Latest Releases
About Heliotricity
The depth Daniel Shams of Heliotricity is able to achieve with his guitar, firebird pickups, voice and poetry is astounding. With his wide range and agile falsettos his voice has been compared to Tim Buckley, who no doubt he was unconsciously channeling in the exquisite track “Helium”. One hears hints of Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, as well as Nick Drake at times.
It is a voice agile and aspiring, reaching for the universal, the common threads connecting all people. You get the sense also of an urgency listening to Daniel, a striving that reveals a relentlessness in his pursuit of an immediate, articulate and pure expression. The result is that his recordings then are more like raw jewels excavated from deep fissures, they aren’t overly polished and pretty in the sense some people prefer. They are the real thing. All you have to do is listen to the soaring chorus falsettos of “Blinded by the Sun” where he wails “I’ve been…I’ve been blinded by the sun” to know that Daniel Shams is the real thing.
And when he sings of love, it is not to a woman, it is to all women. It is as if the great Sibyls are resurrected at once, and one hears him with the ears of Dante’s Beatrice, Faust’s Gretchen or Shahrazad from the Arabian Nights. When one listens they live love for that instant. When he sings “to live, to love, I want to be reborn every instant” through Daniel and his Heliotricity we do these things.
Music Releases
Posthumous Heliotricity
Posthumous Heliotricity is the second of two highly anticipated and visionary full length recordings by Daniel Shams in over 10 years. After the recording of “Scythes IV” in 2004 Daniel essentially disappeared from the music community, living in Spain and Egypt devoting himself entirely to the mysterious art of gypsy flamenco.
This stunning set of original recordings with it’s infectuous rhythms, captivating melodies and compelling lyrics is nothing short of astonishing. The recordings are ecstatic, warm and familiar, yet unlike anything you’ve ever heard. The compositions shine, as if they were somehow lit from the inside.
Similar to Scythes IV, Daniel’s poetry strays fearlessly into deeper and often darker waters, bordering on the mystic. In “To Gold” when he sings “I have never known you quite like this…beloved, everything is beautiful now, I am swimming in you…” you don’t know if it is being sung from the perspective of someone recently deceased, newly born, or one in some ecstatic state of consciousness in which they are unified with something greater. One thing is for certain, Posthumous Heliotricity is unlike anything you have ever heard or ever will hear again.
“A revelation…”
–Wallace Blackie Gold
1/3/2020
كافح
كافح is the highly anticipated first full length recording by Daniel Shams since Scythes IV, after essentially disappearing from the music community for years, living in Spain and Egypt devoting himself entirely to the mysterious art of gypsy flamenco.
Daring, and soulful, كافح is full of rich grooves and intricate rhythms. At times the percussion sounds like a flamenco dancers feet, or a tabla players fingertips are tapping out the coordinates to undiscovered and savage latitudes in your hips. Daniel’s guitar sounds like it is speaking in tongues at times, spitting quadruplets and sextuplets atop a lush canopy of rhythm, while his agile voice navigates accents within an eloquent prose above and around it carving out unique and indelible lines.
“Apples are oranges, are boysenberries posing as poison berries
catching z’s, dreaming of bees,
as indubitably I too would be,
were I in such close proximity to the lavish curvature of your lips.
To the allure of your honey hive hips,
Which is to say that said lips
and the aforementioned heart shaped hips honey hived
subvert occasionally the dominant paradigm
Governing a man’s ability to sensibly speak”
“Ana a’wez tzcara ila wa owda Escandries, 5 stars!”
–Yerbouti Iz’Myn
1/2/2020
Scythes IV
The depth Daniel Shams of Heliotricity is able to achieve with just a single nylon string guitar, his voice and poetry is astounding. With his wide range and agile falsettos his voice has been compared to Tim Buckley, who no doubt he was unconsciously channeling in the exquisite track “Helium”. One hears hints of Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, as well as Nick Drake at times. Visionary and timeless music from a unique and talented singer/songwriter at a particularly fascinating point in his continually unfolding artistic development.
