Exclusive video premiere of ‘Wheel Upon the Car of Dragonaut’ by Blasting Rod.

Originally a solo project that expanded into an improvisational collective, Shah began to mix original compositions with improvisation under the name of Blasting Rod in 2013. Blasting Rod has been active in various guises since July 2006. They began as an improvisational trio. ‘III’ is their latest album, and actually the third chapter for that matter. It’s full of fuzzed out psychedelic atmospheres.

Blasting Rod at Rock Bar Shelter, Nagoya, Japan 2021-12-04 | Photo by Hisashi Kawai

Today we are premiering their latest video, directed and produced by Chris Craychee. The song is part of ‘Anthology Album’ issued by The Hermetic Library.

“This song developed out of a rehearsal improvisation a few years ago. While making a list of songs from our repertoire that might go on our next album, it seemed time to do something with this jam session that had continued to be stuck vaguely in memory. After a dig through old rehearsal audio all of the parts were there, but in need of some structure. Around the same time the only lyric and modified title is a phrase found in a book on Tarot philosophy titled, The Book of Thoth. It seemed to perfectly illustrate the sound for the yet to be named song after the application of both a little misinformation and tribute. From the title came the introduction of field recordings made in Varanasi, India over a decade ago, which further informed the arrangement. The basic track is all one live take performing in a room together recorded by Yoshikazu Tanaka, who produced Kasturei’s Paradise Kappa back in…hmmhmmmhmm. We then brought in our Indophile road manager, and Chihiro’s former Stone Edge bandmate, Noriko O’Sugi on vocals, and with a bit of serendipity at Studio dubreel in Asuke Village with Norihiro “NORI” Nakamura, all of the pieces were gathered together. The tracks were handed off to Yukito Okazaki from Eternal Elysium, who, to quote our Chicago-based collaborator, Mark Hardy, “Totally went ‘Woo’” with them at Studio Zen. It was strangely liberating to completely remove myself from that part of the process and just let Mr. Okazaki have his way with the raw materials we gave him. This, and one other track that was also remixed by Yukito Okazaki were submitted to Portland, Oregon’s The Hermetic Library for their annual compilations. This one ended up on the subscription exclusive ‘This Is Not An Hermetic Library Anthology Album 3’ that was released on November 25th.We’d been talking with Chris Craychee, who has contributed lyrics previously, about using one of our new tracks with one of his 360°video projects. Wanting to draw some more attention to this somewhat hidden release, an idea for a few short clips quickly turned into a complete video.