New Release: Sublinear - Masque of the Red Death

Sublinear - Masque of the Red Death
[free mp3 download]

(orchestral ambient, soundtrack)

"These compositions are expanded and restructured versions of the two dozen very short sound pieces I constructed for the Wandering Rom Players' stage production of "Masque of the Red Death" in 2005. It's best to listen to these by candlelight."

01 Here It Is Folly to Grieve or to Think
02 The Cracked Mirror You Were Made to Be
03 King Pest
04 Anon Strikes the Ebony Clock
05 Their Sad and Solemn Slumbers
06 Your Masks
07 Illimitable Dominion

"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death."

New Release: Faustino Goyena - De Neatins

Faustino Goyena - De Neatins
[free mp3 download]

(glitch, noise)

De Neatins is a musical tribute to legendary Argentine boxer Nicolino Locche, whose lightning-fast defensive reflexes earned him the name "The Untouchable."

1. Welter Junior
2. Tunuyán
3. Nationalen Kronen
4. kombëtare
5. Eso Duró Luis García
6. Adolph Pruitt boxejador
7. fetele ud
8. Las Heras

Faustino Goyena will be on tour in Europe in January 2010. For more information, visit the artist's MySpace page.

Cover art by Jonatan Flores.

New Release: 21 Gramms - Rain

21 Gramms - Rain
[free mp3 download]

(darkambient, drone)

"Only rain..."

1. Prologue
2. Rain
3. Epilogue

New Release: Royce Icon - A Warm Summer's Day

Royce Icon - A Warm Summer's Day
[free mp3 download]

(ambient, drone)

Cold ambient soundscapes recorded late one afternoon in July 09 using a Korg EA-1 electribe, guitar and voice.

01. A Warm Summer's Day (14:18)
02. A Cold Bitter Evening (16:18)

Bio: Royce Icon has been releasing experimental music for the past 7 years. So far he has released over 20 records, both online and through physical labels. aside from solo music he is also involved in the bands Gentle Beast, Starvation Ritual, Dracula Biscuits and Die Rote Form.

New Release: Astral Light - Orion

Astral Light - Orion
[free mp3 download]

(darkambient, space)

A journey into deep space.

01. Pillars of Creation
02. Fading Light
03. Orion

House of The Threshold People

The Threshold People have launched their new blog. There's not much there yet, but check back often for updates!

New Release: 21 Gramms - Complete Silence

21 Gramms - Complete Silence
[free mp3 download]

(darkambient, drone)

"god is egoist."

1. Untitled #1
2. Untitled #2
3. Untitled #3
4. Untitled #4
5. I want to talk with God...
6. ...but...
7. ...i hear only silence.

New Release: 900piesek - Blinded .tale from the underworld

900piesek - Blinded .tale from the underworld
[free mp3 download]

(darkambient, soundscape)

this story never happened. pictures,sounds,projections and words are slowly sinking in the golden rivers of oblivion. you are naked as a child, standing in front of the mirror. you are the mirror. this story is happening in you. you are the story. words are unimportant.

01.opening the gate
02.bended world of the parallel souls
03.invisible space of telekinesis
04.touch by a wing of Lilith
05.golden river of oblivion

Album includes photo gallery: projections 1-13

ParaLucid Netlabel

Volador (Nagual Art) has just launched ParaLucid, a netlabel dedicated to "Dark Ambient, Ethereal, Drone, Folk, Neo-Classical or similar sounds." The website lists upcoming albums from L'Horrible Passion, Divine Crystal Dreams, Dopedrone, and of course Nagual Art. This is going to be one to watch, for sure!

Also, NA side-project Traumflug has just posted a demo track on MySpace. Take a listen!

www.paralucid.net
www.myspace.com/paralucid

Songs that change the weather

Our dear friend and ally Withiel (of whom I have previously written) has self-released a new album of surpassing, and sometimes difficult, loveliness. While Withiel is not currently affiliated with This Plague of Dreaming, I think that the deep core he samples will taste familiar to you who have followed the plaguedream this far.



Withiel - King Zeppelin
[direct download, .RAR/~20Mb]

"KZ was originally meant to be a Brit-Steampunk-Emo album, and now I'm not sure what it is. It contains 8 original songs, 1 cover, and little hope indeed. I hope you get something out of it."

