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Sahara, 1909

from In Search Of The Fantastic by Greg Segal

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Sahara, 1909 (7:29)

floor tom, snare, cymbal, 7-string

I had originally intended to do a track around the idea of Aleister Crowley’s trip to Bou Saada in the Sahara in 1909. During this trip he encountered the demon Choronzon, spirit of dispersion, while “scrying the aethers”- a method of obtaining visions of increasingly higher symbolic realms through use of Enochian magick. But then I thought that maybe that was too specific and that I shouldn’t really tell people what to imagine. So before I started recording I decided to come up with a few more scenarios around this desert motif, so that while I worked I might produce a few more elements for people to work up their own interpretations around. I imagined a military expedition getting hopelessly lost and becoming a ghost brigade. Maybe they died in a sandstorm and reappear suddenly to claim people who wander solitary through the desert. Maybe they survived a battle, got lost and met Choronzon, who escaped the circle and was never successfully banished, and so roamed the area looking for victims. The Crowley story and the “expedition” motif were very present in my mind as I did the tracks. But the main things I tried to think about while I recorded were the time period, the location, and the feeling that something very intense and frightening and weird happened. Ultimately I didn’t want to get more specific than that. That’s why it ended up being “Sahara 1909” and not “Bou Saada”, Sahara being more general and so probably more evocative for a wider range of people.

The melody that’s whistled at the beginning just came out of me once the tape was rolling, and it felt almost like it came through me. I love moments like that, especially when they’re part of a recording.

"Sahara 1909" would seem to be a stand-alone, but the insect noises in it recur near the end of the album on "Wednesday 10 PM", and were created the same way, with guitar.

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from In Search Of The Fantastic, released September 2, 2015

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Greg Segal Portland, Oregon

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