COMETS OV CUPID

Comets ov Cupid is musician Jason Kesselring's latest project which treads the waters of both the most ancient of folk song and futurist ragarock inspired "space" music and all things shoegazer. Comets ov Cupid initially started as just "Cupid". The first show was at Magus Books for the Sonic Seance avant music gatherings. The performance was with a electric Turkish saz, amplifier, and digital looping device. Subsequent performances revolved around the epic electric guitar instrumental "Metalgazer" (a limited edition cd 75 total were available through Magus Music www.magusbooks.com)The early music was purely inspired the minimalist maximalist compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Glenn Branca. The change in name to Comets ov Cupid also coincided with a broader sound inspired by Turkish raga rock, shoegazer music, and ancient folk songs. Please listen and enjoy.LOVE POWER"While occupying a fairly compact area, Kesselring dominated the stage with serpentine grace. Even his least inspired moments are fueled by 90 percent testosterone and 111 percent prowess. His most inspired (and they are hardly rare) display a demonic virtuosity that would have done Liszt or Paganini proud. Inside the lurid chamber, I was drawn from a momentary distraction (an architectural detail perhaps, or the curve of a proud derriere) by a severe sonic disturbance of the highest magnitude. I turned to witness Kesselring, half-crouched, half-sprawled, at an impossible angle, guitar balanced, or rather poised, in a phallic manner, playing not two-handed, not one-handed, but no-handed, somehow channeling a mysteriously melodic stream of feedback. I doubt Tony Iommi or Randy Rhoads ever pulled that off. " Space Is the Place Bringing It All Back Home · Vol 21 · Issue 1035 · 10/4/00 by Rod Smith City Pages_______________________________________________________ _________" Blank Generation surrealist" -City Pages by Simon Peter Groebener 10/28/98____________________________________________________ ____________" Guitar-hero-in-waiting Jason Kesselring is the band's resident sick genius, capable of veering from anxious atmospherics to jagged art-rock freakouts within a single frame." -Star Tribune 1/05/01_____________________________________________________ ___________"Cupid – "Metalgazer" (Magusmusic 2006, 001, ltd. ed. CD-EP)------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------______From Aural Innovations 35 (January 2007)Cupid is the solo project of Jason Kesselring, the former guitarist/vocalist of Minneapolis psych/space-rockers Skye Klad (later Satyrswitch). “Metalgazer” is a single-take recording of just over 20 minutes, an instrumental textural drone piece loosely constructed in three movements. Kesselring employs only a single guitar, colored with a myriad of delay and echo effects, and in the middle section, an actual violin bow (as opposed to the so-popular, and non-destructive, e-bow). In lieu of an actual recording studio, Kesselring chose to record in the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Duluth, MN, which offered (in his words) “transcendent acoustic properties.”The piece opens with a somewhat dissonant wailing drone, but then quickly charges into a layered heavy stoner riff, that repeats (MIDI-fied echo-playback unit obviously in use here) as Kesselring then adds in additional counterpoint statements on the off-beats, and eventually a fuzzy soaring lead break over the top. I remember a Swedish (?) guy named Bond Berglund doing this sort of on-the-fly composition technique live (ironically also in a former Catholic church in Pittsburgh, PA) as an opening act for The Brain (Farflung electronic alter-ego) and Cluster (Moebius & Roedelius), and it was very effective and I’d always wanted to hear more of this kind of thing. Anyway, by the time we’re six minutes in, Kesselring has ramped up the energy full blast and he’s shredding on the strings, and then stomping on the wah and delay pedals for the initial denoument. Movement Two is the eerie minimalist drone segment, with just some incidental sounds as the backdrop for the bowed guitar statements. Kesselring really teases you here, letting the various tones and chords bleed out of the instrument and echo through the cathedral a bit more slowly than the listener would normally expect, and the sense of anticipation for the next stroke keeps you involved.Finally, at fifteen minutes in, the heavier fuzz-echo riffs return and we get into some heavy echo drone that is a bit reminiscent of the kind of thing that Sunn O))) does. Frankly, the hooded Sunn-gods rather much bore me to death, but applied in moderation and mixed in with a number of different textures as Kesselring does here, the end effect is anything but boring. By the time the final strands of reverb-guitar come slowly to the landing, crisscrossing the runway in waves of sonic disturbance and fuzzy echo, “Metalgazer” has proven itself to be really quite a nice affair indeed. Check it out.Metalgazer has been released in a simple paper-sleeve packaging as a very limited edition of 75, each individually numbered, and can be obtained from http://www.magusbooks.com "Reviewed by Keith Henderson Aural Innovations_________________________________________________ _______________""As Cupid, Jason Kesselring freely admits to nipping composer Terry Riley. We'd probably never notice otherwise. His CD "Metalgazer," released last April on the fledgeling Magus Music label, finds the ex-Skye Klad frontman and self-contained guitar army forging epic, maximalist instrumentals from viscous riffs, aided by an effects array the size of Uranus. At the Ritz, he'll be louder. Mute Era, Thunderbolt Pagoda and Zebulon Pike follow, in order of ascending heaviness. With DJ Armchair."- - Rod Smith Star Tribune