“Keep the Americans out!” - excerpt from the text of decrypted secret memo concerning the ‘ghost rocket’ phenomena of the late 1940s.

Before there were flying saucers, ufos or unidentified aerial phenomena, there were ‘ghost rockets’, numbers of which entered Swedish airspace in the years following WWII. The photo shows Swedish Air Force scientific officer Karl-Gösta Bartoll searching for one such “ghost rocket" seen crashing July 19, 1946, in Lake Kölmjärv, Sweden.

Ghost Rockets

"I think someone is trying to drive you crazy before finally killing you."

A tribute to an early work by the master of Giallo, Dario Argento. Long on style, short on logic, the movie is a twisted tale of murder. The original score by Morricone naturally sets a very high bar, and I am confident I might, with luck, one day manage to limbo under it. In the meantime: my own poor alternative take… Made & mixed live in AUM on IPad, using Hilda, Sopranotron, Speldosa, et al. Sequencing by midiDreams. No keyboards harmed during making of the piece.

Four Flies On Grey Velvet

According to mythbusting site Snopes, the ‘Crying Baby' Serial Killer Victim Lure is an urban myth, circulating since January 2003, purportedly relating to a serial killer operating in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana, USA. It suggested the killer would leave a doll rigged with a tape recording of a crying baby on the doorsteps of lone women, to lure them out.  Coincidentally two later-convicted serial killers *were* independently operating there at this time, though neither used the ruse.

A little experiment using ‘emotional’ text to speech AI, https://typecast.ai/, keywords ‘whisper’ & ‘sad’. Recorded on iPad in AUM

Hush

‘In this paper we explain the process of constructing intelligent devices based on atomic switches, in which the behavior of atoms determines the device functions, by integrating them with nanoarchitectonics. “ - Takashi Tsuchiya et al 2022 Appl. Physics Express 15 

Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realise I live in a world where things like this are now real, not sci-fi. So: a hardware jam: live manipulation of a single Atom module (M.I. Elements clone) a Behringer 960 Sequential Controller, and a 962 Sequential Switch, performed & live mixed to AUM on iPad for post processing.

Nanoarchitectonics

It is said that the snow at Hekate Station appears quite black during the long Arctic nights.

Obsidian Snow

“After four decades Freeman had personally performed possibly as many as 4,000 lobotomy surgeries in 23 states, of which 2,500 used his ice-pick procedure, despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. His patients often had to be retaught how to eat and use the bathroom. Relapses were common, some never recovered, and about 15% died from the procedure… Freeman usually wore neither gloves nor mask... He lobotomized 19 minors, including a four-year-old child.”

Minimally Invasive

“All kinds. Some good. Some bad. And some… well, that’d be telling.”
- The Old Woman.

There Is Magic In The World

The Persistence Of Memory

“Crom watches the world from his mountain top, but does not answer prayers and will receive no worship.“ - A God for the Godless. Thank you, Robert E. Howard.

Made with the BramBos/Jakob Haq semi modular app Solderbox. No keyboards were harmed in the making of this track.

Crom Does Not Answer Prayers

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” - H.P. Lovecraft

Track created entirely with Behringer VS Mini synth, recorded and manipulated using AUM on iPad.

A World Not Desperate To Explain Itself

Larry has a knife.

First outing with my new (secondhand) Digitakt, hooked up to my IPad, and mix-mastered live in AUM. No real clue what I’m doing here, but it was fun.

Larry Wants To Get To Know You

According to some astronomers, star  HD 140283, the so-called ‘Methuselah Star’ appears to be older than the universe it is part of. This raises certain… questions.

Track created entirely using the new Stylophone (!) DS2 mini modular synth, no other instruments involved. FX from the Zoom MS 70CDR+ foot pedal. Recorded live and multitracked into AUM on iPad.

Methusaleh Star

Methuselah Star

According to Wikipedia, Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is a nickname or pseudonym for the Devil. The name likely comes from Middle English scrat, the name of a demon or goblin, derived from Old Norse skratte.

DAWless and Cheap(ish) hardware only: Second hand Volcas - Sample Mk1, Kick, Bass, and Modular -, a Behringer JT4000M micro synth, Stylophone CPM DS2, Zoom fx pedal, mixed live into AUM on iPad.

Old Scratch

“ I thought it said "liberate me" - "save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutemet" - "save yourself." - D.J., crew member, the rescue ship Lewis & Clark.

The French have a name for it. That unwilled occasional, powerful urge to hurl oneself from a rooftop, to steer into the oncoming traffic. l'appel du vide: the call of the Void.

