Erik Davis has been writing about music, subcultures, and technoculture for fifteen years. His cult book Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (1998), was translated in 5 languages and is being republished with a new introduction by Serpents Tail. He is a regular contributor to Wired, and lives in San Francisco.
...Davis, who's a regular contributor to Wired, spins an
irresistible narrative about his rediscovery of the classic album
while driving through England, tying the songs in with pagan myth
and feminine representation. Far from being pretentious, Davis'
meditation is charming and readable.
*Philadelphia Weekly*
The most engaging aspect of this irresistibly readable book is the
sheer delight Davis so obviously takes in over reading this stuff.
It's as if he went through some hermeneutic wormhole and emerged in
a parallel universe where Zep's legendary fourth album is
infinitely dense with significance—a textual black hole that sucks
all meaning into its dark maw..
*Shovelware*
...the literary equivalent of sparking the owl, crafting a sigil,
cranking up a back-masked copy of "Stairway to Heaven," and
settling in for a deep chat with the collective satanic majesties
of visionary rock.
*Village Voice*
The most ingenious aspect of this book, even if you're not literate
in mysticism and the occult, is that Davis intentionally and
deliberately over-analyzes the entire album...That's the point.
It's almost like reaching over to your bookshelf, pulling out the
entire Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series and applying them
to "Four Sticks"...you can tell that Davis had an absolute blast
with this whole project.
*Metro NY, August 2005*
The most intellectually inspired and flat-out fun of Continuum's
ongoing 33 1/3 series of pocketbook album appreciations, critic
Davis's adventurous treatise decodes every magical property
embedded within rock's most geeked-on masterpiece.
*Blender*
...most likely destined to a fate of cult favorite, Led Zeppelin IV
by Erik Davis soars the heights of some very rarefied air
indeed.
*Ugly Things*
Even when Erik Davis published his exegesis on Led Zeppelin’s IV in
2005, there seemed to be little left to say about either the band
or its best-selling album. Yet the best 33? titles can make you
hear familiar albums with fresh ears. Davis has some fun unpacking
the rumors of occultic messages hidden in the packaging and in the
music (backmasking! mirrored images! Crowley references!), yet he
acknowledges the power of the band’s particular mythology to cast a
strong spell over even the most skeptical listener. The result, he
writes, is ‘one of the supreme paradoxes of rock history: an
esoteric megahit, a blockbuster arcanum.
*Pitchfork*
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