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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - FULL FATHOM FIVE

Professor Jason Gildow

, my favorite

expert on Egyptology and evil-sounding Medieval texts

, recently sent

Cuniglius Records

his GIL DAO band's home-recordings of ancient Egyptian hymns and Shakespearean magical poems. His songs are really scary and good--weird, de-tuned evil scuzz, with fuzzed-out, half-disintegrated vocals--and all sound like spells that crazy people would cast on one another. There's also a swaying, nitrous quality that makes me feel like I'm going to pass out or be sick, that really wrong kind of psychedelia, all over them. I strongly recommend them for that wonderful skin crawly feeling that's difficult to invent anew. You can hear it with a click further.

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The first song on his tape is called "Full Fathom Five" and was originally written by Robert Johnson. Not the

American blues guy

who sold himself to the devil and inspired a lot of European guitarists to dress up in black robes, but his 1600s predecessor also named Robert Johnson who wrote songs about devils and witches for Shakespeare's lyrics in "The Tempest." (Basically, the same guy.) Johnson also was the court musician for King James, the one who produced the King James Bible.

In the

Tempest

, "Full Fathom Five" is a song that an air spirit sings about her sea-god father, and it goes like this:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.

Professor Gildow - "Full Fathom Five"

If you'd like to hear more, email him

here

.

PATRICK HAMBRECHT