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Ash​-​Stained Cabinet

by Kolessa

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  • Full Digital Discography

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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Astral Temple, On earth, as it is, Fires will Sweep the Cities Built on Our Homes, and Ash-Stained Cabinet. , and , .

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  • Limited DIY cassette - “Ash stained cabinet”
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Limited release of home dubbed Cassette: Ash-Stained Cabinet by Kolessa, with art copied onto lilac paper and featuring a write up of the tale inspiring the music, on wine-stained paper.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Ash-Stained Cabinet via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
Knife 04:20
2.
Runner 04:31
3.
Jar 02:30
4.
Shawl 16:26
5.
Coin/Candle 06:47

about

In the inactive collection of the Bestattungsmuseum in Wien, an Ash-stained cabinet sits in a box, in a corner. This cabinet contains five artifacts - A small, crude knife; the front runner of a burial sled; a clay jar broken neatly into two pieces; a white shawl with blue embroidery; a slim candle with a coin melted into the side. Cabinet and artifacts both are suggested to originate in Ukraine, and the paperwork indicates nothing more. But a century ago...

Perhaps it was the end of the war, its countless rank of dead still haunting those left to rebuild, which gave Kolessa’s work the spark it needed; the public was abuzz about his exhibition, entitled “Funerary Rites and Songs of the Ukrainian Carpathians”, at the future site of the Bestattungsmuseum in Wien, Austria. The museum of death and mourning customs, which was opportunistically opened as the dire reports fed back in from the fronts, reportedly had its main room draped with mourning cloth, the deep purple of a northern sunset; walls and platforms were arrayed with articles of superstition, instruments made of bones and skin of unrecognizable animals. Kolessa himself was to present at the opening, leading the audience of lesser aristocrats and gentry in the most agreeable elements of the rites he had observed, as a symbolic mourning for the casualties of war - perhaps a song, but no wailing, and perhaps an adventurous soul would lie in the coffin lined with down from a native crane.

We have no record of the opening itself. Record exists of Kolessa returning to Lviv, but beyond his publications there is little record of what became of him, except for the curious fact that he ceased his study of music, focusing instead on folk poetry. The history of the Bestattungsmuseum today indicates that the institution was inaugurated some 40 years later, with no reference to a brief existence in 1918. Reports indicate a massive fire in the Innerestadt on some spring night of that year, remarkable both for the astonishing lack of casualties, and for the totally isolated conflagration - the site was burned to the ground, with only a scorch mark here or there on neighboring buildings. The report also indicates the discovery of a cabinet, stained deeply with ash from the fire but otherwise unharmed, containing five artifacts. When the Bestattungsmuseum opened (or reopened) in 1967, the cabinet was listed as part of the collection, and has appeared in every inventory since. Several attempts to return it to Ukraine, or to pass it to another collection, have failed. The author admits to occasionally indulging in some of the superstitions surrounding the cabinet, but wishes to emphasize that, given the evidence, it is probably just an ordinary container of cultural artifacts.

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released September 13, 2018

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