Kryptomagna, "Ohm-E"

A Cover of "Oh, Me" by the Meat Puppets

Welcome to the next cover song and music video from Kryptomagna. The filming of it was a bit more minimalistic than the previous one, with fewer locations and set-pieces; yet completing it met no shortage of challenges, and getting here was an achievement of endurance and good faith.

Behind the Scenes

Heather Joi and I planned the launch of our Twisted Crow page at the beginning of 2024. We had gone through a shortlist of songs we wanted to cover and interpret, and brainstorming originals we would soon transition into working on. It was late spring, after we already had our “So Alive” video underway, when Heather got her breast cancer diagnosis.

This hit us with a curve ball, to say the least, but it didn’t get us to stop what we were doing. Instead we just shifted plans a bit (please don’t make me say “pivot”…).

“Oh Me” is a song originally written by psychedelic rock band, the Meat Puppets. Most audiences probably know it better as having been performed by Kurt Cobain in company with the original band. It is an unassumingly spiritual song, capturing the Vedic concept of oneness with the universe, and Heather has used it often in her meditations. The song is close to our hearts, and we had definitely had it on our list of covers.

When we found out Heather had cancer, we decided this would be the right time to do it. Seeing the results of our efforts, I’m willing to say that was the right choice.

So make no mistake: the woman you are seeing in this performance is an artist undergoing cancer treatment. We shot all of this video at the tail-end of her chemotherapy schedule, all the way up to a mere two weeks prior to her mastectomy surgeries. This was all a challenge that took a lot of courage on the part of us both, but especially Heather. If that wasn’t all difficult enough, it was also getting into the autumn. Everything outdoors—the tree, the mud, and the water—was freezing. But then, so was the water in the “So Alive” video we did, which we filmed during the late spring. Basically, after we were all done, Heather said, “I think I’ll take a break from filming myself in the freezing cold for a while…”

On top of that, when we filmed the green-screen segments, we were both inundated with the worst cold either of us had had in years, which made Heather’s surgery get postponed and that was highly upsetting, and we had to quarantine from our four-year-old daughter for a week (and skip Thanksgiving) so as not to let surgery get postponed again. This is just a little glimpse into the mindset we were in while filming Heather’s performance.

As the man behind the camera, I had the privilege of witnessing and participating in a healing process. This was especially true of the gong segments, with our good friend Eric Magnusson: healing all the other parts of the self that the professional doctors can’t necessarily reach. It was a reminder that healing always requires the patient to choose to do so; the physician can provide the tools, the medicines, the care, but it’s up to you to accept and say, “I want to be healed”.

Art is Long, Life is Short

Alchemy, understood through its metaphorical lens, is the transmutation of the mundane, and even the profane, into the sacred. Much of Heather’s work focuses on this process—and mine, though we vary on the areas of life where we tend to apply it.

“Ars Longa, Vita Brevis” - mural at the town hall of Göttingen, Germany (edited)

With “Ohm-E”, we approached the Meat Puppets’ Vedic lyrics by fusing elemental forces from multiple cultures, with a focus on the Germanic, as tools to transmute fear, pain, suffering, and trauma into a gateway for accessing the divine.

In our hands, art is a magical tool embodying the aphorism, “As above, so below; as within, so without.”

People often view art as something set aside from life; a cordoned-off compartment meant only for escapism. Some may understand that the two interact, but still can’t help viewing it as separated from “real life” or their “self”. This schism gives a whole new dimension to the old question, “Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?”

To us, the answer is, “Art and life are one.” Art is life; life is art.

For us, the creation of this musical arrangement and video were nothing short of the absolute merging of Art and Life, demonstrated. We share our work with you now in the hope of aiding you on your healing journey as it aided ours. The great sacred secret is that everything can be a tool for healing. Even things that can hurt us can cure us. This is one of the meanings behind Nietzsche’s saying, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”

Intentions Behind the Music

We probably keep saying that music has been an ongoing part of our creative endeavors, which remains true, though we’re currently focusing on covering songs as a sort of… curating process. And how can one talk about music, without addressing style? A guy says he’s in a band, and the most likely response question will be, “What genre?” “What kind of band?” “What style of music?”

