Dune and European Progressive and Electronic Music

WHAT IS SURVIVAL IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE WHOLE?… WHAT IF YOU NO LONGER HEAR THE MUSIC OF LIFE? MEMORIES ARE NOT ENOUGH UNLESS THEY CALL YOU TO NOBLE PURPOSE!

–Leto II, Heretics of Dune

Adapted from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#/media/File:Dune-Frank_Herbert_(1965)_First_edition.jpg

Since its 1965 publication, Frank Herbert’s Dune has been adapted across a wide range of media to varying degrees of success. With part one of Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation in the cinemas, there’s been a lot of reflection on the previous attempts to bring Herbert’s magnum opus to the big screen. David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation for the big screen and John Harrison’s 2000 miniseries for the Sci-Fi Chanel both failed to capture the grandeur and breadth of the original novel in different ways, and Jodorowsky’s ambitious but doomed attempt to film the novel in the 1970s has become the stuff of legend. Dune has also had many game adaptations, from card games and board games to RPGs to 1992’s incredibly influential Dune II, the first real-time strategy computer game. But I feel in many ways the most interesting adaptations of Dune, and the least talked about, are in music.

Science Fiction and Fantasy have a long-standing association with metal and its various subgenres, and indeed Dune has served for the inspiration for multiple metal songs and albums, as can be seen on this Bandcamp article. Amusingly enough, when NWOBHM band Iron Maiden asked Frank Herbert if they could name their song ‘To Tame A Land’ after the book that inspired it, his lawyers responded, “Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially bands like Iron Maiden". Regardless of what Herbert’s reaction might have been, I find the most interesting attempts to portray Dune through the medium of music reside in the realm of European electronic music and progressive rock. Both electronic music and prog rock are concerned with the future, so it is not surprising that they frequently drew inspiration from science fiction and fantasy. Much of the uncritical utopianism of the hippy movement makes itself felt in much early electronic and prog music. However, while metal tends to engage with the heroic, whether the straightforward heroism of Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings or the doomed tragic heroes of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion saga, electronic music and prog sometimes draw from a more straightforwardly dystopian strain of speculative fiction. As well as Moorcock, spacerock band Hawkwind drew on Roger Zelazny’s post-apocalyptic road trip novel Damnation Alley (1969), J.G. Ballard’s concrete modernist nightmare High-Rise (1975) and Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopia Fahrenheit 451 (1953). David Bowie’s dystopian concept album Diamond Dogs started life as a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Post-punk electronic artists like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle would create a decidedly dystopian vision in stark contrast to the hippy utopianism of the 1960s. Electronic music and prog rock’s foot in the world of the dystopian allows them to respond to Dune’s ambiguous story in a way that emphasises the cold, the alien, the despairing. Thus they are able to produce adaptations of Dune that more fully align with Herbert’s deconstruction of the messianic archetype than the simple celebrations of epic heroism which more simple adaptations of Dune unfortunately frequently revert to, whatever the medium.

Richard Pinhas – Chronolyse (1978)

Adapted from Discogs https://img.discogs.com/Bo8lrvdZE60p7QZFVYBmeqHsxB0=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1070353-1422109586-5052.jpeg.jpg

French guitarist and electronic music pioneer Richard Pinhas was a student of Gilles Deleuze, and was clearly no stranger to science fiction that deconstructs the fascist tendencies inherent in heroic fantasy. He named his band Heldon, after the fictional country in Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972). Spinrad’s novel is an alternate history set in a world where Adolf Hitler moves to the US and becomes a beloved SFF author, and was written as a response to the fascistic tendencies Spinrad noticed in much heroic SF, such as the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard or much of Robert A. Heinlein’s oeuvre. Pinhas’ Chronolyse was recorded and released as a solo album in between Heldon albums, and so links Herbert’s deconstruction of the messianic hero with Spinrad’s much more explicitly antifascist work. The album’s cover shows various TV stills, some including Pinhas’ face, and others including sinister silhouetted or manipulated shapes, bringing to mind Paul’s spice-induced visions of alternate timelines and futures. Like Pinhas’ work with Heldon, Chronolyse is composed of bubbling analogue electronics merged with shrieking, King Crimson-esque noisy guitars, creating a hybrid between the progressive rock of the 1970s and the harsh electronic experimental music to come of Suicide and Throbbing Gristle. Tellingly, the bulk of the album is given over to the seven-part ‘Sur Le Theme De Bene Gesserit’, dedicated to the Dune novels’ manipulative agents of imperial control, and the dystopian elegiac soundscapes of the side-long ‘Paul Atreides’. With its harsh electronic landscapes that anticipate Vangelis’ work on the Blade Runner soundtrack and its wounded guitar playing, Pinhas’ music emphasises the dystopian outcome of Paul’s messianic rise to power, which will result in a brutal totalitarian empire and the deaths of billions.   

