This year I thought I’d try something a little more original in lieu of my traditional Halloween mixtape. For your consideration and entertainment, I present my first full-length album.
It is a continuous mix of black ambient offerings, with samples of old phonographs and wax cylinders from the 1880s - 1920s.
It is a continuous mix of black ambient offerings, with samples of old phonographs and wax cylinders from the 1880s - 1920s.
Folder includes:
01 Percival Ravenwood, Esq. Watched With Some Horror
02 An Unexpected Change Of Meteorological Affairs
03 The Supernatural Effects Of Harry Houdini's Demonstration
04 Lady Willowthorn's Studebaker
05 A Choir Of Boys With Hollowed-Out Eyes
06 The Dreadful Occasion
07 The Automatic Toastmaster Contraption
08 Duet By Marie And Mabel Church
09 The Apparition's Scream
Album Art
Liner Notes
Excerpts from the liner notes, which are available separately here:
The full song titles are as follows:
Allusions and homages to Mrs. Regera Dowdy, on the anniversary of her first published correspondence with Colonel Gouraud.
Allusions and homages to Mrs. Regera Dowdy, on the anniversary of her first published correspondence with Colonel Gouraud.
1. Percival Ravenwood, esq. watched with some horror as the phosphorescent ectoplasm crawled up the ribs of Duchess Claxton's whalebone bodice.
2. An unexpected change of meteorological affairs drew all attention eastward, causing well-wishers and passersby to feel suddenly and strangely unwell.
3. The supernatural effects of Harry Houdini's demonstration have caused Mrs. Gravesbottom to lose consciousness.
4. Lady Willowthorn's Studebaker, which has stalled on the tracks just outside of Professor Lemon's Sweet Shop at precisely the worst possible time, refuses all attempts at revival.
5. A choir of boys with hollowed-out eyes was glimpsed in the old rehearsal room at the end of the basement hall.
6. The dreadful occasion forced Mr. Edison to reconsider his well-established and probably prudent policy.
7. The automatic toastmaster contraption failed to impress little Billy "ne'er do well" Buckswallow the day before he was brained by a falling harpsichord.
8. Duet by Marie and Mabel Church, who died horribly in a vinegar works factory explosion and are now ghosts.
9. The apparition's scream caused the trembling chandelier finally to collapse, inspiring more than a few of the assembled and noble guests to hasten the seance's conclusion.
Mrs. Regera Dowdy is an anagramic pen name of American writer and artist Edward Gorey (1925 - 2000), probably best known for his 1963 illustrated book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. (“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs; B is for Basil assaulted by bears...”) The inspiration for this album came from Gorey's illustrated corpus, as well as my love of old haunted things. (I leave it to you to decipher the significance of Colonel Gouraud.)
The idea to employ old 78s and wax cylinders as a vehicle of terror was born on my 2010 Halloween mixtape Father Morning Presents..., in which I wove together shards of an old phonographic recording and the closing credits of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In 2009's You've Been Sick I sampled heavily from the saturation chamber sequence of the 1999 remake of The House On Haunted Hill, where 100 year-old ghosts are pitted against the living in an abandoned asylum for the criminally insane. (Ditto for Session 9, which I seem to sample just about every year.)
I love to frighten. I love to conjure up ghastly images and ghoulish landscapes with nothing but the human voice. This is exactly what I feel I have accomplished on Allusions & Homages, which in a way is really an homage to the first recording artists of history, those brave souls of the 1880s who whispered into strange machines with absolutely no idea that, 130 years later, some macabre eccentric with another strange machine (the computer) would be reinterpreting their voices for the sole purpose of scaring the petticoats off the unsuspecting.
All non-phonographic voices are me, recorded on the iPhone 4 Voice Memo app. The audio files were transferred to and manipulated on TwistedWave 1.10.1 (Snow Leopard). All effects consist of EQ, delay, reverb, pitch, volume, and looping. Some effects wound up sounding rather otherworldly, and nothing like the human voice. I assure you that they are. (If you can tell it's an old phonograph, it's not my voice.) The only effects added to the phonographs were light reverb and delay.
A special thanks to Bryan Smith for the cover art.
The Dreadful Occasion is available as a 12”, with a remix and stand-alone versions of three other tracks from Allusions & Homages (the full-length CD is a continuous mix). Free downloads of both the album and the single are available on my music blog (hardcoremathuser.blogspot.com), as well as the Halloween mixtapes mentioned in the preface.
A limited edition of 200 CDs were pressed and freely distributed to random corners around the Minneapolis area in October 2011. They were blank discs in a plain slim jewel cases, and bore an ink stamp drawing of a phonograph. Album, artist and song data is available via Gracenote / CDDB.
The songs were almost more fun to name than record, and took just about as long.
This album is dedicated to Edward Gorey.
- Jason Herrboldt, Minneapolis, October 2011
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