The Waning of the Year

In this time of year’s end and family coming together, I remind you of something Dean R. Koontz once wrote: “for in your family you saw, day to day, those specific things in specific people that justified, by extension, a broader love of fellow men and women.”

Hold your family close.  Because they will teach you how to love the rest of the world.

It's Christmas Time ... Again

Well, another holiday season is upon us, which means it’s time once again for me to wish you a merry christmahannukwanzaakah^* and perhaps invite you to revisit my two holiday mixes: Yuletidal Pools I and II.  Now is a time to be with family, and as much as I also love you, Constant Reader, one must always put one’s children first.

Nonetheless, I will take advantage of this time of the year, as I often do, to wish you and your family the brightest of Yuletides, Hannukahs, Christmases, Kwanzaas, Pancha Ganapatis, and even Boxing Days.  As the year winds down and a fresh one looms on the horizon, it’s a good time to reflect on what we had (or didn’t have), and what we hope for.  What I hope for is that all of us will be happier, and healthier, and more hopeful.  Perhaps it’s a bit meta to hope for hope, but I think we could all use a little right now.

Happy holidays.

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* As always, ™ Jon Sime.

Phantasma Chorale II

"Her Fatal Charm"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

I often say that volume II of a mix usually consists of the tracks that wouldn’t fit on volume I—and there’s a bit of that going on here, admittedly—but it’s also sometimes the case that volume II is an opportunity to broaden horizons.  Many mixes are inspired by a few core artists, and so volume I tends to feature them quite heavily.  But then volume II is our chance to stretch out ... to feature those artists again, sure, but with fewer examples, and to include more, and more varied, tracks to showcase the breadth of the theme.  Last time for Phantasma Chorale, we concentrated on the Coraline soundtrack (which after all was the primary inspiration for the mix), with a whopping 3 tracks from that excellent outing by Bruno Coulais; this time we use only one.  Two tracks each last time from the Beetlejuice soundtrack, the Four Rooms soundtrack, and French sometime-soundtrack artist Xcyril, plus one from the soundtrack for The Da Vinci Code, and out of all those, only Beetlejuice is back for more, and with, again, only a single track.  Of course, both City of Lost Children and Mirrormask soundtracks contribute one song each on both volumes, so we’re not completely scaling back, and, when it comes to Harry Potter soundtracks, we’ve gone from one to two (although from two different movies).  But, still, this is a distillation of the core so that we can make room for spreading out in new directions.

When it comes to those familiar soundtracks, “You Know I Love You” by Coulais from Coraline is a particularly spare, haunting one that I’m surprised I managed to restrain myself from including last time; the Beetlejuice selection, ”‘Sold’” by Danny Elfman, is a pretty (if mildly creepy) little bridge to our closer; Angelo Badalamenti’s “L’Anniversaire d’Irvin” (from City of Lost Children) sounds like abandoned carnival music as played on a toy musicbox; “Conjuring a Dome” (by Iain Bellamy, from Mirrormask) is just as trippy and dreamlike as most of that movie’s music is; Nicholas Hooper gives us a chorus of formless vocals in “Dumbledore’s Foreboding,” off Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; and John Williams, the O.G. Harry Potter soundtrack composer, showcases his mischievous side with the classic “Double Trouble” (from Prisoner of Azkaban).  So a lot of on-the-nose choices, given what we came to expect from last time.  I brought in a few new soundtracks, too: “Secret Room” is off the Dark Shadows soundtrack (that is, the music for the original TV series, not the Tim Burton movie remake), and “Lothlórien / Lament for Gandalf” is from The Fellowship of the Ring.  The former, by Robert Cobert, is a creepy bit of neoclassical that showcases the best of late-60s television music; the latter, by powerhouse movie composer Howard Shore, uses more wordless vocals to take us on a journey through wonder, grief, and mysticism.

