H.P. Lovecraft's Beyond the Wall of Sleep LP is now on sale
H.P. Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep LP is now on sale from Cadabra Records!
Andrew Leman gives another powerhouse performance of Lovecraft’s otherworldly tale that was a joy to score a soundtrack to.
The score for this record is driven by a variety of synthesizers, with additional layers of organ and electronic string arrangements that I wrote for it. Barry Knob masterfully produced the music while also contributing some amazing additional keyboards and electronic bass. Specifically, Barry did phenomenal work on a recurring theme that is bookended and which is full of pulsating synth sequencing.
Karmazid’s art for Beyond the Wall of Sleep is completely astounding and visionary. Both pieces of art he created for this LP are full of magic, adding to his ever-growing body of classic Lovecraft and weird fiction interpretations. The art is enhanced by Josh Yelle’s fantastic hand calligraphy which goes perfectly once again with Karmazid’s nightmarish and psychedelic vision.
Horror and weird fiction expert, S.T. Joshi provides the liner notes which will certainly be full of amazing and essential insights.
Cadabra founder Jonathan Dennison has once again put immense care and attention to detail to Lovecraft’s work in the form of this beautifully produced vinyl album!
Here are more details from the Cadabra press release:
H. P. Lovecraft's Beyond the Wall of Sleep LP. Read by Andrew Leman, score by Chris Bozzone.
* Printed on our deluxe heavy weight tip-on gatefold jacket
* Includes an insert with new liner notes by weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi and Chris Bozzone
* Includes a 24" x 36" poster
* Newly commissioned art by Karmazid
* Hand calligraphy by Josh Yelle
* Printed on our deluxe heavy weight tip-on gatefold jacket
* Includes an insert with new liner notes by weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi and Chris Bozzone
* Includes a 24" x 36" poster
* Newly commissioned art by Karmazid
* Hand calligraphy by Josh Yelle
About:
H. P. Lovecraft's short story, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” has the interesting distinction of being the closest thing the author has to an optimistic tale. That's not to say that this narrative is untroubled – in fact, it's as full of discomfiting imagery of the marred human form as any Lovecraft yarn – but the possibilities first hinted at and then explicitly declaimed in its final minutes reveal wide-ranging concepts available once humans shed their corporeal forms and are able to exist without being tied to such notions as temporal norms.
The degenerate form of Joe Slater, “a low-grade paranoiac,” is in “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” but a physical barrier to the limitless possibilities available him as a being of light, a “cosmic entity” who explains that in our dreaming state, we are all “roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages.” This science fiction tale is, of course, a far cry from the usual mind-ripping endings to the vast majority of Lovecraft's oeuvre, leaving the listener to this recording feeling as though there is something to which they might look forward, rather than fear.
“Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” here read by Andrew Leman and scored by Chris Bozzone, is transformed from the clinical-yet-fantastical recall of a former intern at a state psychopathic institution to something in which wonder is beheld at each turn of events. While Joe Slater might have been prone to bouts wherein he would demonstrate a “daemoniac ecstasy of bloodthirstiness,” Leman's reading reveals the unnamed narrator intern's innate compassion, coupled with the usual thirst for knowledge particular to all Lovecraftian protagonists.
Bozzone's score takes all of its inspiration from the tale's description of the dreamworld made perceptible by the narrator's apparatus. There is a “sound of weird lyric melody,” with “chords, vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies,” which can be heard as “wide plains and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes.” The tones are truly beautiful and show off the vast cosmic beauty at which Lovecraft doesn't just hint, but instead absolutely revels and exults, in an absolutely fascinating and gorgeous inversion of everything which we've come to expect.
While the composer has shown time and time again that he's able and adept at communicating musically the darker aspects of the H.P. Lovecraft storytelling experience, here Bozzone shows that he's just as deft at responding to the author's surprising positivity and sense of hope. The end result is an astonishingly buoyant listening experience which will leave one wondering just what has occurred. Perhaps we too shall meet together “in some other form an aeon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away.”