Heliotricity Scythes IV has been said to be Shams’ “Nebraska”, with its spare arrangements and poetic depth. A number of the compositions having been written while he was living out of a 1985 Saab off the Panhandle in San Francisco, and developed while busking on the streets of SF, Berkeley and later performing for passerbys in the long corridors of the underground Metro subway stations in Madrid, Spain.
When not playing he was devouring the French Symbolist and Surrealist poetry of writers such as Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Apollinaire, as well as the Spanish poetry of Luis de Góngora, Miguel Hernández and Lorca. It was during this time period which he discovered the gypsy flamenco which would permanently alter the course of his life. Soon after he purchased a one way ticket to Spain. Scythes IV was recorded after he returned to the U.S., having spent all of his money after a year immersed in the mysterious art of flamenco. These would be the last the songs he would record before devoting himself entirely to flamenco music for the next 10 years.
“The compositions on Scythes IV sparkle like raw gems in the profound darkness of an unyielding night…”
A’isha Ibn Ali
Blinded by The Sun
The simplicity of the music that flows so seemingly effortlessly out of Daniel Shams of Heliotricity is at times disarming, take the music from Scythes IV for example, how that with just a single nylon string guitar, his poetry and voice he is able to deliver us past the barrage of barriers and propel us into the rich collective consciousness, unifying us in a suspended state of enhanced awareness, an ecstasy.
Compare that then to the various lush, layered compositions making up Heliotricity Blinded By The Sun, like the title track, or “You are the Sunlight” where vocal melodies and guitar textures are woven into a lush and rhythmic aural tapestry, the result is simply sublime.
In Daniel’s voice one hears echoes of the late Tim Buckley, Thom Yorke and Lenny Kravitz woven into the fabric of rich driving grooves. It is a voice agile and aspiring, reaching for the universal, the common threads connecting all people. You get the sense also of an urgency listening to Daniel, a striving that reveals a relentlessness in his pursuit of an immediate, articulate and pure expression.
The result is that his recordings then are more like raw jewels excavated from deep fissures, they aren’t overly polished and pretty in the sense some people prefer. They are the real thing. All you have to do is listen to the soaring chorus falsettos of “Blinded by the Sun” where he wails “I’ve been…I’ve been blinded by the sun” to know that Daniel Shams of Heliotricity is the real thing. And when he sings of love, it is not to a woman, it is to all women. It is as if the great Sibyls are resurrected at once, and one hears him with the ears of Dante’s Beatrice, Faust’s Gretchen or Shahrazad from the Arabian Nights. When one listens they live love for that instant. When he sings “to live, to love, I want to be reborn every instant” through Daniel and his Heliotricity we do these things.
A Collection of Beatles and Spiders
These early recordings from Daniel Shams shimmer with a vibrant intensity, providing unique insight into one of today’s most visionary songwriters. These sparce recordings were done mostly on in inexpensive Vestax analog 6-track recorder with just a shure SM58 microphone. Some of Daniel’s earliest compositions are featured such as the driving and rhythmic bathe, a collection of beatles and spiders, and the haunting Mother I. The song logic, was Shams’ tribute to a local band in Providence Rhode Island named “Feral Logic” whose music deeply moved him. The song sounds like gears, or machinery…Daniel apparently recorded one of the guitar parts with an unplugged electric Stratocaster.
In the song Daedalus with its otherworldy falsetto chorus where he sings “mother hold me…nourish my life…” you can hear how even in these early years he was already exploring a vocal expression which blurred the boundaries of sexuality and social stereotypes. Similar in a way he would find later in singers such as Craig Wedren from Shudder to Think, Jeff Buckley, Tim Buckley and others.
“I’m crying right now”
-Doreen Barker
2/17/2016
Posthumous Heliotricity is the second of two highly anticipated and visionary full length recordings by Daniel Shams in over 10 years. After the recording of “Scythes IV” in 2004 Daniel essentially disappeared from the music community, living in Spain and Egypt devoting himself entirely to the mysterious art of gypsy flamenco.
