Thomas Ligotti's The Clown Puppet LP is now on sale!
Thomas Ligotti’s The Clown Puppet is now on sale as a phenomenal LP release from Cadabra Records! The founder of Cadabra, Jonathan Dennison has brought another Ligotti masterpiece to life in top form in every way with this beautiful vinyl record.
Jon Padgett gives an outstanding performance throughout every second of the album. His reading will have listeners captivated and perpetually on-edge during his masterful reading of Ligotti’s brilliant short story.
I scored The Clown Puppet utilizing a number of different synthesizers as well as a steady flow of acoustic piano, nylon-string acoustic guitar and drones. Barry Knob produced the soundtrack and also added some wonderful additional keyboards into the mix.
Jason Barnett’s macabre and surrealistic art that flows through the jaw-dropping gatefold jacket elevates the immersive experience of this stellar release.
Once again, Michael Cisco wrote a detailed and illuminating essay about The Clown Puppet that is included within the booklet for this album.
Here are more details from the Cadabra press release and I can’t wait for folks to enjoy this LP!:
Thomas Ligotti - The Clown Puppet LP - Read by Jon Padgett, score by Chris Bozzone.
Package includes:
* 150 gram vinyl
* Deluxe heavy weight tip-on gatefold jacket.
* 4 page booklet with new essay my Michael Cisco
* Liner notes by composer Chris Bozzone
* 18" x 24" promotional poster.
* Newly commissioned art by Jason Barnett.
About:
Thomas Ligotti's The Clown Puppet, read here by Jon Padgett and scored by Chris Bozzone, is evidence of what the writer refers to in the opening moments as "the most outrageous nonsense." "The impeccable chaoticism" which imbues each and every one of Ligotti's works can take the form of a grand, nationwide – if not worldwide – conspiracy or a singular, intimate encounter, and it is behind the counter of Mr. Vizniak's medicine shop that the listener of The Clown Puppet encounters the latter.
Padgett's reading of The Clown Puppet takes Ligotti's omnipresent narrator to new heights of enervated ranting. The sheer frenetic energy of the narration is that of a man desperately attempting to convey an important event to the listener as quickly as possible. Never does Ligotti as writer ramble nor does Padgett as reader falter, however. The detail of the events are clear and crisp in their horror, and the reading clipped, with every word enunciated with precision.
One can see the puppet thing hanging there in front of them, "with its pale and pitted complexion, its slightly pointed nose and delicate lips, and its dead puppet eyes," gazing at them with a look which seems to see nothing, and yet everything. It's a feeling of being utterly lost and wondering just what is pulling one's own strings.
Bozzone works here in the sublime combination of piano, picked acoustic guitar, and swirling synthesized electronic sounds which has become the hallmark of his work for this label. The former pair of stringed instruments serve to craft the sense of heightened or lessened tension, as the story requires, while the near-constant electronic sounds craft an all-encompassing atmosphere of distress. The mechanically created sounds of the synthesizer point to the puppet itself, though we are far less certain of its creator than we are that of the music.