DeadAgainst

I really have no idea what I was saying on the previous pages; I'll try to simplify a bit. I think she is rather speaking of obeying the intuitive promptings of the Self, or, as she said elsewhere, "channeling angels in the New Age..." 'Cause my body is my temple, my heart is one, too... I wish you could see to my soul through this black bathing suit You don't know me any better than they do, baby 'Cause I sing like an angel, my heart's like one, too Some other choice quotes from that interview-- She references this in quite a few places and has mentioned multiple times her fascination with Carl Jung. Her music, by her own words, is depicting the interior landscape of the Self. Her songs and poems seem to flit in and out of exotericism and esotericism; witness "Paradise is Very Fragile": Who am I to dream for you? It’s just that in my own mind, I was born with a little bit of paradise. I was lucky in that way. Not like my husband, Who was born and raised in hell. I always had something gentle to give. All of me, in fact. It’s one of the beautiful things about me. It’s one of the beautiful things about nature.... Paradise is very fragile, and it’s only getting worse. And every time I think of that, I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree. And this summer night, you in front of me, Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil. Because you take, and you take, and take, and you take, But you taste like the beach and a kiss. Candy from my eyes, in my veins you run citrus. Watercolour images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst. Kundalini, you breathe me. I could do this forever. But my heart is very fragile, and I have nothing left to give. What is she talking about here? She starts with a concrete picture of the Woolsey Fire; but the end is quite different. Who is her "husband"? Well, wasn't Jesus her boyfriend? Is this her Animus, in the Jungian sense? Why do serpents on orange trees arise in her "midst"? Isn't that the "heart girt with a serpent," representing the risen Kundalini? Or is it the Guns and Roses of her Axl Rose Husband? The following lines make the connection explicit. Compare to the poem by Aleister Crowley: I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined About the invisible core of the mind. Rise, O my snake! It is now is the hour Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower. Rise, O my snake, into brilliance of bloom On the corpse of Osiris afloat in the tomb! O heart of my mother, my sister, mine own, Thou art given to Nile, to the terror Typhon! Ah me! but the glory of ravening storm Enswathes thee and wraps thee in frenzy of form. Be still, O my soul! that the spell may dissolve As the wands are upraised, and the æons revolve. Behold! in my beauty how joyous Thou art, O Snake that caresses the crown of mine heart! Some sources on Yoga will claim that the Kundalini must rise to the top of the head, but this is a bit of a misconception; it is rather the vehicle of awakening the Self in the heart. "The fire of Kundalini is at the base of all existence. It is the raw foundational energy that the spiritual seeker wants to cultivate, develop, or awaken, depending on which tradition or terms they use." I'm on fire, baby, I'm on fire He's got the fire and he walks with it He's got the fire and he talks with it His Bonnie on the side, Bonnie on the side Makes me a sad, sad girl Who is "he"? Her unseen husband? But why does it make her a sad girl? Because awakening the Kundalini is accompanied by a profound Melancholy; the Dark Night of the Soul. "This is the beginning of the Nigredo process, whereby the initiate is pulverised, disintegrated, burnt to blackness. Nigredo is ‘Melancholia’; the saturnine mood is sober, sardonic, grave or sullen. This is the lead of the Alchemists. The beginning of the spiritual process." Well, wasn't "Melancholia the original" "Ultraviolence" title from the Queen of Alchemy wedded to the heavy-hitting King, who once proclaimed SOLVE ET COAGULA? A song like "The Blackest Day" is about journeying into the depths of the Unconscious. "For the Alchemist, the first stage of the 'Great Work' is the Nigredo, the stage of Blackness, disintegration, chaos, where the material (metal, the soul of Man, or what have you) is reduced to the 'prima materia' or formless original stuff, before it can proceed to the second stage, the Albedo (whiteness), where the material may be unified once again. The Alchemical process is circular, alternating between Solve and Coagula on its path towards perfection." (John R. Stahl) The next step of the alchemical process is Albedo--the title of an interlude in 2016. And indeed, Ultraviolence finds her cooking up snow on her alchemical stove; comprehend her sure white lines. (Why is "Yayo" such a significant song for her? Why did she sell heart-shaped coke spoon necklaces?) Now compare the subject of the title track to this stage of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey: "Ultraviolence" is a study in Initiation by the archetypal Father where the initiate is "pulverised, disintegrated, burnt." "Jim takes me down, he's a fire eater..." I could have died right there 'Cause he was right beside me Jim raised me up [Mississippi South] He hurt me but it felt like true love Jim taught me that Loving him was never enough With his ultraviolence Now turn to her explanation of "Get Free": And her explanation on World Café, this is the key to getting free: "I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people." And now I do, I wanna move Out of the black (out of the black) Into the blue (into the blue) Finally, gone is the burden of the Crowley way of being That comes from energies combined (2017) "The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego." (Crowley) Crowley's works were based on the western tradition of Hermetic alchemy...among other things. I'm crossing the threshold From the ordinary world To the reveal of my heart Undoubtedly That will for certain Take the dead out of the sea And the darkness from the arts "For as thy blood is mingled in the cup of BABALON, so is thine heart the universal heart." (Crowley) The "threshold" is in Crowley's system a crossing of the Abyss; the "energies combined" are the alchemical King and Queen, or Fire and Water, Animus and Anima. The arts are, of course, the Hermetic arts; in one live performance, she replaces "arts" with heart, where the transformation takes place in the core of being. After 2017, it seems like she made a deliberate decision, as stated in "Get Free," to focus more on the realities of her day-to-day life and less on mysticism (out of the black, into the blue). Her songs since then seem to lack the overt symbolism of her previous work, trying to find paradise in the mundane. "Life is beautiful, but you don't have a clue."