Zed – Visions Of Dune (1979)

Adapted from Discogs https://img.discogs.com/MrCtProPkOeO9MKqwvCbcfMx7TE=/fit-in/600x597/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2771879-1528046289-5279.jpeg.jpg

One year after the release of Chronolyse, Pinhas’ fellow French electronic music pioneer Bernard Szajner released the album Visions Of Dune under the name Zed. Szajner, like Pinhas, took much inspiration from current science fiction, and invented a laser harp after reading about such an instrument in Samuel R. Delany’s Nova (1968). Visions Of Dune, like Chronolyse, is a suite of electronic music pieces with the occasional prog rock flourish. But Szajner dispenses with the humanity of Pinhas’ guitar, instead creating cold and alien drones, out of which electronically modified voices and bursts of chaotic percussion occasionally emerge. The album’s original cover, a stark, brutalist abstract sculpture with the equally stark artist name emblazoned above, recalls the iconography of the inhuman and unknowable monolith from Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a connection strengthened by the music’s occasional atonal shrieks of warning. Like Arrakis itself, Zed’s music is harsh and austere, an environment that makes no concession to humanity. The album progresses through tracks named after key characters or events in the Dune books – ‘Shai Hulud’, ‘Bene Gesserit’, ‘Gom Jabbar’ – with a mechanical intensity that recalls the inevitable pull of Paul’s destiny towards intergalactic Jihad and personal tragedy.

Klaus Schulze – Dune (1979)

Adapted from Discogs https://img.discogs.com/jjnU-IRidH0lqs_bbSAfH79FZ94=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-868540-1462176972-2998.jpeg.jpg

The same year that Szajner released Visions Of Dune in France, German electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze released Dune, his interpretation of Herbert’s series. Schulze played in the original line-ups of krautrock legends Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, two bands with a science fictional bent, and after going solo, released a series of albums of electronic music drawing vaguely on SF concepts, such as 1973’s Cyborg and 1975’s Timewind. On the previous year’s X, Schulze had embarked on a project to create “musical biographies” on artists who influenced him. One of these tracks was dedicated to Frank Herbert, so it makes sense that Schulze’s own take on Dune would follow. The album’s cover, weirdly enough, evokes another legendary work of science fiction, being a photograph Schulze took of his TV showing a scene from Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1968), the first and best adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel of human contact with an unknowably alien alien. With this visual pointer, it is perhaps unsurprising that Schulze’s Dune evokes the inhospitable alien majesty of Arrakis’ landscape. Side one’s ‘Dune’ is a dignified electronic soundscape which perfectly conjures up inhuman territories. On side two’s ‘Shadows Of Ignorance’, Arthur Brown intones portentous lyrics written by Schulze. Lines like “Empires have no hold on me / Nor the pull of history…” seem to be written from the point of view of Paul’s spice-induced omniscience, back when he still believed he might be able to control his own destiny and prevent galactic and personal tragedy. The harsh howling of the electronics that almost drown him out suggest otherwise.

Dün – Eros (1981)

Adapted from Discogs https://img.discogs.com/sVZvfy2zBb5FlyTfq35plBf2PWk=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1671664-1366047200-3606.jpeg.jpg

