A collaboration between Danielle Ashley and Mike Dickson has - so far - produced two soundtrack albums of exquisite weirdness. They belong to the same narrative arc and dwell in the same world of curiosity, greed, despair, longing, magic, lighthouses, fate, abominations, denial, codices and unseen malevolence.
The associated web pages for both are maybe even weirder still.
A soundtrack for an imaginary movie par excellence, this lengthy work explores the nature of the inner workings of a cult with the outer expectations of its membership. Within the music lurks strange things unseen and voices unheard, as well as a single sound that will likely haunt you for the rest of your days. Within the text is hidden five linked stories that tell the continuing story of the few survivors of what befell the group when they met for the last time. With no narrative, few tunes and barely any rhythm, this tone poem draws out a fixed narrative that follows the trajectory of a wide story arc. Baffling to some yet revelatory to others, this musical Finnegans Wake bears repeated listenings.
Or something like that.
Set as a precursor to secpairy, this double-length work features all the melodies the last work missed and many more besides. Textures and ghosts loom from every shadow as the Rosetta Stone of a written narrative leads you from the earliest beginnings of the cult that ultimately found its own downfall, through a wide cast of creatures, actors and players, centering on one lonely and trapped character who sought power for its own sake and who ultimately was destroyed by his own legacy. More or less wordlessly, the landscapes of the cryptic phantasm is unwound to the shattering climax that leads to the clergy and rituals that drag its own followers down to the soundless depths of the silent cold waters of the tides.
Or something like that.
