Arthur Machen's The White People 2XLP now on sale!
Cadabra Records has just started sales for an exquisite 2XLP set of Arthur Machen’s exceptional horror tale, The White People.
Laurence R. Harvey gives an absolutely captivating and masterful performance of Machen’s classic tale. He brings The White People to life in an exhilarating way that greatly elevates this amazing weird fiction short story.
It was a thrilling experience for me to create the soundtrack for this vinyl release. The score utilizes 12 string guitar, electric guitar, piano as well as a large variety of synthesizers, electronic string arrangements and drones. Barry Knob did a stellar job producing the soundtrack as well as contributing some outstanding deep bass lines for the 12 string themes that run throughout the release.
Karmazid’s art for The White People is unbelievably hallucinatory and wonderfully captures the eeriness found within Machen’s masterful writing.
S.T. Joshi provides a scholarly essay found within the extraordinary gatefold jacket.
Cadabra Records founder Jonathan Dennison has created a fantastic and breathtaking layout for this wonderful 2XLP set.
I can’t wait for people to soon see and hear this forthcoming release!
Here is more information from Cadabra:
Arthur Machen, The White People 2x LP set, Read by Laurence R. Harvey, score by Chris Bozzone.
Package includes:
* Limited pressing on 150 gram vinyl
* Fully unabridged reading
* Printed on a deluxe heavy-weight tip-on gatefold jacket
* Essay by weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi
* 24" X 36" promotional poster
* Newly commissioned art by Karmazid
About:
Second only to his own The Great God Pan in terms of folk horror brilliance, Arthur Machen's The White People is a novella whose scope encompasses another hidden world just outside our own. Not for nothing is the "the curious and dimly disquieting chronicle" H.P. Lovecraft's second favorite piece of weird fiction after Algernon Blackwood's The Willows. In Lovecraft’s seminal essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature," he ably sums up The White People as "a triumph of skilful selectiveness and restraint, accumulates enormous power as it flows on in a stream of innocent childish prattle."
Read here by Laurence R. Harvey and scored by Chris Bozzone, Machen's nesting tale is given a masterful interpretation. The opening frame tale sees Harvey flitting between three voices with nary a pause before the novella moves into into "The Green Book," wherein Harvey effortlessly transitions from three old men sitting and drinking while pontificating upon the true nature of sin to a young girl's naiveté as she explores a hidden world.
It's a masterful performance which is made all the more impressive because then, within "The Green Book," Harvey then tells further stories in the voice of the young girl, retelling tales heard from her nurse. It's a delicate balancing act which requires a nimble voice and skillful interpretive skills, and it should come to no surprise of longtime fans of Cadabra that Harvey is more than up to the task. At no point is the hypnotic, twisting nature of The White People broken, unless it is to be thrust back into reality in order to change sides on the record.
Harvey's reading is scored by Chris Bozzone, who once again has paired the electronic with the acoustic to pull the listener back in time. At points, it's as though the composer and musician has gone full folk, using instruments such as one would have heard in a bygone age, evoking a sense of discovery in the long ago, while the here and now – such as it is in a story which folds in upon itself myriad times – is brought to life with warm, pulsing synthesizers. The swim and oscillation of the score, regardless of instrumentation used, lulls the listener into the world of The White People as if in a daze.