Dün were a French progressive rock band of the Zeuhl subgenre. Zeuhl is a term coined by Magma in the alien language of Kobaïan, which translates as “spiritual music” but refers to the type of progressive rock formed by Magma, an amalgam of Soft Machine’s jazz-inflected prog, John Coltrane’s experiments in free jazz, and the gothic choral arrangements of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Magma are an explicitly science fictional band, with all their lyrics and liner notes in the invented language of Kobaïan, and their albums a series of interlocking conceptual suite telling the story of humanity’s fleeing a ruined Earth to form the utopia of Kobaïa, the Kobaïan’s ascent to godhood and their conflict with arrogant humanity. Already one can see multiple thematic and narrative overlaps between the Magma project and Herbert’s Dune, so it is not surprising that a band drawn to playing Zeuhl music would also be drawn to Herbert’s epic. Eros is Dün’s only album. It was never released on a label at the time, with the band printing copies themselves, but has since gained status as an underrated prog classic. The album’s cover features a mask reminiscent of the Commedia dell’arte, particularly the character of Pierrot, who had featured extensively in the music video for David Bowie’s hit single ‘Ashes To Ashes’ (1980). Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ tells the story of the tragic downfall of his previous space hero character Major Tom, the protagonist of Bowie’s earlier hit ‘Space Oddity’ (1969). Thus, the tragicomic Pierrot on the album cover references Paul’s tragic fall from grace in Dune Messiah (1969) and Children of Dune (1976) rather than his heroic liberation of the Fremen and defeat of the Harkonnens. This is reflected in the music, which expands on Magma’s original Zeuhl template on tracks like ‘L’Epice’ and ‘Arrakis’ towards a mournful, Pink Floyd-esque sound, occasionally interrupted by dramatic percussive flourishes and guttural chanting.

Bene Gesserit – Postcards From Arrakis (1983)

Adapted from Discogs https://img.discogs.com/4us_FxcWbrqA0Ympi4QLckveY_I=/fit-in/567x409/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-814470-1178358829.jpeg.jpg

Bene Gesserit were a Belgian electronic music husband and wife duo, whose dedication to Dune extended beyond naming themselves after Herbert’s psychic witch coven to taking the pseudonyms B. Ghola and Benedict G., and titling their debut cassette-only release Postcards From Arrakis. The original tape cover features a moon and a shooting star over an alien landscape, which barely hints at the weirdness included within. Bene Gesserit do not explicitly reference Dune throughout the album, or on their next album, their masterpiece A High, Happy, Perverse and Cynical Cry of Joy (1985). However the influence of Herbert’s creation is more than just cosmetic. Like the Bene Gesserit themselves, the Belgian duo are fascinated with the suggestive power of the voice. Tracks frequently involve Nadine Bal’s vocals singing nonsense or nursery rhymes, as on ‘She Sells Sea Shells On The Sea Show’, distorted and manipulated via electronics, pitch shifting and various tape effects so that they are barely recognisable as human. The games that this allows the band to play with perspective, gender and narrative voice on their records anticipate the work of Swedish electronic musicians The Knife, whilst recalling how the Bene Gesserit in Herbert’s book use tone modulation of their Voice to control the minds of unsuspecting victims. It is this that make the band Bene Gesserit perhaps the most oblique but also one of the most interesting responses to Herbert’s novels.

Dune’s ambiguity as a text is surely a large part of its appeal. It was able to capture the heroic tendencies of Golden Age science fiction whilst deconstructing those same tendencies. Thus Herbert’s novel sits in between the unbridled imperial optimism of the Golden Age and the cynicism and despair of SF’s New Wave. This ambiguity is part of what has made it such an inspiring text across so many media. Electronic music and progressive rock were already embracing the cynicism and dystopian impulses of the New Wave, and this made them ideal candidates for some of the most interesting adaptations and interpretations of Herbert’s original texts. In particular, Dune seems to have struck a dystopian chord with electronic and progressive music pioneers in Europe, inadvertently capturing the post-War disillusionment with European imperialism that inspired many of the 60s and 70s’ discontent youths. The influence of these artists extends across countries and genre boundaries, much as Dune itself does.

References

Bene Gesserit, Postcards From Arrakis. Ding Dong Records and Tapes, 1983

Daniel Cole. Arrakis Rippers: A Guide to “Dune”-Inspired Metal. Bandcamp Daily 5^th August 2021, accessed 4^th November 2021 <https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/dune-inspired-metal-list>

Dün, Eros. Self Released, 1981

Frank Herbert, Dune. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Company, 1965

                - Dune Messiah. New York: Putnam, 1969

                - Children of Dune. New York: Putnam, 1976

                - Heretics of Dune. London: Victor Gollancz, 1985

Richard Pinhas, Chronolyse. Cobra, 1978

Klaus Schulze, Dune. Brain, 1979

Mick Wall, Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills, the Authorised Biography (3rd ed.). Sanctuary Publishing. 2004 p. 244.

Zed, Visions Of Dune. Sonopresse, 1979

All record images sourced from Discogs <https://www.discogs.com/> Accessed 5 November 2021