Recorded with Russia’s oldest orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, this stirring body of work taps into the more melodic, uplifting aspects of the KJ musical canon, using Coleman’s ongoing journey with this hugely influential UK outfit, something central to his being since later teenage years, as the consummate vehicle for a Gnostic mass (a ritualised celebration of the mysteries of existence).
What we have here is a passion project recorded at a time of international tension and delivered against the odds – “13 digestible epics”, five with full chorus, ordered to be experienced in a single sitting, and conceived to appeal to those not generally engaged with the world of orchestral music….
“I wanted to revisit not just a succession of epiphanies that transformed my own life,” explains Coleman, “but also to portray some of the more hidden or occulted milestones of the human race that have captured my imagination for some four decades. So I specifically chose an unusual combination of sacred texts that I discovered at different stages throughout my life. The only possible connection between them was that they had the immediate effect of inflaming and lifting my spirits to another level. They are, to coin a phrase, Words of Power!”
The prose that best fulfilled these criteria was ‘The Great Invocation’ (‘Magna Invocatio’ in Latin) by late mystic author, Alice Bailey, founder of the Lucis Trust – an organisation with consultative status to the United Nations, and one dedicated to the establishment of a new and better way of life based on the fulfilment of the divine plan for humanity.
Launching with a choral fanfare, aiming “to project the themes of ‘The Great Invocation’ to the four corners of the earth”, Magna Invocatio is 90 minutes of powerful, transcendental orchestral music designed “to lift the listener up and away from the traumas of our world to another dimension, a more desirable reality where positivity and possibility, Agape and interconnectedness take precedence.”
States Coleman, celebrated musician, composer, producer, author, lecturer, traveller, philosopher, actor & Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (an Order of France recognising a significant contribution to the arts), “The end goal was always to bring magic into the listener’s life in some meaningful way”.
Magna Invocatio, ‘The Great Invocation’, clearly does that.
Finally, with collective nostrils flared and righteous anger carried torch-high, Killing Joke continue to take their music of resistance to fresh levels, and are confirmed as special guests on Tool’s forthcoming 26 date North American Tour. The Tool / Killing Joke tour starts on 15th October in Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado and finishes on 25th November at Capitol One Arena in Washington, DC.
Magna Invocatio – a Gnostic mass for choir and orchestra inspired by the sublime music of Killing Joke track listing:
- Absolute Descent Of Light
- The Raven King
- Intravenous
- You’ll Never Get To Me
- Absent Friends
- Invocation
- In Cythera
- Big Buzz
- Adorations
- Into The Unknown
- Euphoria
- Honour The Fire
- Magna Invocatio (Gloria)