Daring, and soulful, كافح is full of rich grooves and intricate rhythms. At times the percussion sounds like a flamenco dancers feet, or a tabla players fingertips are tapping out the coordinates to undiscovered and savage latitudes in your hips…
Scythes IV is the fourth full length recording by Daniel Shams. His voice, delivery and the depth of his poetry often draws comparisons to Tim and Jeff Buckley.
Blinded by the Sun is the third full length recording by Heliotricity. In contrast to the stark simplicity of Scythes IV, rich, layered compositions make up Blinded by the Sun.
A Collection of Beatles and Spiders is the first full length recording by Heliotricity.
Chaos, Clouds and The Tongue is a collection of the poetry of Daniel Shams.
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Daniel Shams of Heliotricity performing “Helium” from the album Scythes IV. The compositions on this extraordinary album were recorded after Daniel moved back to the states from an extended period of time living in Sevilla, Spain, having spent all of his money after a year immersed in the mysterious art of flamenco.
These would be the last songs he would record before devoting himself entirely to flamenco music for the next 10 years.
WHAT IS HELIOTRICITY?
Heliotricity is a musical entity founded by the prolific musician/artist/poet/scholar Daniel Shams in the early 90’s.Daniel originally conceived the word Heliotricity by fusing “Helio” meaning having to do with the sun with “tricity” which suggested electricity.
In an interview he stated it had to do with the balance and fusion of natural and man made forces. As one might suspect, various corporations have latched onto the word Heliotricity which Daniel originally conceived, conveniently associating it with solar energy among other things.
The Last and Greatest Poem of his Life by Daniel Shams
It was the last and greatest poem of his life. He was sitting outside the train station and all the tea leaves that ever were and ever were to be were speaking to him. They spoke to him long dry color drained in tongues rose leaf, darjeeling and chamomile, even those leaves not yet of tea still green too green too stiff to sift through a sieve manifested in tongues long and eloquent to his avid ears. In the tenacious heat outside the train station dead thunderstorms were raining upwards while smashed hieroglyphs streamed like ancient jetties transporting sun after sun across his feverish consciousness. When he looked down he found his arm hairs had stiffened into long rows of sugar cane reeds and from his yawning pores he sweated pollen heavy bee feet and scuttling scarabs whose black bodies shone in tones irridescent blue and green in the streaming suns.
All the tea leaves were speaking to him and through them he knew the bees that they had known, knew draughts and plagues dating back centuries, he spoke in hibiscus, in lemon peel, fluent too he spoke in scarab, his tongue crawled backwards across an immense sky of throats. Somewhere a kettle whistled and then a cup of tea fell onto the floor and when it hit it shattered and the thin ceramic shards slid across a hard marble floor echoing in his ears shrill and sharp, then the shards hit the wall and suddenly shrapnel jagged and foreign jutted from his skull.
He kept writing, rhythms 5’s, 6’s, 7’s and 12’s were born on beads of sweat as they fell from his beard. He looked down and noticed his beard had grown a beard, and that beard had a beard, and that beard another, and every one of those beards had ears. And into those ears whispered tea leaves, tea leaves long defunct, long bagged and in vaporous drinks dunked. And their flavors emanated across his years, across his beards of beards and fanned his fertile feverish consciousness cooling his furrowed ancient brow.
Chamomile flowers sprouted in an unmarked tomb on his tongue and he knew there was little time. He swallowed some by accident, they tasted like candy and then his pen wrote in raw sugar. He pushed the foggy crystals around the page, they shone like glass eyes in the sun. He covered them carefully with wet rose petals and when they melted a sweet red sea flooded the street. He looked around, nobody seemed to notice. A sudden gust of wind then blew one of his beards beards upwards and it bit him viciously on the tongue and he began to spit blood. Through the blood as it flew he could taste the air, he watched as a number of the droplets sprouted wings and split off from the rest rising like little rubicund bats, the others spattered generously the bleached leaves of his wrinkled notebook. Afterwards they began to coagulate, and once fully dried, little cracks creeped in from their deep crimson perimeters, it looked like the paper was wounded, like a grenade had gone off in its vicinity but just out of range splintering it with cuts and the blood had bloomed from the myriad shrapnel wounds.