Created entirely in apps on iPad

The Call Of The Void

The Haunt Frequency relates to the concept that certain subliminal pitches, created by naturally occurring resonances in walls, machines, plumbing etcetera, engender an unconscious atavistic unease in those exposed to them, perhaps related to our ancestral role as prey to large predators capable of generating such pitches in their growls, thus leading to sensations of supernatural fear. Created as a single pass live jam on the pictured modular case. Recorded and mixed in AUM on iPad. No keyboards or overdubs harmed in the making of this.

Haunt Frequency

Conplan 8888 is the US goverment’s real world military mobilisation plan to respond to a 28 Days Later-style ‘zombie virus‘ pandemic apocalypse. Nice to know there is at least a plan…

Created in AUM on IPad using 4 instances of Igor Vasiliev’s NoiseSpace app, Alteza reverb, and nothing else.

Conplan 8888

You demanded proof, and bade me call for my friends from over the mountain. Now they are upon you, and payment for your doubting will be exacted. In full.

Friends From Over The Mountain

The question “Are you a travelling man?” and the response : “I travel from the West to the East” is said to be a way for Freemasons to covertly identify each other. Of course, there are those who suggest the Travelling Man referred to is not a Freemason at all…

Travelling Man

“It is said that there is a border between our reality and those… other… realities which press upon it. And that there is a house there, a house of refuge for travellers in the Dark Ways, a place of respite from the impossible horrors which await. But the house itself is impossible, and the refuge it offers comes at a terrible price.” - The Seer

The House Of Apparent Refuge

“Now that we who survived have reconstructed a civilization on a rational basis, we want to preserve for future generations as many accounts as possible by the actual witnesses of the catastrophe that overtook the world” - from ‘When The Moon Fell’ by Morrison Colladay, first published 1929.

Moonset

In peace or in blood, we will all go down to Sheol 

Going Down to Sheol

I Would Come As A Pain In Your Heart

Took delivery of my Behringer Syncussion SY-1 today. It’s a cheap, Eurorackable twin channel percussion synth cloned from the Pearl original which despite its simplicity, is very tweakable for usage beyond percussion. This whole track was sequenced from Beatstep Pro, multitracked in AUM on iPad… and used the Syncussion as the only instrument.

All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful

“If you take Joe’s bus to that damnable place, buy a single. You won’t need no return.”

A hardware jam: all sounds from a Stylophone (!) CPM dual oscillator/filter into Zoom Multistomp pedal. No sequencing, no keyboards, no patching, just live tweaking and looping straight into Alteza reverb in AUM on the iPad.

Joe Sargent’s Bus Service

You probably think this song is about you…

Ideas of reference are a symptom of certain mental illnesses, in which the patient  believes that strangers’ conversations, tv and radio broadcasts and so on are conveying special messages for the patient solely and directly.

Created entirely in apps and recorded to AUM on iPad.

Ideas Of Reference

There is no such thing as a ghost. And, one day, quite soon really, there will be no such thing as you either. Or me. Maybe, WE are the ghosts.

A little Koala action, with live melodica overdub. Recorded on iPad into AUM.

All The Ghost That You Will Be

If witches did manage to get in the house, sleeping with a Bible, a silver dollar, or a knife beneath your pillow had all been recommended as preventatives. Turning your socks inside out before going to bed was also thought to keep away witches. Mustard seed scattered around the bed was equally effective.

Made entirely with the Dexed app in AUM on IPad.

Apotropaia

“ Ever wonder how David slew Goliath? Like the insect, he wasn't afraid to die.” -  Dr. Nils Hellstrom.

An all-Stylophone jam, featuring the CPM DS 2 and new Stylophone Gen X2, live and direct into AUM on ipad via the Zoom multistomp pedal.

Hellstrom Chronicle

Live jam: four overdubs of Soma Labs’ unruly ‘organismic synthesiser’ via Zoom L6 mixer/interface into AUM on iPad. Alteza reverb, no other fx or instruments used. Was it good for you?

From A Lyra 8

“ mediæval sorcery and witchcraft and black magic, and all of the valiant glamorous things that the modern world has repudiated...” - Frank Belknap Long, ‘The Hounds Of Tindalos.’ Read it for free here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_13/Issue_3/The_Hounds_of_Tindalos

All The Valiant Glamorous Things

Made with B00GA, Hainbach’s new app take on a piece of obsolete lab equipment called a Word Clock Generator, here repurposed as a drum machine/sequencer/glitch thingy. Word! :)

Word / Clock / Generator

Word/Clock/Generator

The Experiments: Dark Ambient. Hauntology. A Craft of Love.  

NEW ALBUM: ‘Norsecraftian’, links below. All tracks available free of charge for use in your own artistic works: videos, games, movies, theatre etc, in return for a namecheck. Request in the comments & I’ll be in touch. Collabs and commissions accepted.

All tracks composed on an IPad or modular,  arranged on iPad or Ableton.

Popular tracks by Cthonicist