Welcome to the temple of ruin, I am drunk and you're insane...

Heka is the magick of ancient Egypt - magick practised while still alive.

Heka - exhuberant noise chime, landscape-y topographical hallelujah music -- nzmusic.com.

It's been too long a time since I last heard the magic, but those days and weeks and months are wiped off with the peal of the first notes. It's taken four years for this moment, but finally I have my hands on the CD. Heka is the name of the band - Dunedin duo of Stephen Kilroy and Heath Te Au - and Last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation is the name of their new album.

Both have spent time in legendary bands - Kilroy is an alumnus of the band Stephen (feat. David Kilgour), released a solo track on the seminal Xpressway Pile=up compilation, and was a founding member of Chug; Heath has done time in The Puddle, Suka, Mink, and Cloudboy to name but a few. Both are enthusiasts and horders of classic old equipment - huge Gunn valve amps and vintage tape echo boxes and shiny electric guitars and analogue effects units. For both it was time to re-enter the music scene after something of a hiatus.

Put Stephen Kilroy and Heath Te Au together and what you have is a self-described "sonic tour-de-force based around furious krautrock beats and a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar soaked in delay". So - take the extended jams of The Clean, the dense overtures of Spacemen 3 or H.D.U. or My Bloody Valentine or Bailter Space or even The Jesus And Mary Chain, and the transfixing propulsive motorik of Neu!'s Klaus Dinger - and you might have some idea what they're about. Or, what they at least sound like. But these two illuminati conjure up something entirely more mystical altogether.

For this pair, Heka is about coming together to make beautiful, ritual music. Together they summon magical spirits to which they offer themselves up and they enter another world where they become one with the ceremony and can lose the now and forget about the trudging from one day to the next.

Heka - Temple of ruin (3.74 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

It's glorious stuff. This is the sort of music you can live your life without hearing, but one listen and then you wonder how you ever got by. And of course, to see them live is a special treat.

Good Heka magic indeed.


Please visit the arclife records site if you want to buy the CD, which I naturally urge you to do. The CD is not actually listed on this page, but I trust the ordering information and other avenues of purchase are still valid.