Hands of Ruin

The third and final preview from Empire and Dust before it is released on 28 May:

Sign up to the mailing list for exclusive access to a bonus track that won’t appear on the album.

Another dark ambient mix, beginning with two wonderfully eery tracks by Nagual Art and :Zoviet*France: and eventually ending up in noisier territory with some Dagda Mor.

Playlist:

• Nagual Art - Seemanslied
• :zoviet*france: - Ascend a Fall
• Aghast - Sacrifice
• Raison d’être - The Slow Ascent
• Inanna - Body ov Light
• Last Nights of Paris - 1677
• Kazuyuki K. Null & James Plotkin - Lost (Held Under)
• Hands of Ruin - Resting in a Cold Place
• Dagda Mor - Sturmruf

Here’s another preview from the new album, Incense on the Altar:

The album will be called Empire and Dust and will be released on 28 May. Mailing list subscribers will get free access to an exclusive bonus track.

I have long been interested in writing a soundtrack. Last year I set about looking for a suitable film to write for. I considered some of the silent film classics that I love, such as Nosferatu or Metropolis. I did a bit of research, filled up my Lovefilm queue with silent films, and learnt quite a bit about that era in the process. But when I found Webber and Watson’s 1928 film of The Fall of the House of Usher I knew I’d found the one.

James Sibley Watson Jr and Melville Webber made the film between 1926 and 1928. The style owes something to German expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, particularly in the design of the crazily-angled sets. The film also features many intriguing visual effects, shots through prisms and other distortions, super-imposed images, and so on. The film lacks dialogue or any other intertitles, so the story will be somewhat obscure if you’re unfamiliar with Edgar Allan Poe’s original. However, if you have read the story then you will see that Webber and Watson have been surprisingly faithful to the text.

At only 13 minutes, it’s a manageable length for a first attempt at a soundtrack. Obviously, writing for a film sets up an interesting set of constraints for a musician. The first step was choosing how to divide the film into musical segments, and it seemed to me that there were three distinct sections. Then I had to set up the tempos so that events on screen would fall at useful musical boundaries. I can’t say that I used any sophisticated maths here. Just a mixture of trial and error and serendipity. The choices of some of the sounds, particularly in the second section, were inspired by events on the screen, but I didn’t want to be too literal about creating sound effects for the film. I’ve also been distinctly modern in writing this music. I haven’t made the slightest attempt to emulate the music of the period. Ultimately, the style of the music is simply my own style. The purpose of the exercise was only to write a soundtrack. I thought that would be a sufficient challenge for me at this stage.

There are a number of other soundtracks. Alec Wilder wrote one score when the film was first made, and another in 1959. I don’t suppose the first was ever recorded, but I don’t know about the second. I haven’t been able to find it. The version on Treasures From American Film Archives has an accompaniment by Martin Marks. And while uploading my own version to YouTube I discovered Scott Keever’s score.

I’ve watched the film countless times in the course of writing this soundtrack. The wonderful thing is that this film rewards many viewings. I’m still noticing details and symbolism that would have escaped me if I’d only seen the film once.

The new album, Empire and Dust, will be released on 28 May 2012. I’m excited about this one. I’ve been working on these tracks for two years now. These tracks were all produced with my current music-making setup of Ableton Live plus Ableton’s orchestral instrument samples and Tobias Marberger’s G-Town Church Sampling Project sounds (about which I might write another blog post some day). I’m excited because I think the quality of these tracks is greater than anything I’ve released before.

By the way, my mailing list subscribers will have access to a free bonus track that didn’t make it onto the album, so go ahead and sign up.

Here’s a track from the album, Neither Predator nor Prey:

There was a slight planning fail in putting together this mix: Lisa Gerrard has contributed to three of the nine tracks here. Still, who’s going to complain about listening to a bit of Lisa Gerrard?

This mix also includes a track from the forthcoming Hands of Ruin album, Empire and Dust. I haven’t picked a release date yet, but the music is all written and mastered now.

Playlist:

• Black Tape for a Blue Girl - Again to Drift
• Dead Can Dance - Orbis de Ignis
• Coil - Cardinal Points
• Hands of Ruin - Neither Predator nor Prey
• Lisa Gerrard - Nilleshna
• Shinjuku Thief - The Witch Hunter
• Arcana - Aeterna Doloris
• Arvo Pärt - Lamentate IV. Pregando
• Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy - Sailing to Byzantium

A little dark ambient music has crept into a couple of my mixes so far, but here’s one devoted to that genre:

Tracklist:

• Archon Satani - A Time of Ruin
• In Slaughter Natives - Saducismus Triumphatus
• Mortaur - Fields of Asphodel
• Heid - Pilgrim Of The Sublunary World, part V
• Meczûp - Kwaidan
• Sephiroth - Helipolis
• Sophia - Inner Turmoil
• Desiderii Marginis - Still Life

Another mix, this time covering neo-classical music, and in particular the darkwave neo-classical music that I love. It might be obvious that some of these bands have been a big influence on me.

Here’s the playlist:

• Sect - Doom
• Puissance - Love Incinerate
• The Protagonist - The Puritan
• Hands of Ruin - Untitled
• The McCarricks - Letter From Nagoya
• Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson & Sigur Rós – Yfirum (over the bend)
• In the Nursery - Angelchrome
• C17H19NO3 - Carrier of Shadows
• Swartalf - The Shadow Gods

I’ve put together another DJ set, this time of neofolk and (sort of) related music:

Here’s the playlist:

• 00:00 - 07:56: Von Thronstahl - Ganz in Weiss und Ganz in Eisen
• 07:56 - 11:01: Spiritual Front - Border
• 11:01 - 16:00: Leonard Cohen - Avalanche
• 16:00 - 19:58: Rome - Die Nelke
• 19:58 - 24:03: Orplid - Später Tag
• 24:03 - 27:31: TriORE - Let Us Meet in the Trenches
• 27:31 - 32:47: Blood Axis - Wulf and Eadwacer
• 32:47 - 39:04: Der Feuerkreiner - Die Erde und der Krieg
• 39:04 - 42:07: Menace Ruine - Surface Vessel

Here’s the second in what will likely be a small series of mixes, and may continue as I find that I enjoy the process of putting them together. This one is mostly martial industrial, with a bit of dark ambient thrown in at the end.

Here’s the playlist:

• 00:00 - 04:00: Triarii - Neuropa
• 04:00 - 09:57: In Slaughter Natives - Skin Sore Eyes (Final Structure)
• 09:57 - 14:32: Wappenbund - Unser Blut
• 14:32 - 19:28: Hands of Ruin - Untitled
• 19:28 - 23:31: Rome - Wir Moorsoldaten
• 23:31 - 28:42: Desiderii Marginis - Blackout
• 28:42 - 32:12: Sophia - Sigilum Militum IV
• 32:12 - 37:13: Phelios - Cloud Sector α