Inspired by anime aesthetic, this ballad brings a brave heroine into the mountain world of a curious sci-fi monster feared by the locals. I wanted to create a story that sweeps the imagination much in the way an anime film would, and I borrowed aesthetic elements from 70s folk ballads and film music to craft it.

DEMO version. Written for FAWM 2022. (https://fawm.org/fawmers/clioem/)

One day she arrives in a distant land
in a distant land far from home

Uncharted peaks surround it and it’s often said
that one should never roam alone

but she has never seen the clouds
or a sunset turning to stars
and she has never seen birds fly
and the mountains reach for her heart
she has come too far.

—

One day she climbs a mountain in this distant land
despite the warnings in the town

and far below unfolding she sees distant sand
and a distant sea crashing down

The view is beautiful and sweet
but she feels sharp eyes on her back
and now the sunlight will retreat
down, oh down to that  distant rolling sea 
and she will not turn back.

—

She runs, oh she runs to the forest trees 
but her steps are slowed by the wind

The light is fading, she can barely see 
she shivers, why is her coat so thin?

But out of the corner of her eye
she sees metal gleaming and a sharp-edged smile 
she knows that it is now too late 
and she turns around  ……

  —  
The great metallic being with its  arms outstretched 
looms over her like a spider 

but something about him makes her hesitate
 and the fear quells down inside her.

Would you like to be my friend? 
asks the being, reaching out a metal arm
 Down there, they don’t understand
they sent me up here to rust
 I’m afraid to descend. 
—

Music and text © Clio Montrey (as Clio Em)

Ballad Of The Great Metallic Being

This track was written for a "Skirmish," which means you get a prompt and have an hour to write, record, and post the track. The prompt here was TRAIN STATION. It was a race, but then, trains are fast, right? I used an arpeggiator synth simulating a 70s arp as my "bass line," and then added a more flowing synth, and finally did a lot of baroque ornamentation with a synth harpsichord, which I ran through some self-modeled reverb.

Three trains leave a station and go in different directions, seeing different yet parallel landscapes.

Landscape Vignettes

"I dream that I am wearing the black dress in the ballroom... to escape, I turn
into a raven. My wings carry me out the window."

From the upcoming book GRAVITY WING.
VIDEO --> https://vimeo.com/clioem/ravendress

Recorded on an antique acoustic piano and subsequently electronically transformed.

Music, text, performance and recording Copyright © 2015 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em). All Rights Reserved.

Raven Dress

"The first notes drift in as if from a dream, slow, tentative. The next notes dance. The following notes weep. Serge manages to play a melody that strikes me to my core. He is tremendously, infinitely musical."

Music, text, and recording Copyright © 2015 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em). Viola performance by Gerda Fritzsche. All Rights Reserved. 

Serge's Song

The Banff Session | recorded and mixed May 2015 in Banff, Alberta

Music composition and performance: Clio Em
Recording, mixing, production: Tristan Capacchione

Copyright © 2015 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em). All Rights Reserved. Special thanks to Tristan Capacchione.


Serge's Song | Banff Session

"My music has been packed away for two years. I don’t want it boxed anymore. I want it to fill the air. 

She turned the tiny handle and the music box sang in time with her rising heart."

Read Music Box: https://clio-em.com/2015/10/05/music-box/

For Music Box, I recorded the small metal music box (pictured) being played in various ways: strummed, used percussively, played note by note. To this I added plucked viola and minimal vocals.

clio-em.com/airships/

I am currently writing a series of short stories entitled Airships. Set in a fictional steampunk world, the tales speak of love in a world of industry. For FAWM 2016, I am setting some of these to music.

Story, music and photo © 2015-2016 Clio Em

Music Box

"Some people referred to the DRGNs as the dragons . . . that generation was designed to be terrifically strong."
Serge, to Isabel, in Gravity Wing (https://igg.me/at/gravity-wing/x)

New Canada Engines is a spinoff album from Gravity Wing, my novel and soundtrack set on the planet of New Canada. In the story, NCE a company that builds spaceship engines. Founded by a pioneering couple on this new world, they company makes huge strides in innovation, eventually dominating the spaceship engine market.

For FAWM 2017 I am testing and building spaceship engines through ambient glitch soundscapes. Each track represents an engine built by NCE. The next track is a new layer or rework, building on and extrapolating from the previous piece, just as if each piece were a spaceship engine: built, test-flown, reworked, improved.

NCE 2 is the first proper build. Flight tests are being carried out.

I composed this track based on NCE 1 - prototype, which was entirely comprised of samples of a singing airplane engine. To this I added touches of synths, acoustic viola harmonics, more bitcrusher, and digital strings subtly quoting fragments of Serge’s Song (http://vimeo.com/clioem/serge), a classical piece that is an essential part of the Gravity Wing soundtrack.

NCE 2 - DRGN

Music composition/production/electronics/assembly: Clio Em
Cello: Liina Leijala

New Canada Engines is a spinoff album from Gravity Wing, my novel and soundtrack set on the planet of New Canada. In the story, NCE a company that builds spaceship engines. Founded by a pioneering couple on this new world, they company makes huge strides in innovation, eventually dominating the spaceship engine market.

