That's right, it's All Hallows' Elephant!
Wooooo!
All Hallows' Elephant is a festival of spooky music which is entirely legally distinct from a certain other celebration of spookiness coming up in just over a week. How does one celebrate All Hallows' Elephant, you ask? Why, with a carefully curated selection of BEM's very spookiest tracks, of course! And yes, some of these picks may seem a little left-field at first, but bear with me. I can explain. I think.
The Black Box Society
What better way could there be to kick off such a spooky episode than with something from Confound and Disturb? It's right there in the name, people. Rob Ramsay is a master of the unsettling and the uncanny, and all this talk of black boxes does absolutely nothing to reduce my pre-existing paranoia about sealed containers, black or otherwise.
Discord (Domestic Policies)
Ah, the scariest monster of them all... The News.
Don't let the major key and ostensible cheeriness deceive you. There's something thoroughly weird going on in the background of this song that stops you from relaxing. There are moments, especially towards the end, when that weirdness threatens to break through, but, like any good horror movie, the tension lies in not letting the monster surface fully, in building the anticipation of what lies beneath.
Don't let the major key and ostensible cheeriness deceive you. There's something thoroughly weird going on in the background of this song that stops you from relaxing. There are moments, especially towards the end, when that weirdness threatens to break through, but, like any good horror movie, the tension lies in not letting the monster surface fully, in building the anticipation of what lies beneath.
Even Then We're Scared
It would be absolutely criminal to leave Mr Slatter off this list. In Happy People, he sheds life on a distinctive fear of his own: fear of this strange phenomenon we laughingly call existence, of whatever the hell our place is in the world and how we're meant to cope with it. That, to me, is spookier than any ghost or goblin.
Save Me From The Rain
Konchordat's forceful, near-apocalyptic tone has wonderfully grim overtones of the dark and dangerous - granted, intimidating might be a better word for this than spooky, per se, but it still feels to me like it's in the spirit of All Hallows' Elephant. And the album cover of Rise to the Order evokes Pyramid Head, one of the best-known and scariest creatures in popular culture, so that's a point in its favour.
Bedhead
Now We Have Power is... it's, um... it's been spookily well-reviewed? Okay, look, I know these connections are getting a bit tenuous, but, honestly, you'd be amazed at how hard it can be to work to this theme even when you're working with all music, let alone when you're restricted to the releases of one smallish independent label. It was this or the Monster Mash. You don't want me to post the Monster Mash, do you?
Status Update
Summer is over, much as the weather will try to convince you otherwise. It's quiet here at Elephant Towers. No new releases on the immediate horizon for now; this is a time of rest and scheming for us. You're safe.
For now.
Wooooo.
Review Roundup
A trio of reviews for you this week: Echoes and Dust with a positively glowing review of Dial, neoprog.eu with an impressive five stars for Now We Have Power (and hopefully some fitting commentary, but my French is rather rusty), and DPRP imploring you to give Suite for Piano and Electronics a spin.
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