But perhaps the most interesting soundrack tune here is “Twisted Nerve,” by Bernard Hermann.  While it’s most familiar to modern audiences as the tune Daryl Hannah’s character in Kill Bill whistles in the hospital as she’s hunting the Bride, it’s originally from a movie of the same name from 1968, in which a creepy young man pretends to be deveopmentally disabled in order to get close to a young woman he fancies (played by The Parent Trap’s Hayley Mills) and then goes on a killing spree.  Hermann’s main theme starts out as an almost jaunty whistling that soon turns genuinely menacing.  It’s a musical portrait of a dream turning into a nightmare, and I thought it made the perfect opener here.

I haven’t forgotten the gaming music either.  For actual videogame music, I went with the theme from Arkham Asylum, as reinterpreted by the London Philharmonic.  They actually have several entire albums of them playing videogame themes,¹ and they’re pretty cool.  It tends to elevate the the game music to give it a broader, more sweeping and dramatic impact ... although, honestly, even the original in this case is pretty breathtaking.  Certainly it has the full creepy going on, though perhaps it’s a bit lacking on the child-like aspect.  But that’s okay: I’ll make up for it with returning champs Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana, who contribute two tracks each.  From MS, “Dusk” is the perfect bridge into “Arkham Asylum”: it’s a creepy build-up, some howling winds, and then bam.  “Room 47” has more of a haunted house vibe, but the spooky musicbox motif in the middle is what earns it its place here.  NA, on the other hand, gives us “Labyrinth of Dreams,” which is all spooky musicbox right from the jump, plus the formless vocals to back it up.  It’s the soundtrack to walking through a dark forest while being stalked by a big, bad wolf.  Finally, “Once Upon a Nightmare” (from the same album, Grimm Tales) is almost a companion piece; here, the musicbox-style opening is almost immediately swallowed up by those wordless vocals and then a very dramatic neoclassical piece featuring timpani and chimes.

While I wanted to step away from the Four Rooms soundtrack, I didn’t want to omit Combustible Edison entirely, so I went with “Les Yeux sans visage” (which is French for “eyes without a face,” I believe), which uses a slow organ and cymbals motif to break up two quite carnival-esque sections.  And, speaking of carnival-esque, while I had nothing quite like last volume’s “Oompa Radar,” “Rue de Moorslede,” from late-80s German synthpop band Camouflage, is a similar (if much shorter) track that makes a nice bridge to the volume’s back half.  And, since volume I included a track which reminded me of the theme from the original Star Trek, I decided I needed one of those here as well.  “Ritual of the Torches,” by exotica artist Frank Hunter, is surely more upbeat than last volume’s “U Plavu Zoru,” but that only hits the carnival vibe that makes it work here all the better.

And we couldn’t have a volume of the mix without some offbeat neoclassical and a Dead Can Dance tune.  For the former, I went with Amber Asylum;² “Heckle and Jeckle” is a weird little tune that almost sounds carnival-like ... except a bit off.  Which of course works perfectly here.  For the latter, I’ve always liked “Anywhere Out of the World”—it’s possibly my favorite track off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun³—and I think it works brilliantly here: the bell-like intro (which might just be synth, or maybe something more like a glockenspiel), the pipe-organ-like bass drone that then sweeps in, and Brendan Perry’s excellent baritone vocals ... just gorgeous.  “Maybe it’s easier to withdraw from life,” he sings, “with all of its misery and wretched lies.” A very dark tune, but it still works here thanks to the bell-like counterpoint running through it (and another lyric provides our volume name).

Phantasma Chorale II
[ Her Fatal Charm ]