In the various unpublished musical sketches Heather and I have done, we’ve leaned heavily into electronica and synthwave, but we both have influences from other areas. Heather has had an ongoing interest and experience in punk rock, I’ve hung around the heavy metal scene, and we both have a lot of influence and learning from classical. Our intent going into creating music has always been to develop some sort of “fusion” between genres, especially the ones I’ve named.

Stepping back and listening to the arrangement in our cover of “Oh Me”, I feel we’ve successfully taken a step towards achieving that.

I see genre as a palette. This is part of the motivation behind creating a so-called fusion. Genres in their own right are great, but they also can trend into formulaic work. They’re “manufactured goods”, so to speak: take the formula, set up the array of tropes associated with the genre, tick off all the boxes, and there you have it! Another “X”-genre song.

Audience expectations are massively tied up with genre as well. I remember when I was in high school, I had been going through my dad’s records and really got to liking Jethro Tull. Guess what? The lead singer plays a flute. They’re a rock band, plus a flute player. Then one day I was hanging around with a friend, and I mentioned Jethro Tull to his dad, who scoffed and said, “I could never get my head around having a flute in a rock band,” essentially.

When a musician creates a rock song, listeners expect the entire song to be “rock”. A metal song: the whole thing is metal—and only metal.

Yet what we did in this arrangement is only have “death growls” in the final chorus. (For those not familiar with metal, “growls” refers to the raspy-voiced style of singing). What effect did this have? Build-up and climax. The song now has a story arc, akin to a movie: a crescendo before the ending. Most metal songs would maintain the death growls all the way through, not having the arc pan out in the same way.

That’s not to say that genre-music never has arcs or climaxes; they all have their own ways of building up towards the end. But I think we’re finding a path to yet another option: genre tropes, as the colors on one’s “brush”.

Art, Fame, and Freedom

Doing this project has led me to think a lot about Kurt Cobain; his music, his career, his personal struggles, and his untimely death. We’ve talked about this at length, as Heather has sat with and contemplated Nirvana for a time. It’s probably not impolite to say Nirvana had a bit more fame than the Meat Puppets. They were a huge phenomenon of their generation. And yet, there was Kurt: looking up to the Meat Puppets as mentors, covering their songs with the attitude that they were honoring him. I don’t know whether this theory is correct, but maybe part of him envied them because they had a freedom that he could not hope to find. Cobain was existentially unable to break the constraints that the record industry had set upon him; even if he were to act out in some form of rebellion against the ‘brand’ set up in his name, that act would simply get the stamp of approval as the next “Kurt Cobain / Nirvana” product. There was no escape from the fame.

Being more obscure, the Meat Puppets were more able to experiment and follow their inspiration wherever it took them. But Cobain loved music in itself. He was a true artist and could see the raw heart and spirit in their work. In his “unplugged” performance of “Oh Me”, one could almost believe he felt freer than ever, to the point that it may have been his Perfect Moment.

We don’t know whether these ideas are on to something, or just wild suppositions, there was certainly something truly special about that performance, which was why Heather and I set about doing this cover of our own in the hopes of remaining true to that spirit.

In Gratitude

Magnusson and Heather Joi with 1000 Hands

The gong that our friend and collaborator, Eric Magnusson, is playing behind Heather is called “1000 Hands”. This impressive instrument has a lot of history to it. It was created through melting down over one hundred old singing bowls to be reforged into the gong you see here. The family who originally possessed it said that fifty such gongs were made, and thirty are still known to exist in the world. This is a symphonic instrument capable of many unique sounds.

We cannot offer enough thanks to Magnusson for his performance. The sound bath session we filmed with him was completely improvised and incredible to experience in person. We are grateful to him for offering his space and time to make it resonate for us.

We give our thanks to the Largent/McGraw family, for the use of their property for scenes in this production. Acknowledgments also go out to Berkeley Springs State Park, where we recorded the water scene.

Also, thank you to Shane for the bind-rune on Heather’s head!

We cherish the financial support of our patrons. It is because of you that we are able to continue to work while undergoing such personal challenges. With this page, we seek to form a community of people who are inspired by this type of work, we are thrilled to see it already happening. Every contribution you make helps us to fulfill that mission.

Thank you so much to our supporters and patrons for joining us on our journey.