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T Venus Ray
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Back row: Rob, Barney and Steve, front row: Tony, Dig |
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Formed in London in 1996 by singer/songwriter Diggory Kenrick and Steve Smith on drums, VENUS RAY were always going to be different. They joined forces with multi-instrumentalist Robert Coyne, whom they had known and admired since the early 90's for his work with the seminal, Suicide-influenced Silver Chapter, and avant garde composer Barney Oliver, notorious for emptying the Queen Elizabeth Hall with a performance of 'Sister Ray' transcribed for 30-piece orchestra. With song-writing abilities spread evenly throughout the band, and an excess of divergent ideas firing off each other, they locked themselves in an unlit basement and started recording. Their debut LP "Chuck Berry vs. IBM" astonished and confused in equal measures. By the time it was released the band hadÊgrown a crucial fifth limb in the shape of former Scientist Tony Thewlis. It was this line up that was halfway through recording their second album when drummer Steve Smith died tragically earlier this year. Venus Ray are continuing as a four-piece, and the finished album - 'The World Woke Up Without Me' - will be released on the Negative and Everlasting labels in April 2003, in loving memory of Steve. Venus Ray: Hierarchical Ruler How wonderfully everything is balanced in the solar system, and how necessary are these opposites! If we had only the Venus Ray, we could never really learn to love the good and the beautiful, for we distinguish only by contrast. If nothing around us were ugly or evil, the desirable qualities of the opposite condition would not appear so marked. People who aim to cultivate exclusively the Venus faculty of love and beauty find their esthetic sense revolting more and more at the sordid phases of life, which they bewail but in a helpless manner because they have mistakenly repressed the Mars ray and killed out their temper. Mars energy drives people to face disagreeable situations and overcome difficulties that would discourage people dominated by the Venus Ray. Blended, the Venus Ray softens the harshness of Mars, and thus the highest good is reached. Proceeding with our comparison of Mars and Venus let us not make the mistake of thinking that Venus is altogether lovely and Mars totally evil. Each has light and shadow, and ours is the privilege of living in best or the worst of their phases. The intrinsic nature of Mars is 'dynamic energy'; from him comes ambition to accomplish; he furnishes the power for the world's work. Necessarily the hustle and bustle incident to the expression of this constructive energy cause friction between man and man. Thus anger and hate are engendered by the Mars energy in operation along various lines. Mars never generates this discordant element directly; it is produced by our method of using his energy, and it is as much a mistake to blame Mars for our temper as it is to blame well prepared food for causing indigestion when our stomach is out of order. In the latter case the stomach should be blamed for not performing its duty properly and for spoiling the good food instead of utilizing it in the economy of the system. Similarly, when the Mars Ray works through us as passion, we are to blame for not better using this great constructive force. Yours in Fellowship, Max Heindel
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