Vril

Effigies in Cork 

Sleevenotes (by Frank Key):

VRIL released their first album 'Effigies in Cork' in 2003, which the band recorded as a trio, consisting of Bob Drake, Chris Cutler and Lukas Simonis.

In the summer of 2007 they came together with an extra guitarist, Pierre Omer, former-dead brother, to record new material, which at the moment of writing (october 2007) is still being worked on. As a foursome the band felt more like a live-unit, so the plan is to do some gigs if the album comes out. But that can take a while. (personally i hope it can be done before the summer of 2008)

More to follow!

"...What you hold in your hands is a shadow of Lothar Preen's original concept. It took our hero almost ten years to attempt to recreate the glory that he created in that forsaken hangar. No blandishments would persuade the musicians to work with him again. In any case, the Tashkent Terror had succumbed to ever more enervating attacks of the seeds, his pallor so grotesque that he shunned human company; the Badger, having discovered that lawn tennis was dubbed sphairixtike by its 19th century inventor, now devoted the bulk of his waking hours to devising anagrams of the word; & Bim, sainted, gentle Bim, was holed up in the Antarctic, doing something scientific at a dilapidated weather station, despite being entirely ignorant of ice & penguins & penguins & ice. Lothar Preen himself, cursing & malevolent, yet had the will to wreak this music from some unknown, indeed unknowable, source. It is all we have, & for that, we should rejoice..."

chris wrote;
about the name - it's from a novel by edward bulwer lytton
"What is the vril?" I asked.
Therewith Zee began to enter into an explanation of which I understood very little, for there is no word in any language I know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies. They believe that it is one of the properties of the all-permeating agency of vril, to transmit to the well-spring of life and intelligence every thought that a living creature can conceive.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race, (1871)

lukas wrote;
it's funny.
as for vril, i thought is was some kind of plankton, but maybe you write that slightly different (couldn't find it in dictionaries). looking on Google i noticed a lot of stuff about energies, ancient civilizations,the power of the coming race and other esoteric stuff...

chris wrote;
krill is plankton
vril was invented by a victorian weird stories author, it was a kind of universal power nonsense..
i like it and it's simple and memorable and weird and will occasion some speculation and isn't in dictionaries and has no immediate associations..

lukas wrote;
yes it's good
i allready feel some vril running through my veins

lukas wrote (much later);
so Bob & me did two AA Kismet album's (with several other musicians). The concept was; 'songs' (in our personal rock/pop/whatever tradition). Then Bob came with the idea; let's make a twangy guitar album (i think the idea was planted in his head because of the intro of the 'nina' song on the second album, but that's just my idea). So i said yes, and he said let's ask Chris as a drummer (i only understood later that this was not the third AA Kismet album but the first 'Vril' one) and i said yes that's a good idea (if he starts practising playing in 4/4 i said). Then it turned out that i was the victim that should write all the tunes so i started writing all the tunes. Not that i mind writing music ,it can be fun of course. But the good thing about doing atonal/noisy/abstract music is that you can sleep well. With all those tunes haunting the backrooms of your sleeping head this gives more problems.
So i didn't sleep well for some time.

Part of the tunes that i wrote were still in a demo-state when we started to record them, in the summer of 2002. It meant that Bob still had to do some work -rearranging and editing and mixing- when Chris & me were gone home after the sessions. So it took some time to finish the album.

As for the 'twangy guitar'-concept; some of it is still there. Inspired by the Ventures, sometimes even a bit of postrocky stuff, the Shadows and all those other classics of the genre. What it became is a well blended mix of the people involved and the original concept. i am proud of it, and as i am a slow starter, i think the next Vril-album will be even better.