Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Very nice creepy music video from Crosss

This video of a Crosss song is very nicely done.  "Golden Hearth" tells a short story about ritual killings (most likely) using elaborate costumes, rapid cutting, and a recursive media narrative. NPR (!) adds

Fair warning: Wicker Man-inspired costumes, grisly occult dealings and static-flickering VHS tapes lie ahead. For some of us (read: me), director Torin Langen's video for Crosss' "Golden Hearth" is the stuff of nightmares, but the heavy weirdness is definitely worth your time.

We can cover more disturbing music videos here if you, dear readers, are intrigued.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Terrific audio versions of two Lovecraft stories

Two H.P. Lovecraft stories receive splendid audio treatment in a recent production. The Duke St Workshop and Laurence R. Harvey perform "From Beyond" and "The Hound", combining spoken word, electronica, and fine soundscaping.

These aren't full readings, but impressionistic mixes, using excerpts from the stories to anchor audio brooding.  

Get into your isolation tanks, at Matt Howarth used to say, and listen:

 

Madness rides the star-wind . . . claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses . . . dripping death astride a Bacchanale of bats from night-black ruins of buried temples of Belial. . . . Now, as the baying of that dead, fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings circles closer and closer, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnamable.

(thanks to Mark Wardecker!)

One dark library tale

Death and the librarians: here's a fine short video about one bad browser.

(thanks to Thomas Hill)

A sweet stream of macabre movie music

If you're looking for scary and horror-movie-related audio, you'd do well to listen to this fine Fangoria mix.

The linked site calls it a "macabre delight, oscillating from ultra-synthetic synth fare in the Howarth mould through acid through Goblin-indebted schlock rock."

Play very loud and enjoy:

Music comes from the Death Waltz label.

 (via John Coulthart)

Listen to the hacked zombie alert

Following up on that story about a zombie emergency alert prank, an audio file is now available for your listening pleasure.

Consider this fine fodder for parties and music sampling.

(thanks to Thomas Burkdall)

Christmas with the devil

Here's a musical celebration of Christmas, Infocult-style: Christmas with the Devil, by Spinal Tap.

(thanks for the reminder, Peter Naegele)

Deep sounds of hell

What does Hell sound like?  BLDGBLOG wonders.

[David Toops] calls this, citing the Aeneid and Paradise Lost both, the "auditory configuration of Hell": "The auditory configuration of Hell is an opposition of low homogeneous moan and confused Babel, of deep tones and threnodic shrieks, as if combining the outer extremes of human perception is the most authentic expression of damnation." There is acoustic "distress," Toop writes, somewhere "between roaring water and the tumult of the wandering helpless unburied," where dogs howl and angels whirling to their doom are deafened by "the bellowing of the Earth itself." 

There's a ton of music doing this already, but I wanted to cite this as a nice evocation.

Jazz vampire

Here's a sweet vampire song, really about jazz fandom.

(thanks to Jesse Walker; cross-posted to the Draculablog)

Dracula in violin

"Nosferatu": a beautiful composition by Antonio Ballestín, performed by Alma Olite.

It's a program piece inspired as much by Stoker as Coppola:

6 uninterrupted episodes:

I. "Carriage through Carpathian Mountains" II. "The Castle" III. "Love Theme: Crossing Oceans of Time" IV. "London 1897" V. "Love and Death" VI. "Back to the Grave"

Metal names, the map

How heavy metal band names are made, the ultimate infographic.

Here's a detail:

And here's the whole thing, squished up:

(thanks to the shadowy "Mr. K")