Friday, September 15, 2023

MUSIC FOR HAUNTED ASYLUMS: EIGHTH TOWER RECORDS

Sounds, whether disconsolate or indignant, seeping from the flaking walls of an abandoned asylum, constitute the foundation of nightmarish heartbreak. One can imagine the ghosts of Norman Bates and Baby Jane Hudson flowing along the musty corridors of any such decrepit structure, triggering one's anguish, trepidation ... empathy. 

The guiding genius of Raffaele Pezzella, through Eighth Tower Records, now offers an audio anthology to represent that weird sector of life ... and death: Music for Haunted Asylums

The artists are fruitful and skillful in their baleful results, listed below by their names (on the left) and their compositions (on the right):

1) insectarium ... Tx plan

2) Kloob ... Enclosed Murmurs

3) phoanogramma ... traks

4) Cult of Light ... Uncharted Corridors

5) The Black Monolith ... A Banishing Ritual of Memory

6) Bjorn Jenkins ... Nightfall

7) Nihil Impvlse ... Confession on the Bergonic Chair

8) SILENI ... Lunacy

9) Mombi Yuleman ... Beyond the White Room

10) OMENSWORN ... Forgotten Cells of Shattered Psyche

11) Vyormouth ... Barbed Asylum

12) Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse ... Collapse (Sanatorium) 

13) Vacant Stations ... Spectral Fray

14) Psionic Asylum ... The Hall

To absorb Music for Haunted Asylums is rather like listening to a textured, haunted-house, novelty LP of decades past, only in this case, the communications are more layered, penetrating and hypnotic. They force one to question one's intrinsic terror, to assess that teetering breaking point where one might slip among the institutionalized souls. 

The effect is chilling, but like the best, psychological horror, enriching for the bold expanse it teaches.

Enter these deceased annuls and come away all the more alive for the mad intimacy they invoke:

https://eighthtowerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-haunted-asylums

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