Aleister Crowley's At the Fork of the Roads 7" record is now on sale!
Cadabra Records has just released a beautiful 7” record of Aleister Crowley’s short story, At the Fork of the Roads.
Laurence R. Harvey gives a magnificent reading of Crowley’s hypnotic tale.
I greatly enjoyed composing the score for this release. I performed the soundtrack utilizing a grand piano, Fender Rhodes, synthesizers and hand percussion. Barry Knob did an awesome job producing all of the music.
The fantastic and psychedelic art is by Aleister Crowley.
Leigh Blackmore wrote fascinating liner notes as part of the triple-panel design.
Jonathan Dennison masterfully did the layout for this striking vinyl release.
Here is additional information from Cadabra Records:
Aleister Crowley, At the Fork of the Roads 7" - Read by Laurence R. Harvey, score by Chris Bozzone
* Pressed on 150 gram vinyl
* New essay by Leigh Blackmore
* Housed in triple-panel sleeve
* Art by Aleister Crowley
From the first issue of The Equinox: The Review of Scientific Illuminism, in 1909, Aleister Crowley's At the Fork of the Roads is less a straightforward narrative, and more a descriptive tone poem. It's as though the English occultist, in writing this short story, is crafting a spell on which to meditate, rather than a story for entertainment.
As read by Laurence R. Harvey and scored by Chris Bozzone, Crowley's story is both meditative lyric and something of an allegory for those who dabble in the dark arts. At the Fork of the Roads' is a warning as to the possibility of being too confident in one's abilities, and how it might require desperate measures to triumph over.
It is also, obviously, a thinly-veiled accusation toward Crowley's fellow poet William Butler Yeats, and how he was a black magician attempting to destroy him. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. Harvey's delivery reveals none of this, devoting his reading to reveling in the sound of the words themselves, with all the richness of intonation necessary to heighten the dramatic tension.