"Freedom comes from the call..." https://knpr.org/npr/2018-02/lana-del-rey-world-cafe I want to end with the song that ends the record, "Get Free." You sing, "This is my commitment / My modern manifesto / I'm doing it for all of us / Who never got the chance." Never got the chance to what? For Amy [Winehouse], and for Whitney [Houston]. "And all my birds of paradise / Who never got to fly at night, / 'Cause they were caught up in the dance." It's about people who don't get to reach their full potential because they let controlling people stop them from being free. It has a line that's so evocative: "I wanna move out of the black, into the blue." I'm wondering what the black is and what the blue is. Well, in my head, the black was negative thinking, and the blue was a bit of a retreat into nature. So visually, I was thinking the ocean, but also just the connotation of the words: I think of the sky, like a new horizon, something fresher. What's the key to getting free? I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people. "When I was writing that song, I had a little conversation with my engineer, who's one of my dear friends; his name's Kieron Menzies. And we were talking about this model they use in literature; sometimes it's called the Hero's Journey. And it starts with crossing the threshold of the ordinary world and moving to the main character's reveal of the heart. And then the character goes through all these different cycles; they battle the giant, they battle themselves, and then they come back and they find out who they really are. And so I liked that idea. I thought it sort of resembled my story. (Inaudible), I revealed my heart. And then the rest is a Mystery. All I'll say." What did she say in the inaudible part?

Everything else either has that ridiculous clipping or is at like 48kbps

This is absolutely the best version I can find anywhere on the internet, and I've been looking. Do you have it in lossless or 320?

I still like BB, but Beautiful and Violets are pure tedium and drag the middle of the album down. Imagine IYLDWM segueing straight into Dealer and you have a killer album.

It seems that there are two digital masters for this album: the original master from which the Text Book, Blue Banisters, and Wildfire singles were pulled, and a second master released on CD. You can find the original master on Qobuz and it sounds great, but it clips like mad. I suspect the second master was an emergency fix job to tame some of the egregious clipping, but in so doing it lacks the punch of the original master. You can see the Qobuz waveforms compared with the Amazon release and they're noticeably different. Something for the collectors...

I have always been a big evangelist for Lana being best heard on vinyl. Someone uploaded the whole album to YT so you can hear for yourself:

This is definitely one of those albums that should only be heard on vinyl; the digital release has loads of nasty clipping on the songs. Here's an analysis and comparison (not mine): https://magicvinyldigital.net/2021/11/13/lana-del-rey-blue-banisters-review-vinyl-streaming-amazon-music-qobuz/

It’s just that in my own mind, I was born with a little bit of paradise. I was lucky in that way. Not like my husband, Who was born and raised in hell... And every time I think of that, I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree. And this summer night, you in front of me, Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil. Because you take, and you take, and take, and you take, But you taste like the beach and a kiss. Candy from my eyes, in my veins you run citrus. Watercolour images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst. Kundalini, you breathe me. I could do this forever.

first-season callbacks done right

I knew Pitchfork would concede, but I thought it would take ten years at least

the mastering is nicely balanced and lacks that glassy digital sound that marred LfL (Not that the vinyl doesn't have certain benefits in dynamics, but still, it's listenable)

Even the Drudge Report is stanning

LfL was badly-produced, tho; every track had the same glassy fake digital ProTools sound to it, except for the one produced by Sean Lennon

I like it It's better than LfL

I literally work in audio transcription during the day, so I took the liberty of correcting some of these

Tropico is a documentary

I respect a vinyl rip connoisseur

High quality 5.1 concert audio downmix @ 320kbps, by myself: https://mega.nz/#F!eVxwQIqb!vDWM4KDI70VzNANrlFjD-g

https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/lana-del-rey-cover-story

Radiohead pulling the Fake News defense in the wake of bad press, I take it

Wait, what comment? National Anthem always seems more and more like it's being sung by Melania Trump to me

Even if Radiohead owns the royalties to the song, I don't think that means she can't put it on the album ... does it? Otherwise all those Kidz Bop albums would never exist.