TRACKS:
1: All Our Lost Loves
2: Dreamers
3: Denial Song
4: Ashtray for your Memories
5: My Way In Time
6: Shackled To Change
7: Drillbit Lostlovesong
8: Dreaming of You (cover)
9: Tory of 0

[This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK:
England & Wales License.]

On a personal note, KZ hits me in right around the same emotional place as the Wicker Man soundtrack ("corn riggs," and all that, but with a bit more vacant car park and orange sodium glare). Whatever I am doing at the moment, Withiel speaks to the part of me that is quietly preparing to do something else, in a different place.

=PD

[To be clear, this is not a TPoD release, just a promotion of a favorite artist who deserves to be more widely heard.]

What I Believe

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-story car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.

I believe in the forgotten runways of Wake Island, pointing towards the Pacifics of our imaginations.

I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel; in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.

I believe in the beauty of all women, in the treachery of their imaginations, so close to my heart; in the junction of their disenchanted bodies with the enchanted chromium rails of supermarket counters; in their warm tolerance of my own perversions.

I believe in the death of tomorrow, in the exhaustion of time, in our search for a new time within the smiles of auto-route waitresses and the tired eyes of air-traffic controllers at out-of-season airports.

I believe in the genital organs of great men and women, in the body postures of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Di, in the sweet odours emanating from their lips as they regard the cameras of the entire world.

I believe in madness, in the truth of the inexplicable, in the common sense of stones, in the lunacy of flowers, in the disease stored up for the human race by the Apollo astronauts.

I believe in nothing.

I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dali, Titian, Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, Redon, Durer, Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, the Watts Towers, Bocklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.

I believe in Tokyo, Benidorm, La Grande Motte, Wake Island, Eniwetok, Dealey Plaza.

I believe in alcoholism, venereal disease, fever and exhaustion.

I believe in pain.

I believe in despair.

I believe in all children.

I believe in maps, diagrams, codes, chess-games, puzzles, airline time-tables, airport indicator signs.

I believe all excuses.

I believe all reasons.

I believe all hallucinations.

I believe all anger.

I believe all mythologies, memories, lies, fantasies, evasions.

I believe in the mystery and melancholy of a hand, in the kindness of trees, in the wisdom of light.

-J. G. Ballard, 1930--2009

New Release: Nagual Art - Seance 1931 | Tales from F.

Nagual Art - Seance 1931 | Tales from F.
[free mp3 download]

(darkambient, soundtrack)

Mors Janua vitae?

A soundtrack to a seance: lost voices; a sudden chill; a cold, familiar touch in the dark.

01 A Song from F.
02 Seance 1931
03 S.H.J.
04 Der Wandernde Jude
05 Seemannslied
06 The 1631 Daemon

This audio drama was recorded 2009 at Paralyze Room Freiberg by Volador. Many thanks to the spirits! I know you are dreaming the art.
For more information please visit: http://www.nagualart.de

New Release: The Tales from the Dead Sun Remixes

[I said I had good news for the fans, and here it is!]


[Esc.] Laboratory + The Threshold People - The Tales from the Dead Sun Remixes
[free mp3 download]

(horrorbeat, remixes)

Horrorbeat masters The Threshold People are probed, dissected, and re-stitched by the mad scientists at [Esc.] Laboratory's Department of RMX!

source:
The Threshold People – “The Pit” (from Night of the Threshold People)

destination:
01. The Pit (full of snakes pt. I_RMX) by [off:error]
02. The Pit (full of snakes pt. II_RMX) by [off:error]
03. The Pit (full of snakes pt. III_RMX) by [off:error]
04. The Pit (pendulum pt. I_RMX) by [interrupt:Jumper]
05. The Pit (pendulum pt. II_RMX) by [interrupt:Jumper]

source:
The Threshold People - "Deja Vu" (from Seven Legs from an Eight-Legged Beast)

destination:
01. Deja Vu (kHz Munster_RMX) by [G.umbatz M.onev`s G.reen E.lecktrode]
02. Deja Vu (caustic_RMX) by [ur:neon:ono]
03. Deja Vu (it rains on doomsday_RMX) by [revolting:Robotniks]
04. Deja Vu (last life got crushed_RMX) by [revolting:Robotniks]

source:
The Threshold People - "The Werewolf`s Cure" (from Seven Legs from an Eight-Legged Beast)

destination:
01. Werwolf`s Cure (better off dead_RMX) by [Yahuy-Che-Kabah]
02. Werwolf`s Cure (silver touched_RMX) by [Yahuy-Che-Kabah]
03. Werwolf`s Cure (the curse is better than the cure_RMX) by [Throatwobbler:Manegrove]
04. Werwolf`s Cure (cured by blood) by [revolting:Robotniks]
05. Werwolf`s Cure (cured by flesh) by [revolting:Robotniks]

