Label
Cold Spring Records

Written In Spring 1999
by
Mr Greg

Visit

Cold Spring Records


Malignant Records





Last Edit/Update
23 June, 1999

IGNIS FATUUS
Christus Snipes

Magickal Soundtracks

An article by Mr. Greg

    The music of Ignis Fatuus is very intentional, intense, and interesting.  It evokes both the sensation of being in a very calm and centered place -- in a ritual or religious rite, even -- while leaving your eyes wanting a similar visual score. The Futility Goddess, Ignis Fatuus'  first full-length album, excited and inspired me so much that I contacted the creator, Christus Snipes.
    Christus began playing music and experimenting with sounds over fifteen   years ago. While just a sophomore in High School, he and his friends would take cameras, tape recorders, and journals wherever they went. They were obsessed with documenting their experiences and any neat sounds, ideas, or images they came across. One such escapade, in an appropriated official government vehicle, resulted in a hilarious recording. It captures the giggling laughter and terrified sounds of stoned teenagers in a car which Christus is busily crashing into a farmer's field at over seventy miles an hour. (Do not try this at home, kids.) Eventually this type of consistent documenting and recording led Christus and his childhood buddy Brett Smith (Caul) to form the band Ped Sking.

Visit Caul on the web.

    No longer documenting their experiences just for fun, Brett and Christus began to create music with their tapes. They also began playing and recording everything around them. "When I first started doing music I was collaborating with Brett Smith (of Caul) and we used whatever we found air ducts, garage doors, toys, department store keyboards, TVs, you name it." [10/12/98]
One benefit of this experimentation for Christus was that he was working with what he had; he was not waiting for some piece of critical equipment. His vision was not limited by material resources. The most important aspects, however, were that "Ped Sking really helped me to become familiar with the multi-track recording process along with the basic creative impulse and the myriad of ways that that can be manifested."
    Having worked together for several years, Christus and Brett decided to pursue their own unique ideas. This parting led to the birth of Ignis Fatuus. Rather than continue on in the purely experimental vein, Christus decided to focus his interests and learn more about the craft of recording and working with samples. He began exploring these processes in-depth, trying out innumerable approaches to layering, recording, and re-recording samples.

    During this same period Christus took great interest in films in which the soundtracks were as pivotal and influential as the images. His interests also led him towards some modern composers like Wim Mertens, Philip Glass, Zbigniew Preisner, and older pieces by Michael Nyman. Greatly inspired, the artist composed several songs. Unable to come up with a name, he decided to randomly open up the dictionary and start looking at different words and names. Having used this method before, he found it to be a reliable form of creative divination. This was how he discovered the name Ignis Fatuus. In Latin, it means "foolish fire."
    Christus explains this further "Ignis Fatuus is a term also used to describe a light that travelers of olde (sic) might've seen at night following alongside them several feet from their path. Curiosity would eventually get the best of them and they'd go chasing it. Usually this light would hover above such things as quicksand and, inevitably, the travelers would meet their end in this manner. Led astray by an illusory light." He chose the name because, "It metaphorically seemed to correspond to my life and my lessons at the time."

   One of the artists who influenced Christus during the early years of Ignis Fatuus was Genesis P-Orridge, founder of Coum Transmission, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Thee Majesty. While the music of TG and PTV did speak to him, it was P- Orridge's approach to music and video which really got Christus' attention. Having read an interview where P-Orridge described well-paired music and video as working like a  spell, the artist knew he had found what he wanted to work on. Having grown impatient with more traditional forms of art like sculpture and painting, Christus had been seeking an art form with greater energy and motion. Composing motivational pieces which inspired the mind's eye became his calling.

Visit Genesis P-Orridge on the web.

    Several months after Christus read P-Orridge's description of melding media into magickal spells, he joined Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth for a short time. This gave him a chance to explore ideas and practices of magick and mysticism with a like- minded group of individuals. Brett, now creating his own unique film scores without films, also joined TOPY at about this time. Clearly linked as friends and musicians, Brett and Christus have actively exchanged ideas, support, and encouraged one another for many years.
    While active in TOPY, Christus saw an ad in a TOPY newsletter for a cassette compilation of musick by Temple members. By the time that Christus contacted Justin, the coordinator of this effort, the cassette had already been released. Justin really liked his musick, however, and reviewed it for an industrial music magazine. Several months later Justin contacted him and told him he was starting a label, Cold Spring.

Visit Cold Spring on the web.

    Christus sent him a tape of some new material and Justin liked that, too. After several letters and exchanges of tapes The Futility Goddess was born.

    Currently Christus is at work on a new album, as yet untitled. Unlike The Futility Goddess, the new album will be comprised of songs which define themselves by creating their own context. Interested in exploring the physicality of the real instruments, Christus will have many more of these on his new album. In addition to his musical work, Christus has continued his research and interests into the magickal world. While his focus has been primarily upon Zen and Buddhism, he has always been open to "magick that works."  His own magick works, too. Recently, a Taoist priest contacted Christus expressly to thank him for composing The Futility Goddess. This priest, one of Genesis P-Orridge's magickal advisers, regularly uses TFG during his ritual works.
    Clearly Christus is in touch with a very magickal and musical vein. Even  though he has not sought out magickal people, they are beginning to contact him, to seek him out. For a first album, this is an impressive and admirable achievement. Doubtless, Ignis Fatuus' next album will be a collection of magickal spaces waiting to be experienced, waiting to be filmed.

This material is copyrighted to Das Romanie Booksellers, 1999.

Click the graphic
to read Michael Lunds
review of
The Futility Goddess