H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness 6XLP boxed set, "The Final Horror" variant now on sale
Cadabra Records is now selling the final remaining copies of the most monolithic music project I've ever embarked upon in the form of a 6x LP boxed set containing my soundtrack to H.P. Lovecraft's brilliant and immortal novella, At the Mountains of Madness. I'm incredibly excited for people to experience this beast on every level in the very near future!
Andrew Leman’s superb reading of At the Mountains of Madness is one for the ages and it was such an honor to create the soundtrack to this cosmic nightmare.
I played a wide array of synthesizers as well as Fender Rhodes, organ and electric guitar for the score. Barry Knob expertly produced the soundtrack. He also performed some phenomenal additional keyboard arrangements, electronic bass and Mellotron parts. Dave Barbaree contributed chilling and lush string arrangements. He also took the time to take awesome studio photos for the booklet and created a fantastic behind the scenes video of Barry Knob and I at Retro City Studios along with an incredible documentary about Cadabra Records and the making of At the Mountains of Madness. Todd Mendelsohn provided deeply atmospheric sample arrangements and effects processing. Stephen Quaranta added excellent and hypnotic drum programming.
Jeremy Hush, who did all of the absolutely staggering and epic art for this release completely nailed the tone and atmosphere of Lovecraft’s masterful work of weird fiction. Josh Yelle supplied all of the intricate and lovely calligraphy that flows perfectly with Hush’s otherworldly art and Jonathan Dennison’s impeccable design and layout.
H.P. Lovecraft scholar and horror/weird fiction authority, S.T. Joshi contributed the wonderful essay to this release.
Endless thanks to Jonathan Dennison, the visionary and head of Cadabra Records who makes all of this possible as the label continues to walk a peerless path into further uncharted territory, reaching new heights along the way.
Here are more details from the Cadabra press release:
H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness 6x LP Boxed Set - Read by Andrew Leman, score by Chris Bozzone. Full Unabridged Reading. Over 5 hours of terrifying, cosmic horror. One of the greatest tales of weird fiction ever told. Cadabra Records most ambitious release to date.
THIS IS A PRE-ORDER - SHIPS IN 4 WEEKS OR LESS
Your order will be double boxed and fully insured
These are our very last copies and final variant offered of this edition
"The Final Horror" variant set:
LP 1 & 2 - Natural white
LP 3 & 4 - Opaque grey marble
LP 5 & 6 - Black
"Had Lovecraft written nothing but At the Mountains of Madness, he would deserve to be remembered as a pioneering writer of the weird tale." - From S. T. Joshi's liner notes.
Package Includes:
* Limited 6x LP pressing on 150 gram colored vinyl
* Full unabridged reading of H. P. Lovecraft's masterpiece
* LPs housed in 2x triple gatefold jackets
* Tip-on box
* 12x pg booklet
* Essay by weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi
* Liner notes by composer Chris Bozzone
* Gallery of Howard V. Brown's art from the very first publication of the story in Astounding Stories
* 27" x 39" promotional poster
* Newly commissioned art by Jeremy Hush
As H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness is itself a masterwork of weird fiction, so is composer Chris Bozzone's score for this adaptation a masterwork of auditory terror. Even those for whom this novella is familiar, well-trod ground will find themselves wishing to turn on a light, rather than listen to it in the dark. Over the course of nearly six hours, the music which underlays Andrew Leman's reading of Lovecraft's magnum opus reflects the changing moods of Dr. William Dyer, whose story is recounted within the novella.
At first, Dyer's tone is that of warning, hoping to prevent the Starkweather-Moore expedition from attempting to follow in the footsteps of those from Miskatonic University, and Bozzone's music is also heightened, but quickly turns to thoughtful reflection, mirroring the quiet days as the expedition first comes to Antarctica, full of hope and joy.
Neither the story nor the music, however, are to remain calm for long. As Pabodie makes his discoveries, and mysteries of the Mountains of Madness draw the characters ever-closer to their menacing reaches, Bozzone's music turns more curious, with a hint of uncanny menace lurking in its ever-darker timbre.
As Leman reads of “the howling, piping wind that raced through the pass” as Dyer and Danforth clear “the momentous divide” to see “the unsampled secrets of an elder and utterly alien earth,” Bozzone's music becomes that of the wind itself, effortlessly changing from intense and alarum-like tintinnabulation to the Aeolian tones of air passing over the miles-high peaks.
Once Dyer and Danforth are within the sprawling, “Palaeogaean megalopolis,” and the tale turns to awe-struck wonder, so does the score. Bozzone's work conveys the wonder and sheer scale of the city of the great Old Ones in all its wonder and terror-inducing glory. As our narrator and his companion explore, it's as though they're accompanied by a string quartet, reflecting their ever-changing mood as the pair comes ever-closer to discovering whence these ruins came.
As Dyer begins to realize just what is going on, the score heightens and climbs in its apprehension. The pace quickens, bringing the listener's heart rate in pace with the escalating worry in Leman's reading. If one is not breathing heavily by the time the entrance to the great abyss is reached, the only possible explanation is that the sheer volume of fear accumulated by this point has rendered the audience mute and insensate.
Even those of sterner stuff, however, will find themselves hard-pressed not to be driven mad by the closing minutes of At the Mountains of Madness' twelfth and final chapter, wherein Leman's narration and Bozzone's score become one terrifying march to the end. Fuzzing synthesizers give way to droning, choral noises, only to finally resolve themselves back into those siren sounds with which the story began, ending with “a single, mad word of all too obvious source: 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!'”