Ambient. Atmospheric. Ethereal. Intelligent.
As a huge fan of this band since the early '80's this to me is their greatest masterpiece. Probably of my Top 10 favorite albums. Crack open a beer, kick back in your recliner or throw your feet up on your coffee table and turn up the volume.
(this contains 2 bonus tracks added to 2011 re-release.)
(this is album performed live in Sydney)
Hope you enjoy!
1 Aura 6:59
2 Ripple 6:03
3 Paradox 3:59
4 Lustre 5:45
5 Swan Lake 2:26
6 Feel 3:55
7 Mistress 4:12
8 Kings 4:35
9 Dome 4:00
10 Witch Hunt 1:27
11 The Disillusionist 6:24
12 Old Flame 1:37
13 Chaos 9:34
14 Film 3:56
"With the luxury of time, lowered expectation and some haze-inducing drugs, a kind of sublime, relaxed psychedelia can be the happy result. As in the case of this album by one of Australia‘s finest bands of the Eighties and Nineties.
Defeated and disappointed as well as tired from touring on the back of an album they were unhappy with, they went back to Sydney’s Studio 301 and in lengthy and relaxed sessions (and apparently encouraged by opium) they began an album where the music flowed effortlessly in a dream-like state and the lyrics were elliptical and allusive.
Songs seemed to refer to mysterious, unresolved and Dylanesque narratives, the music worked up from improvised fragments and the themes came from one-word titles that Willson-Piper came up with in the manner of Brian Eno’s provocative Oblique Strategies as prompts to creativity.
Gavin MacKillop’s cinematic but sensitive production allowed for a warm and sumptuous sound.
The result was Priest = Aura.
Lush, languid and ethereal, the album was largely made up of atmospheric pieces, four of the 14 tracks stretching past the six minute mark and Chaos spinning out to nine and a half minutes.
It still sold over 200,000 in the US but back home the critics were divided and the wider public which had embraced the Church from their jangle-pop and ragged rock days were bewildered.
It also arrived just as grunge from Seattle was washing over the rock landscape and music like the Church’s which sounded uncommitted, indifferent and emotionally detached wasn’t fashionable.
Priest = Aura was, as they say, “a commercial failure” and given the effort they had put into it, the band was jarred by the indifference.
It might have been their musical highpoint to date, but it also lead to the end of the Church as they had been.
Guitarist Koppes quit before they could tour in support of it, as did drummer Jay Dee Daugherty who had been recruited in from the Patti Smith Group when former drummer Richard Ploog had signed out.
The band was down to the duo of Kilbey and Willson-Piper and although the Church would reappear in name on other subsequent albums, Willson-Piper and Kilbey would increasingly produce solo albums.
Kilbey later described Priest = Aura as “the best album that the Church as the Church had ever done” and Willson-Piper said he thought it was “too bent” even for the fans.
“Instead of seeing it as an interesting rock record, the critics saw it as a pretentious record. And the public saw it the same way.”
Their reunion shows have always seen them reappraised and acclaimed anew -- but Priest = Aura, their most challenging and successful album, still divides fans although the critics have swung around in recent years.
Alluring, oblique, mysterious and quite a trip at 65 minutes, Priest = Aura is an album which repeatedly gives up its soft, dark, slightly menacing, enduring and endearing magic."
Yes , i have to do mine too 