"Songs of a Dead Dreamer" by... DJ Spooky?

[Sam]

Well, this is an odd one. I accidentally stumbled upon this CD today at Amazon:

Amazon.com: Songs of a Dead Dreamer: DJ Spooky: Music

 

Amazon.com: Songs of a Dead Dreamer: DJ Spooky: Music

According to the Wikipedia stub for that album,

Quote

Songs of a Dead Dreamer is an electronica album by DJ Spooky, released on 2 April 1996... It is based on Songs of a Dead Dreamer, the story collection by horror fiction writer Thomas Ligotti.

Neither Amazon's Editorial Review nor any of the Customer Reviews mention Mr. Ligotti by name, and except for the track "Nihilismus Dub" most song titles sound more like Star Trek than soft black stars... Judging by the Amazon previews, the songs do have a dark, futuristic noir sound, but I can't find anything else on the interent that would substantiate a direct connection between this music and Mr. Ligotti's writing.

I'm curious to hear what others think about the it. Does this sort of electronic ambient music whisk you away on phantasmal puppet strings?

[g]

I've always been surprised this hasn't come up. Obviously, the overlap between DJ Spooky and Ligottians isn't vast. I've seen DJ Spooky live and I'm quite a fan. The album was influenced by his reading and interpretation of Ligotti's collection. I would say that trying to turn Ligotti's atmosphere into electronic beats and washes of white noise is a noble but difficult undertaking and, despite some exposure when it came out, Spooky's latter work is far more accomplished. So, if you want to hear jarring abstract soundscapes that were somewhat inspired by Ligotti (a song is named after a Philip K. Dick novel as well), then you should get it. It was a big deal in certain circles when it came out, but the work Spooky does now is more impressive.I guess what I'm trying to say is that the idea of a dead person dreaming and what sort of songs the dead dreamer would hear is what Spooky seems to have been going for. He liked Ligotti's short story collection a great deal, but it was that single concept that (in my opinion) influenced the work and led to "borrowing" the title. This is one gifted, brilliant, yet still developing (1996) artist's idea of what songs dead dreamers hear--not an out and out homage to Ligotti on a deep story-based level, though the dark claustrophobic intensity is in evidence. Paul D. Miller (aka that Subliminal Kid aka DJ Spooky) is an astoundingly bright and well-read composer who's one of the greatest experimental DJs alive...it's just that disjointed, minimalist hip-hop beats aren't what I think most of us would first think of as Ligottian music. It's still quite nice to listen to while reading him, but Spooky was fully-formed and doing his own thing and then found a kindred idea that unified his instrumentals as opposed to paying out and out homage to what Ligotti did in the fiction of Songs of a Dead Dreamer. Spooky deserves great credit for reading Ligotti's collection and seeing its brilliance, but he used his ideas and not Ligotti's. [All of this is couched as my opinion. I'm listening to the album now for the first time in years. Ligotti's album does a far better job of capturing what Ligotti's about.]

[Sam]

Thanks for the info, g. I am not very conversant in electronica/DJ music, and a cursory look through Google results wasn't really spelling it out for me.

I do have a DJ Spooky CD from a couple of years later, "Riddim Warfare." I got it a decade or so ago and just never really got into it. I like the dirtier, darker sounds in the Amazon samples for "SOADD" more, I think. I may be off base, but they remind me of the little bit I have heard of Dalek.

I usually listen to bands like Skullflower or Aluk Todolo when I'm looking for that cosmic horror vibe. Still, I have become intrigued by "SOADD" and since it is only $4 used, I'll give it a shot. Can you recommend any similar music in that vein?

	SOADD Songs of a Dead Dreamer   Songs of a Dead Dreamer was the first book published featuring a collection stories by Thomas Ligotti. Original Printing Revised Printing

[Ascrobius]

If you like dark, creepy, atmospheric, electronica, check out The Future Sound of London's Dead Cities. It's fine headphone material and has some rather sinister moments.

[g]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I wish I could say I was reflecting on a deep answer, but I've just been busy.

D.J. Spooky was, and remains, profoundly significant in electronic music today because he's still turntable-based. Everyone has moved on to laptops or even iPods--which is utterly different because Spooky's magic is in his hands. I watched him remix a live classical orchestra once. So you had forty classically trained virtuosos, an insane amount of technology, and a turntable. What we heard was what he did with his hands, not things he figured out with his mind. So, even at the outset, electronic music was moving on to sequencing and samplers and he got this warmer sound by doing extremely labor-intensive physical manipulation. He's taken it places no one else reached even though a record player's beyond obsolete technology at this point. (His "File Under Futurism" collaboration came sweeping back into my head. If you're looking for a starting point but planning on really digging, that's a better starting point. Otherwise, Riddim Warfare's the obvious thing to listen to.)

But that's not where I would situate the heart of Ligottian music today. Along with the obvious signifigance of Current 93, and despite being different than the kinds of music that I think Ligotti himself likes, I think the whole hauntology movement hits the emotional tones quite well.

Bands like The Focus Group, Belbury Poly, Eric Zann, and the Advisory Circle (basically, everything at Ghost Box Music) have the otherwordly and cosmic aesthetic more than anything else I know. Frothed and churned synth washes, incidental found sounds, 1970s training film electronic bleeps and boops, and carefully atonal melodies make for a whole new kind of spooky and weird British music. They take inspiration from Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, among others. So that would be my rec.

Here's the best article I know on trying to make sense of Ghost Box's sound, John Coulthart's "An Invitation to the Electric Seance."

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/art...lectric-seance

[Sam]

Thanks for the Spooky info. That orchestra remix sounds like it would sound incredible! I checked his website, lots of interesting reading and listening there, to be sure.

With the advent of GarageBand and Fruity Loops and such, it seems like just about anyone can spend a few minutes in front of the computer and come up with a song of some sort. I'm all for the democratization of pretty much everything, but you do end up with a lot more chaff than wheat... I like seeing people doing things their own way, not necessarily the easy way. Good on Spooky for that.

(It reminds me of the current state of book publishing. Thanks to Blurb and Lulu and the like, pretty much anyone with a few extra dollars can publish a book. There is often no craft in the layout or construction of the book, let alone any editorial control over the content. They fit the dictionary definition of a book, but have little in common with books from, say, Centipede or Night Shade. Again, I applaud the democratization in concept, but in execution it can leave something to be desired.)

The Coulthart article was very informative. I found a sample of Mount Vernon Astral Temple that I quite liked over at aQuarius recOrds - a nice deep drone that slowly expands. I also played a bunch of tracks at the Ghost Box website, and while not my regular cup of coffee, I could see listening to some of that. Will have to investigate Eric Zann further, might be something for me in there... Thanks again for the information!

And Ascrobius, I investigated FSOL and came away intrigued. I found this YouTube clip of two tracks from Dead Cities that I like:

future sound of london dead cities - YouTube

Very haunting without being too overt. This kind of thing, along with the Ghost Box stuff, is what I'll play at Halloween next year when handing out candy to the confused kids.

[g]

Here's a nice hour long downloadable mixtape for anyone wanting to sample the Ghost Box / Hauntology sound.