Cthonicist

Follow Opequon Creek to the village of Middleway, West Virginia, at the foot of the brooding Appalachians, and you will encounter The Wizard Clip - the legend of a Protestant man who in 1794 denied a sick Catholic stranger the services of a priest for his last rites. After the stranger died, it is said that candles would not stay lit in the room his corpse was, sounds of horses galloping and crock...

“ I see earthquakes and lightnin' / I see bad times today” -Creedence Clearwater Revival Demoing the great, free AudioThing / Hainbach collab app Moon Echo, which uses the actual freakin’ moon as a kind of plate echo. Get it here: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/moon-echo/id6503342104

“In ancient times it was believed that the delineation between worlds was more permeable in certain anomalous areas in a landscape; these areas were known as ‘thin places’, and were sometimes signified by burial mounds or standing stones.” - Ciara Healy, University of the West of England.

“My child... the hour draws near. Soon you will join the great embrace. You've known for some time that this world is just a game…” - Saint Maud. All instruments and FX played live and recorded direct from Roland S1 to AUM in iPad. No other instruments or apps used.

In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh oversaw the first British foothold in America, the Roanoke Colony. Five years later, a resupply mission found the fortified colony barricaded, abandoned, and the cryptic word ‘Croatoan’ carved into the palisade. A possible reference to a nearby island, or to the local indigenous peoples, further enquiries into the meaning of the carving were thwarted by a storm which th...

“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 glo...

A setting of lines spoken by Matt Dillon, as Jack, from Lars Von Trier’s disturbing and controversial horror thriller The House That Jack Built.

“ They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars — on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.” - Robert Frost Created with apps on iPad

“So: You have chosen the Lament Configuration.” - The Priest My (belated) entry for this year’s drone day: https://droneday.org/ Created entirely in apps on iPad.

You probably think this song is about you, don’t you?

Circle of Blood, a lurid tale of a coven of baby-sacrificing witches in the catacombs of the Vatican City, released to little fanfare at the height of the Giallo craze in 1970s Italy; Luca Vozza’s only, now-lost movie eclipsed by contemporaries Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Yet it acquired a cult reputation, not only for its graphic depictions of torture and murder, but also because, it was rumour...

Sci-fi author William Gibson suggested that in the blackest depths of cyberspace, the line between rogue AIs and supernatural beings - for instance, the Loa of Haitian and Louisianan Voodoo - grows thin. This image appeared as the final iteration of the ‘negative space’ created by an AI art program prompted to produce ‘the opposite of Marlon Brando’. Wording in the scene apparently read ‘Loab.’ Re...

“…a Cyclopean city of no architecture known to man…vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous perversions of geometrical laws…” H.P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains Of Madness.

In 2017, artist James Brindle created a photo piece, ‘Autonomous Trap 001’. This consisted of creating a salt circle around his self driving car, a familiar magical technique to contain summoned spirits. The vehicles’ software, interpreting the salt as a circle of No Entry signs, was unable to move the vehicle from the circle. Any familiar with the Loa spirits currently manifesting as autonomous A...

Hey, you remember what happened to Doveland back in the 90’s, right?

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

I do not advise you visit Hekate Station. Korg Volca Modular recorded into AUM on IPad.

Zona incerta, the ‘zone of uncertainty’ : a region of the brain of which nothing certain can be said. Its functions are mysterious; unknown. So unknown, it doesn’t even feature in many anatomical textbooks. It is suspected it may have something to do with the way we make, or interpret, memories. But this is speculation. Recorded live in AUM on iPad using 3 instances of the synth app Hilda

“But as in wailing there's nought availing, And Death unfailing will strike the blow, Then for that reason, and for a season, Let us be merry before we go.” - John Philpott Curran

“We are all roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages.” - H.P. Lovecraft, Beyond the Wall of Sleep Made in AUM, on iPad. No keyboards were harmed during the making of this piece.

Officially, the facility known as Project Winterkeeper, approximately 5 miles east of Attu Station, Alaska, is a seed bank, a storehouse of plant germ lines hoarded against apocalypse. Following an unspecified incident in August 2010, however, the nearby coast guard station was evacuated, and both facility and island abandoned. Unofficially, rumours persist that the large dome, censored in public...

“I sank nearly to the lichened earth, transfixed with a dread not of this or any world, but only of the mad spaces between the stars.’ -H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival.

“This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear most.” -Thomas Olde Heuvelt

In Norse mythology, two wolves, Skoll, the one who mocks, and Hati, the one who hates, chase the sun and the moon through the sky. It is not clear which divine animal chased what, but it is nevertheless believed that it is from this mythological origin that the real world ice halo optical effect of a double or triple sun which may occasionally be seen derives its’ name, as Skoll or Hati close upon...

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.” - Captain Ahab