Cthonicist

A collaboration with Christian Krupa, guitarist extraordinaire: https://on.soundcloud.com/WdmwY

“I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.” - H.P.Lovecraft, ‘Nemesis’. Inspired, obviously, by the best Lovecraft film which had nothing to do with him, Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1997 cosmic horror masterpiece, Event Horizon. Moog Sound Studio 3 hardware (Mother 32, Dfam, Subharmonico...

“I thought the little house was lonely when I saw it, and that like myself, it was conscious of its meaningless nature before the great sea.” Lovecraft’s last published collaboration before his death a year later was this eerie 1936 story, mainly authored by 18 year old R.H. Barlow, of a fragile artist - not unlike Barlow himself - possibly losing his mind in an off season oceanside cabin. Created...

“Our order possesses the key which opens up all Masonic and Hermetic texts.” - Carl Kellner, chemist, industrialist, occultist. Founder of Ordo Templi Orientis - Order of the Temple of the East, a.k.a. O.T.O, later taken over by the Great Beast himself. Aleister Crowley. That key was sex. Specifically, sexual magic rituals. It always comes down to sex in the end… Various apps recorded live in AUM...

“Through the desolate summits swept raging intermittent gusts of the terrible antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping.” - H.P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains Of Madness A trip out for the amazing Moog Moogerfooger FX apps, (filters, phasers, saturators, delays and more) variously working on Decent Sampler instruments in AUM.

‘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: liv...

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 s...

A true tale of travelling in the rust belt. Vocals: Natural Reader Free. Accompaniment: me Full transcript available here: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/56924/i-m-a-believer-in-fate-so-a-speakers-enhanced-slice-of-raw-fact-nothing-happened#latest

“I found the Artefact, scavenging The Zone, dodging the patrols. Obviously an Outsider device, their creepy mix of tech and biology, worth something to someone, I bet. What it did I had no idea, but seeing myself reflected in it’s metal surface, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, though long dead or decommissioned, it was somehow *looking* at me…”

“All I ask of living is to have no chains on me, and all I ask of dying is to go naturally.” - Laura Nyro Live iKaossilator app jam transferred to Launchpad app and augmented with effected loops

Three horned face. 12 tonnes in weight, 30 feet long. 68 Million years old. A very common dinosaur: the armoured, herbivorous ‘cow of the Cretaceous’ would still beat the T Rex it shared habitats with in a straight fight, because physics. The initial clash has T Rex down, probably impaled. An ambush? Possibly, a different story. A live hardware jam using a PO33 sampler, SOMA labs R.O.A.T, and Wing...

“When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written.” - Henry Miller, Tropic Of Cancer. Live improvisation using Soma Labs Rumble Of Ancient Times and Meng Qi’s Wingie II resonator. Recorded in AUM on iPad.

“Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?” - Edgar Allan Poe Created live with apps in AUM on iPad. No keyboards or DAWs were harmed during the making of this piece.

“Is this really all there is?” - Sir Gawain “What else ought there be?” - The Green Knight Completed in response to an AudioBus Forum challenge, in turn derived from Paul David’s YouTube guitar challenge. Created entirely with fx & IPad ‘tape manipulation’ techniques using Paul David’s original guitar backing track found here: https://youtu.be/8Bt3RYy6Y-Y as the sole source material. No instrument...

‘Preacher Man, he preach at midnight in the old ruined church, to a Congregation of cockroaches and coffin beetles. The book he reads from ain’t no bible…” Tin whistle, played live into AUM on IPad and manipulated with FX apps.

"Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed." - David Mitchell, Slade House

‘I mean, it’s just a box, right? All that stuff about a curse, and a demon inside it and everything is just B.S. Right? Right?” Live modular jam: Lyra 8, FX Aid XL, Behringer TD3 MO AM

The Hemingford Herald of 24th April 1896 reports cowboy Joe Healy, driving cattle near Guide Rock, Nebraska, encountered a ghost, and emptied all six rounds from his pistol into it, with no effect. There have been many such sightings since. Not coincidentally, perhaps, is the fact that the rock is sacred to the Pawnee as Pa-hur or Pahur, one of five dwelling places of spirit animals with miraculou...

“‘I fancied that I discerned objects in the temple, objects both stationary and moving, and seemed to hear again the unreal chant…” H.P. Lovecraft, The Temple Live MIDI played from keyboard into Atom, driving multiple instances of Hilda synth inside AUM on iPad.

One who sees far, between the worlds of what has been, what is, and what will be. Final face of the Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother… Crone. At Trendle Ring, a Bronze Age hill fort 4km West North West of the Somerset town of Williton, it is said that on misty days she can still be seen in this form, gathering sticks, or herding the local red deer. In other, more - difficult - encounters, she may ins...

Hiraeth- a homesickness for a place that never was. Pronounced he-reyeth, this Welsh word describes a type of homesickness, but for a home that you can't return to, or that never existed. A combination of longing, nostalgia and yearning. A feeling which doesn't always go away, even when you do return home. Created on iPad in AUM with Hilda, Model 15, and Steel Guitar Pro.

The cryosphere is frozen water in the form of snow, permanently frozen ground (permafrost), floating ice, and glaciers. If all this were to melt, sea levels would rise by 70 metres. Created solely with a vintage Hohner Soprano Melodica played live into AUM on iPad and processed with various FX. No other instruments used.

In thunder's embrace, Spider spins a delicate tracery. Raindrops kiss the strands. Made on iPad in AUM using aPolyvoks synth and Enso looper.

“I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart, which can be cured only with gold.” - Hernan Cortes, destroyer of the Aztec civilisation. Harbinger of the modern age. Made on iPad in AUM using only apps. No real instruments were harmed during the making of this piece.

“Mind the Threefold Law you should, three times bad and three times good.” - The Witches Rede. The word "rede" derives from Middle English, meaning "advice" or "counsel". In the neopagan religion of Wicca a ‘rede’ is a key moral precept. In this case, that whatever be wrought, by magickal means or otherwise, it shall return thricefold upon the initiator. Wiccan karma… Recorded on iPad in AUM using...