“Twisted Nerve” by Bernard Herrmann [Single]
“Anywhere Out of the World” by Dead Can Dance, off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
“Labyrinth of Dreams” by Nox Arcana, off Grimm Tales
“L'Anniversaire d'Irwin” by Angelo Badalamenti, off The City of Lost Children [Soundtrack]
“Ararat Legong” by David Parsons, off Ngaio Gamelan
“Double Trouble” by John Williams, off Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [Soundtrack]
“Room 47” by Midnight Syndicate, off Gates of Delirium
“You Know I Love You” by Bruno Coulais, off Coraline [Soundtrack]
“Ritual of the Torches” by Frank Hunter, off The Exotic Sounds of Tiki Tribe [Compilation]
“The Secret Room” by Robert Cobert, off Dark Shadows, Volume 1 [Soundtrack]
“Dumbledore's Foreboding” by Nicholas Hooper, off Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Soundtrack]
“Rue de Moorslede” by Camouflage, off Methods of Silence
“Heckle and Jeckle” by Amber Asylum, off Frozen in Amber
“Les Yeux sans visage” by Combustible Edison, off Schizophonic!
“Once Upon a Nightmare” by Nox Arcana, off Grimm Tales
“End of May” by Keren Ann, off Not Going Anywhere
“Conjuring a Dome” by Iain Ballamy, off Mirrormask [Soundtrack]
“Teach Me How to Drown” by Unto Ashes, off Moon Oppose Moon
“Dusk” by Midnight Syndicate, off Vampyre: Symphonies from the Crypt
“Arkham City (Main Theme)” by London Philharmonic Orchestra, off The Greatest Video Game Music, Vol. 2
“"Sold"” by Danny Elfman, off Beetlejuice [Soundtrack]
“Lothlórien / Lament for Gandalf” by Howard Shore, off The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Soundtrack]

Total:  22 tracks,  72:44

There’s not a huge number of unexpected tunes here, but perhaps the most such is “End of May” by Keren Ann.  We’ve seen her before, but typically in a more upbeat context.⁴  Still, the anti-folk Dutch singer can go a bit darker when the mood strikes her,⁵ and this one is just the right balance of innocence and menace to work perfectly here.

Unto Ashes is more known for goth and darkwave, but I always thought “Teach Me How to Drown” had a weirdly light counterpoint going on (probably the bells thing again).  It almost plays like a super dark nursery rhyme.  And, finally, we have a track off of David Parson’s Ngaio Gamelan, which is primarily electroworld, but there’s just something about “Ararat Legong” that harkens back to that Star Trek sound: there’s ghostly, wordless vocals, echoey percussion, and rapid trills on something in the xylophone family, and it all comes together to form a beautiful track which fits quite nicely on this mix.

Next time, let’s take a walk on the angry side.

⇐ Phantasma Chorale

Phantasma Chorale III ⇒

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1 One of which I used on Paradoxically Sized World II.

2 We heard from AA on Shadowfall Equinox I and II, as well as Eldritch Ætherium I.

3 Other tracks off this album that I’ve used include “Xavier” (on Dreamscape Perturbation I), “In the Wake of Adversity” (on Penumbral Phosphorescence I), and “Windfall,” which was on our last volume.

4 Such as Sirenexiv Cola.

5 Such as on Wisty Mysteria II.

Witchlight Wild Launch

This week my youngest (not quite yet 10 years old) officially started her first D&D campaign (the Witchlight campaign, which I alluded to in a previous post).  She’s very excited about it.  And, so far, she’s doing a great job, youth and limited familiarity with the voluminous rules notwithstanding.

As I mentioned previously, I’m going with my dinosaur-person.  Our middle child (who I still sometimes refer to as “the Smaller Animal,” even though he’s now a good bit taller than me) is being a sort of a blob-like creature called a plasmoid.  Meanwhile, the youngest is running a character to help us out who is a small mouse-person called a jerbeen.  So our party looks something like this:

So far, we’ve met each other (which was fairly entertaining), and then we found the Witchlight Carnival and met its proprietors, Mr. Witch and Mr. Light (naturally).  Our first mission is to find a missing pink unicorn.  Should be a piece of cake.

I’m pretty excited for the adventure, and I’m excited to see what modifications the girl will make to the published adventure.  Changing things up to suit yourself or your players is pretty standard for experienced DMs, but newbies often try to run the adventure exactly as written.  But our girl has already thrown in several of her own touches (I know this because she proudly announces it whenever she does so).  So I’m excited to see where things go from here.

A more extensive post next week, and more news from the Witchlight trail as I have it.