BANDCAMP

THE HALL OF MIRRORS

MARTIN HALL
MC
SEPTEMBER 1989
MIND AND MEDIA (MM888)

The Hall of Mirrors is the only one of Martin Hall’s music cassettes that was released through an actual distribution. Issued in a limited edition of 888 – all individually numbered copies – the tape offered a refreshing new way of working as far as Hall was concerned: Using a line of guest vocalists on the various tracks, the tape had a more sketch-like production to it, something that suited both the project and its main artist.

The Hall of Mirrors also features Hall’s first collaborations with both Irma Victoria and Aud Wilken, two performers that would later be highly featured on his Mind and Media label. The cassette was the label’s first release.

The track “Song for Someone” – one of the recordings on the tape that Martin Hall sings himself – is included on the Catalogue compilation box (2007).

1. Mind (4:13)
2. Fragment (1:17)
3. Brainwash (feat. Aud Wilken) (2:44)
4. Compression (feat. Henrik Möll) (1:44)
5. Box 1 (3:20)
6. Song for Someone (3:10)
7. Intermission 1 (0:21)
8. Heyl (3:45)
9. The World (Chanson D’Amour) (feat. Ken Rivad) (3:10)
10. Memorial (feat. Irma Victoria) (3:52)
11. Box 2 (2:54)
12. Reprise (1:32)
13. Intermission 2 (0:58)
14. Tension (Focus of Unity) (6:18)
15. Box 3 (3:56)
16. Got a Feeling (4:32)
17. Finale (0:51)

MIND

”What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow; our life is the creation of our mind.”
(The Dhammapada)

Never mind = no matter
No mind = never matter

FRAGMENT

”Everything has its tides – the pendulum swing to the right is the measure of that to the left – rhythm compensates.”
(The Kybalion)

BRAINWASH

“The mirror is not to be confused with the reflections which appear in it.”
(The Cycle of Day and Night)

I can’t help this feeling
I don’t think it’s mine
I think I need cleaning of brain and of mind

Brainwash
Wash it all clean now
Brainwash
Take it away
Brainwash
The ease and the dis-ease
Some like it hot, and some not
Not at all

And I don’t need no doctor
I just need myself
The melodramatic is going to hell

COMPRESSION

”If thought precedes action, what precedes thought?”
(The Living Qabalah)

Give me your name
Give me compression
Give me your name
And give me your mind

BOX 1

Fragments of an interview:

It’s very often that people take kindness for weakness, which is a shame, because it puts you in a situation, where you need to be hard before you can be soft – you need to somehow show people the disciplines and tensions, before you can actually deal. And that’s again just a symptom of, well, the whole 20th century basically, but particularly about, well, people’s attitudes and mental arrangements, towards themselves first of all, and secondly to others.

Things are what they are, regardless of how much we disagree about them, and having emotions about something is stupid, unless it’s got a purpose – I mean, unless you can use that emotion as a fuel to change.

I mean, that’s the whole thing, that it takes one to recognize one, and what you see in others is merely a reflection of yourself.

But the question remains: What are you going to do about it – because, well, it might be that you actually are the one martyr of this world, but then if you really are, that just puts a much greater job on your shoulders than sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself. And it comes into a situation, where there’s very little escape from what is real; it comes into the scenery, where you begin to become not just responsible for your own life, but actually becoming the architect of your own, well, actually destiny, if you want to put it like that.

SONG FOR SOMEONE

”Without struggle, no progress and no result.”
(Views from the Real World)

So your cynicism is your new religion
Where your doubt allows you no devotion
It makes you feel secure ’cause they can’t say you’re wrong
And that’s right ’cause you’re close to nothing at all

So while you’re fighting blinded in your mirror land
You run against the size of your own little box
In a two-mask nightmare theatre
You live what you call your life

I call you slave of guilt
I call you sick-sick-six
You know my name but you don’t know me
In the stupidity of mass identity
Your self-fixation won’t set you free

Now analysis is very easy to offer
Help is a quite different feature
I wish you’d come down to the basics
I wish you’d begin to surrender

INTERMISSION

“Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently with much sagacity.”
(The Smaragdine Tablet)

HEYL

“That garment is made up of tales and stories; but we, we are bound to penetrate beyond.”
(The Zohar)

THE WORLD (CHANSON D’AMOUR)

“O then come hither, and lay my book, thy Head and Heart together.”
(The Pilgrim’s Progress)

Got the world in my pocket
Got the world in my hand
Got the world in my singing
But I don’t understand

