A digital audio study in futility, mortality, and clotted emotion, wasted and left to decay.

This set represents a cross-section of my work from 2005 to 2008, and my return to compositional form in 2012.

Best absorbed sublingually in small doses. 

100% toxic to small children, animals, and optimists everywhere.

Powered by Reaktor.

July 24, 2012 - Downloads enabled; have fun, kiddies! 

Manifesto Vulgaris - A Cross-Section of Dark Matter

This is a 2012 remaster of 2004's 'A Touch of Dread'. The track was originally titled 'End Credits', and I've long since forgotten why I changed it, but here it stands in its intended form, substantially buffed with a generous serving of unadulterated, brown-noting Mordor..

End Credits - 2012 remaster of 2004's 'A Touch of Dread'

My buddy Hemadrone made some really cool H.P. Lovecraft chant recordings that I just knew I had to do something with. Despite having done oppressive, dark/horror ambient for years, I had not touched anything I could associate with one of my favorite pulp writers, so I had no choice but to deploy.

This track, from start to end is 100% Tom's vocals, from the dizzying low end pulse to the shrill choirs, to the deep rumbling gurgle of the Abyss. The track was composed in NI's Reaktor, using two very different, but equally effective sampler instruments.

Easily one of my most formulaic (and favorite) tracks, the concept is simple:

A lone acolyte sends a challenge across a dark, barren hilltop in rural Maine. His ancestors have ever gathered here, calling in vain for the return of the Old Ones in all their twisted glory, but the stars were never right before.

This time, they are.

Cthulhu responds.

The world spirals into Madness and Doom as the Old Ones gleefully lube their 1,001 slathering orifices with the dripping Corpse of Man.

*accompanying image by Hemadrone*

Cheers,
D

Picnic at Dunwich, 2012 edit

From 2004 to 2006, I had a custom of making a track each Winter, in what was called the Cold Earth series. When I lapsed, each instance of gravity compelling me to return was most strongly felt from the desire to continue this series.

Cold Earth VI was several years in coming.

Winter is the peak (or trough) in my own annual Depression cycle, and like the Resurrection Gods (Jesus, to most of you..), each time I survive it, I feel reborn and having made it through a oppressive form of psychic Death.

Cold Earth IV marks the second attempt at composition after a four year abstinence from creating tracks. It jumped out of me full grown, having been waiting inside for so long, it literally wrote itself and was one of the most painless of all my compositions.

Made on Mac OS X, with Reaktor and various supporting VST effects in Plogue Bidule.

Cold Earth IV, 2012

This track was what like..a plateau for me. It was originally cut in 2008, and only sees some minor editing here in an effort to tame some unruly digital clipping, sadly unavoidable to a host of issues on my audio PC at the time, and actually marked the end of my efforts for the next four years.

I began this work, the descent into deeper and deeper introspection, as a means of coping with a life-threatening drug addiction which had countless times nearly claimed the life of someone very close to me, whom I was ultimately powerless to help, and suffered my own collateral damage which impacted every facet of my life.

Due to crippling technical issues, its my most 'unprofessional' production, and yet it remains my favorite of all, having several instances of what I feel strongly were the most powerful moments in all my creative efforts, especially in the track's ending minutes.

When it was finished, I was overwhelmed with a violent frustration that told me that I'd come to an end in my work, at least for the foreseeable future, contrasted against an enormous sense of a burden relieved, an agonizing, emotional cyst long festering within me, finally lanced and free to bleed the wound clean. 

Its my most intimate piece, above all others, for I would rather die than be without the woman this track is dedicated to.

100% Reaktor.

All The Hours Wound, 2012 edit

If "Dark" = "Cool", than 2005's 'Initiate' would probably be considered my 'coolest' track. 

Pretty fucking heavy, to boot..

Inspired by the noxious horn blasts of the tripod war machines in Speilberg's War of the Worlds, I sped home intent on recreating and using that powerful timbre in a track, and the result was Part II in what is known as the 'Illuminatus Triumvirate', with 2005's 'Bliss of the Illuminated' being Part I. The concept of the trilogy was to present the moral and spiritual downward spiral of what would be recognized today as the 1%. The allure and attraction to Power and Mystique is captured in Pt I, and by Pt II, it becomes plain that things are not what they seemed initially.

A favorite tactic of the truly powerful is to harness the well intentions of ignorant, upwardly mobile minions, convinced that as they claw their way up the sides of the Pyramid that they somehow do what is Best For All, not recognizing the division in the upper annex of Might that will forever bar them from entry.

Everyone wants to be more than what they are; everyone desires to be desired, to control, to feel Power course through oneself, to assert ourselves over all others. At the end of the day, however, Power only has one master.

Itself.

The Head of Baphomet awaits even the most incorruptible heart at Journey's End.

One night stand between Reaktor and the superb and underrated Exciton soft synth. Fans of John Carpenter's The Thing will have no trouble at all making a positive ID on the primal beat driving this composition. Initiate presented me with a conundrum that I haven't overcome to this day:

If Initiate is a corruption of Bliss of the Illuminated, how in the HELL am I going to follow that progression and corrupt Initiate beyond its present incarnation?

Consequently, the trilogy will likely never see its completion. I'm just not good enough to pull that one off..

Initiate

This was my only track from 2006. I used to make a big fuss about how I never saved any of my project files, forcing each track to be 100% unique and preventing me from any easy convenience of falling back on previously used arrangements and tones. 

This track forced me to rethink that wisdom.

I can't even tell you what instrument I actually used here, but I got such a great synthesis of a distorted electric guitar string on this that I beat my head over and over at how stupid I was to not save it.

Haven't managed to reproduce it ever again.

Naturally...

This is a rare beast for another reason, as it is one of only two (three?) tracks to have anything remotely resembling a rhythm, however rudimentary. Works here pretty well.

Slo - 2006

A dark ambient experiment in catharsis, begun in 2005 to 2008, and resumed in 2012. Sickle is 100% digital audio endeavor, with the majority of compositional material generated in Native Instruments' Reaktor, a modular environment. Dark, punishing, and occasionally beautiful, harsh tonal arrangements are superimposed against an organic flow that transports the listener to introspectively daunting places they might not willingly visit by any other means.