If
H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Christmas carols just aren't, you know,
dark enough for you, dig:
It's an excellent new album from The UK's
Will "Seesar" Conner and his large contingent of daemonic underlings creating Lovecraft-inspired dark ambient soundscapes, much of it created with found things on which mortal man was not meant to be making music. You might not necessarily know that from listening to this album, tho, as it's all quite musical, with each track creating its own sonic world. No random, self-indulgent banging-and-clanging here - Dr. Connor does have a PhD, after all.
The opening track is some genuinely spooky stuff - Mr. Connor shouldn't be surprised if horror film directors come a-calling. "Sirens" sets us adrift on a haunted ship lost at sea. Other tracks suggest dense rain forests, or swarms of giant insects. Way cool! Too bad this album came out
after Halloween.
I asked Connor about he and the other members of his coven's use of found/invented instruments: "the re-purposed stuff is on all the tracks and that's all me, for the
most. There's bicycles, pot lids, mixing bowls, unopened 2 litre bottles
(they make great chime sounds!), bags of fertilizer (that was a less
than pleasant day at the studio for my nose...), glass jars, various
bottles, pieces of aluminum, newspaper, plastic, and much more. Arcaide
makes a lot of his own electronics, and I think Benjamin Pierce does as
well. Hell is Carbon is entirely guitars, but he used extended
techniques for all the tracks to which he contributed. I think Druha
Smrt, Babalith, and The Strange Walls (for this one track) used
primarily store-bought instruments played traditionally, but, as you can
hear, they stayed well away from standard melodic and harmonic material
for the most."