For FAWM 2017 I am testing and building spaceship engines through ambient glitch soundscapes. Each track represents an engine built by NCE. The next track is a new layer or rework, building on and extrapolating from the previous piece, just as if each piece were a spaceship engine: built, test-flown, reworked, improved.

NCE 3 is the second proper build. Flight tests are being carried out and developments are moving along, though not always in desired directions. Personal problems from the team begin to intrude but this does not stop the creators from engineering art.

I composed this track based on NCE 2 - DRGN. First I took NCE 1 - Prototype, made up of singing airplane engine samples. To this I added touches of synths, acoustic viola harmonics, more bitcrusher, and digital strings subtly quoting fragments of Serge’s Song (http://vimeo.com/clioem/serge), a classical piece that is an essential part of the Gravity Wing soundtrack, at which point NCE 2 was born. For the third iteration, I added a movement from my 2011/2012 composition "Monodrama of the Mechanical Doll" for cello and actress. Here I just used the solo cello, in a live-recorded concert excerpt from VIII. Reality may be harsh or sweet, depending on the context. The cellist was Liina Leijala.

Thus, NCE 3 is the most "life-infused" of the engines so far. Much has happened, both good and bad. Experience informs the reality of the founders of New Canada Engines.

At the premiere performance of Monodrama of the Mechanical Doll (https://soundcloud.com/musiclio/sets/monodrama) in Nikki Bogart Gallery Vienna, Shakespearian actress Brigitte Pekarek created the role of the Doll.

Image by Clio Em.

NCE 3 - Reality

Milo and Celestine
You'll never know what you are
Cats chasing butterflies
In a garden that orbits a distant
Star.


from Gravity Wing - Soundtrack, coming this week

composition, lyrics, vocals, guitar, electronics - Clio Em
folk violin - dea.nice

Gravity Wing - Soundtrack

Milo and Celestine - from Gravity Wing - Soundtrack

Binary stars circle in an intergalactic dance. 

Copyright © 2019 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em).

LACE - Sarabande

Air - double is the folk reflection of the sarabande from my LACE suite. Composed based on the harmonic and melodic patterns of the air for campanula violin, the air - double is a meditation on a steampunk world of musical mechanics.

Copyright © 2019 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em).

LACE - Air

Paper is the bridge track of Airships & Lace (2019). I coomposed it based on the "Paper" tale from my AIRSHIPS series as a soundscape of love in a time of industry, then took it apart and reassembled it so that it becomes a part of a Baroque suite. Tearing and crumpling paper is used as an instrument - recorded, amplified, transformed. ,Strings are prepared with bits of paper. A pedal becomes a beating heart. Reversed recordings of a grand piano with open dampers take on the timbre of a drone instrument.

The concepts behind the creation of this piece stem from the experimentation I carried out for my AIRSHIPS project during my residency at the Banff Centre (Canada.

AIRSHIPS: http://clio-em.com/airships
PAPER (short story): https://clio-em.com/2015/10/13/paper/

LACE

LACE - Paper

Inspired by Ann Leckie's novel "Ancillary Justice," this is my idea of what the stringed instrument that Breq listened to on the planet Nilt would sound like.

The Stringed Instrument

Soundscape: Clio Em, based on Fantasia in g minor (Wq.117/13, H.225) by CPE Bach
Clavicord:  Lukas Sehr

I reinvented Fantasia in g minor (Wq.117/13, H.225) by CPE Bach using my own electro-acoustic approach by I recording, transforming, and aurally reweaving it. This was one of my seven speaker sounds as part of my installation MDW MULTIVERSE for Bibliosphäre, an MDW project (run by Marino Formenti) for Wien Modern that turned the university's library into a world of ever-changing sounds. 

MDW MULTIVERSE turned the stairwell into ghosts and reflections of performances that were happening in parallel to my electronics in real life, across various rooms and spaces of the library.

Fantasia on a CPE Bach Fantasia

from DARK CECILIA
To entrance, or an entrance made? 
Mallets on guitarlele strings, amplified. Dark folk opera. 
demo
feb2021
Dark Cecilia EP 2021
This is a FAWM songwriting version. Full release coming Fall 2021. 
Copyright (c) 2021 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em). 
Composed and performed by Clio Em

Entrance

Cecilia roars in from the alternate universe on a wave of guitar distortion.
She knows opera was really made for rebels like her.
Dark Cecilia EP 2021
DEMO - This is a FAWM songwriting version. Full release coming Fall 2021. 
Copyright (c) 2021 Clio Montrey (as Clio Em).
Composed and performed by Clio Em

Cecilia

Part of the electronic soundscape for my upcoming piece "Birdsong." which I'm in the process of writing and refining for Harpist Elisabeth Plank and myself on electronics.

Birdsong Electronics

I build atmospheric worlds 
out of pictures, sounds, and words | Sci-fi composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist and writer
Some of my other work can be found at soundcloud.com/musiclio

Clio Em

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