The album "Ancient Metals" combines field recordings from various international locales with drone organ and synth and distant melodies played on a 100-year-old “banjolin”, a banjo-like instrument that uses mandolin tuning.

Each piece is meant to conjure up a different ancient environment, or fictional in the case of Melniboné, which is the name of the dreaming island of evil in Michael Moorcock’s Elric mythos.

The primary musical inspirations for this recording were the early dark kosmische experimental music of Klaus Schulze ("Cyborg", "Irrlicht") and the avant-garde organ music of Eliane Radigue ("Adnos", "Trilogie de la Mort").

Samarkand

DAYS PASS ON BY

BACK AGAIN

SONG FOR YOU

A HOUSE AIN'T A HOME

EMPIRE OF ILLUSION

DISTANT SHORES

I've had this simple guitar line that I've been playing around with for the last few months.  Key of A seems to be the most natural for me playing.  I got around to recording last weekend, just the main line and some additional guitar lines over that.  Spend last weekend and this working on arranging and mixing.  To me, it sounds triumphant, but life can be that way sometimes.  Not often but sometimes.

A Waltz for New Arrivals

“Alas… The Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive” finds Whettman Chelmets exploring more of the guitar sounds and textures that defined his teenage life, and that sound lends a nostalgic longing to each these three tracks. The first track hits right of the bat with the artist plunging into shoegaze, fuzz-echo noise pop structures reminiscent of the Jesus and Mary Chain, The Cure, and Phil Spector. Track two takes on acoustic treatments and blends them with 4/4 kick drums, reverberated guitars and chimes that weave to a grandiose apex with nods to the The Tornados’s “Telstar” and other larger-than-life sounds. Track three slows it all down to a glacial pace and unfolds guitar textures over the course of nine minutes, moving from a dreamy yearning to crushing waves of feedback and noise. At 18 minutes, Whettman Chelmets takes us on a journey through fuzz-tinted memories.

Alas, the Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive

Alas... 2018

Flood Your Heart is a dark pop/post-punk track which will be featured on my upcoming album Empire Land coming soon in 2020.

Flood Your Heart

Forgotten

Allister Thompson is a singer-songwriter who works in the genres of folk, indie, prog, psych, ambient, and Krautrock under different projects.

Samarkand

Allister Thompson/The Gateless Gate

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