What came first from the big void?
What came first, hen or egg?
It’s too strange to consider
So I love it instead

Sometimes when I think about the great buildings in this world, I feel proud – I don’t know why, but I feel proud. And when I feel proud, I also feel love. And when I feel love, I want to sing. And when I sing, I sing a “Chanson d’Amour” … And if you want to sing a “Chanson d’Amour” too, then sing along with me now:

La-la-la, la-la-la

God bless you …

MEMORIAL

“It’s a matter of observation, not learning.”
(Assume Power Focus)

Wake up children
The day is near
Wake up children
I feel so weird

I can remember
I can forget
Sometimes it all seems like a dream in my head

Wake up children

I can remember
Hey-hey, hey-hey
I can forget
Tra-la-la-la

BOX 2

Fragments of an interview:

Well, it’s easy to know about something, but to actually understand it, that’s something else. I mean, if you really understand something, it’s going to change your life – because otherwise it’s just an intellectual commodity that you carry around in your head. But, I mean, true understanding, I don’t think that that is a matter of information, or just dumping more information into your brain – I think it’s more a matter of actually getting rid of nonsense in yourself.

I’ve had enough of emotional hysteria. It’s quite stupid to produce this massive emotion about feeling not understood – because after all, when you take into account, that you’re actually dealing with something like six billion emotionally and mentally handicapped people, then the big issue about being personally misunderstood, it’s a bit grotesque.

Well, I think it’s a bit weird, that what’s most easily obtainable in this world, is what people identify themselves most heavily with – a thing like common emotion, getting angry about something, or feeling something, is what people somehow make their ultimate identity, and in the light of the fact, that, as I’ve said, it’s the most easily obtainable, it becomes a bit bizarre, that people turn it into their religion.

REPRISE

“What is now proved, was once only imagined.”
(The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

INTERMISSION

”You do not question or worry about your wisdom. You just do whatever is required. The situation you are facing is itself profound enough to be regarded as knowledge. You do not need secondary resources of information. You do not need reinforcement or guidelines for action. Reinforcement is provided by the situation automatically. When things must be conducted in a tough manner, you just do it because the situation demands your response. You do not impose toughness; you are instrument of the situation.”
(Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism)

TENSION (FOCUS OF UNITY)

“Opposition is the source of all growth.”
(Tao Teh King)

Tyranny of ignorance
You will know who you are
As the mask of identity falls and breaks on the floor

Tension grows in the focus of unity
Tension grows in the still of the night

See the pain and the pantomime
20th century erosion
In the blood print of stimulus
It takes more than a dream

BOX 3

Fragments of an interview:

Personally, there’s a lot of things that I’d like to rewrite in myself, and there’s a lot of things that I’ve done that, well, I’d do it differently today. It’s very difficult for me to forget things, and, well, that’s been quite a struggle in a way, to overcome this weight of the past. But the strength to actually change comes very much, I think, from a superior viewing – because a thing like all the time bringing your past into your present is wrongful according to, really what a life is. And, well, let’s take an example like bitterness, I mean, it’s a thing that most people would find quite easy, to actually surrender to the feeling of bitterness, because there’s so much evidence in a 20th century life of, well, pain and resistances. So it, unless you actually take a stance against it, it’s a bit like a ghost that tries to take you into the shadowplay of self-solemn martyrdom, and really, the only way to avoid all these aspects that are so dominant features in, I think, every person’s inner life, you really need to add up up what you’re in, what you’re doing – because in the end, you’re stuck with you.

In the end, you’re going to die alone, so what you’re doing is really between you and you, all the time. And in that context, it’s, well, it’s different to live, because what you do is between you and you, and you need no justification or “forgiveness” from any outer world.

GOT A FEELING

“The standard of the physical plane is strength; the standard of the astral plane is beauty; the standard of the mental plane is truth; and the standard of the spiritual plane is that of right and wrong as we understand the terms; therefore there is no ethic except in terms of spiritual value; all else is at best expediency.”
(The Mystical Qabalah)

Got a feeling in my heart
And it makes me wonder why
Wake up in the morning and it’s there
I feel it inside me
Everywhere

FINALE

“The nature of reality is to liberate.”
(The Book of Tokens)

Stronger than thousand suns
Zero equals one
Two reveals unity
As all things to be

Aud Wilken: Vocals
Henrik Möll: Vocals
Irma Victoria: Vocals
Ken Rivad: Vocals
Martin Hall: Vocals, instruments

Design: John L. Christensen
Photo: Ken Rivad