given a choice, when any of our three Muses is visiting, we will always choose
to make musick, not consume it.
- We have adopted Aleister Crowley's spellings, through our mutual
admiration of the musickians who were once Coil, of using of words such as
"magick" to distinguish it from "magic" (as in stage-magic), and hence
"musick" to try to distinguish our work from typical radio-fare "music." We
have also adopted the use of "e.v." for calendar dates in all our copyrights,
to distinguish it from the Christian origins of the calendar for the same
reasons - not in any sense of anti-christianity nor anti-religion, but to
disconnect it from a context we do not believe in.
- We are not truly esotericks not occultists, but rather agnosticks. We
disdain any association with Crowley, Satanists, or cults of any sort.
- We will always Thank others for Listening.
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