= = = = =

I am also thrilled to announce upcoming releases from fan favorites Nagual Art and Sublinear, as well as the PlagueDream debuts of 900piesek and 21 Gramms!

Anniversary, and an announcement

One year ago today, the airship Jane Guy disappeared without a trace. To date, neither the ship nor her crew have been found. If you feel so moved, we invite you to join us for a moment of silence at 7:14 pm (EST), the time of the Guy's final radio message to the Institute.

~

In less somber news, [Esc.] Laboratory has a new website: WWW.ESC-LABORATORY.COM

As of the end of March, this will be the group's only official presence on the web, so update your bookmarks!

I have another exciting piece of news for fans of [Esc.] Lab (and The Threshold People!) that I hope to be able to announce very soon. Stay tuned!

=PD

Palimpsest Now!

"Palimpsest just knocks me flat with her use of language: rich, cool, opiated language, language for stories of strange love and hallucinated cities of the mind.”
— Warren Ellis

"It's never enough to merely read a book like the Palimpsest, it has to be imbibed, and its sensuality fully savoured."
--Nick Bantock, author of The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy

Just a reminder that Palimpsest is on the shelves as of yesterday. My own copy is in the post, and will hopefully arrive today. If you enjoyed the original short story (previously posted), maybe consider ordering the book, or pick it up at your local independent bookseller?

Palimpsest

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse -- a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important -- a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.

The novel, by Catherynne M. Valente, comes out in February (you can preorder--I did), but in the meantime I strongly encourage you to stoke your senses with the original short story at Senses Five Press. The question I'm dying to see answered is: can she keep up this level of dream-drenched intensity over the length of a novel? Do I ever hope so.

=PD

That could have gone better.

News? No News.

This is not a post about the missing airship Jane Guy, I am sorry to say. Since I last wrote to you on the topic, leads have been followed and lost, sightings have been reported and debunked, and little if any actual progress has been made in the investigation. Some of these episodes might make interesting reading when the time comes to tell the full story, but they are not news.

The fact is, there is little enough news coming out of the Institute at all right now. Winter is the time when we settle down to the orderly, indoor task of transcribing and collating data accumulated in the more temperate seasons (for budgetary reasons, each department's yearly reports are due by the end of March). By Spring, some of this tedious industry will yield breakthroughs. Everything else will simply be absorbed into the cavernous Institute archives, to accumulate dust while it awaits the whims of a future researcher to bring it back into the light.

But a lack of anything interesting or relevant to write about has never yet been an impediment to blogging, so I shall forge ahead with this update undaunted.

Let's see, what's been happening... Well, my lab assistant-slash-webmaster (i.e. the Luddite) has been snatched away from me and reassigned to Central, after I let slip word of his coffee-making prowess. We have been forced to fall back on our own inferior brewing skills, which hurts, but on the plus side, the website might get updated a little more often. Oh, and speaking of the website, we are changing servers, so expect the site to be down for a while sometime in the next 24-48 (all music will still be available at archive.org).

I'll be honest, I'm making this post mostly because I'm bored and lonely. My staff has the afternoon off, and I'm just pottering around the lab tidying up loose ends on various projects and trying not to think too hard about tonight's presentation. Oh yeah, I'm speaking at a fundraising dinner tonight. I need to sell the idea of the Outreach program to some of our oldest and most secretive backers (it's a black mask affair, natch), and I don't expect to enjoy myself very much. These things are creepy enough when you're not the center of attention, and by now the prospective donors will have heard the tale of the Jane Guy. It's funny how some of the most eccentric and bizarre people can also be the most conservative and intolerant. Or maybe it's the money that does it. In any case, wish me luck.

=PD