And when he scratched away the dried blood with his splintered dirty fingernail underneath he found chapters beautiful writ in unusual letters scarlet running from right to left, meticulously sculpt. Leaning in to study them he found that upon being spied the mysterious characters glowed like uncanny coals live and moreover the phrases changed strangely each time over them passed his eye, metamorphosizing each time with a new rhyme yet maintaining their curious content all the while.
It was the last and greatest poem of his life and when he got to the final line he knew it was time. Hot vapour rose like ghosts from broken teacups and the sugar fount of his pen was nearly dry. He stopped then with a befuddled look, his masterpiece just one word from completion and realized that the final line lacked a rhyme.
All was quiet as perplexed he stroked his beards of beards searching for the rhyme. Even the tea leaves, all the tea leaves that ever had been, that ever were to be were silent. They all stayed that way for a moment. The word he was looking for was the word he had looked for all his life. He had been told that it did not exist
Suddenly a look of astonishment overtook his tired face, and he gasped as it came to him. And all the tea leaves that ever had been and ever were to be, and each and every one of his beards with their beards, the pollen footed heavy bees, the scarlet winged spit bats, and the sun toting sweat scarabs all crowded around him eager with anticipation to see what the word was as the smiling poet leaned in pen in hand to finish the work. But before he could press the pen to the paper he suddenly expired and collapsed there in the street outside the train station.
Various people passed by the smiling old man not realizing he was dead until later an old gypsy woman pushing a small cart selling hot tea to passers by in the street who had known him came by and saw that he had died. And parking her cart slowly, she pondered him for a moment, then picked up his slouched body, dusted him off and leaned him up against the wall. He had often visited her while she worked and would always recite his most recent poems to her which would always give her great joy. Then blessing him, she got up and poured them both a cup of steaming tea and added sugar. The steaming vapours rose from their plastic cups like feverish ghosts. And while they sat there quiet together it was then she noticed his notebook and the unfinished poem. She picked it up and read the first line and smiled. She knew it by heart, and she recited it to him out loud, it was the same unfinished poem he had written all his life.
Written 3.25.10 on a train through the Egyptian desert between Luxor and Aswan
Los Años Florecientes – Daniel Shams
¡Viva la Muerte! ¡Viva la Muerte!
Brotando en la nada como una sombra magnífica
Nacido antes que ningún sol
Hay nubes y golondrinas sobre mi terraza
Y arden con buenaventura, cantando
“¡Años floricientes te han encontrao!”
¿Ven a llevarme? ¿Ven a llevarme?
“Demasiao temprano” dice el vendaval de moscas
Con un sombra larga y esquizofrenica
"Tan temprano" pensava la borracha en su cauce de vomita
y alrededor de ella náufragaron tulipánes,
tulipánes que quisieran unir todas las lenguas divididas
“Le ví la Muerte!” exclamó un murciélago invertido
"Bebiendo y bailando debajo las alas de un vendaval vivo
¡y me preguntaba de ti!"
Pero Levantando de su tumba antigua
La Plaga de 1836 sacudiendo su cabeza rara
le dije a la Muerte “esta demasiao temprano,
Bajad tu guadaña de terror”
Es verdad que he vivido, Alimentao por limónes
Y tengo un limonerito ya en flor en mi jardin
Que crece mas débil cada día
¡Viva la Muerte! ¡Viva la Muerte!
“Dejale ser” dice el difunto
Empalao por los juncos sanguinarios
¿Ven a llevarme? ¿Ven a llevarme?
“Basta ya! Dejadle cantar” le dice a la Muerte
La mendiga Gitana con ríos de perlas
Corriendo por sus venas
© 2043
“Ana a’wez tzcara ila wa owda Escandries, hal youmkin aQul ghoubz mA enta fee Masr, lkan atakalm Ala al ghoubz hoa shutta Awi! Khatr al mout, insha’allah!”
–Yertitz R’Myn
1/2/2020
SITE LAST UPDATED 3/6/83