A Closer Listen
Magic Lantern is a collection of miniatures ~ 25 in 33 minutes, as short as thirteen seconds, none reaching the three-minute mark. Originally composed as the score to Strange Company, an audiobook anthology offered by Audible Editions, they have now found a home on Clay Pipe Music. Timmi Meskers, otherwise known as Garden Gate, already has one horror score under her belt, and has spent time as part of a sextet and a duo, but is now stepping out on her own.
The first thing one notices is how well the music fits the Clay Pipe aesthetic, weaving a sense of wonder and a touch of the foreboding into a bed of vintage electronics, best personified in the work of Vic Mars. The music seems beamed from a previous decade, rife with organ, bells, and sound effects, the sort of thing that might be playing in an old mansion one finds after taking a wrong turn. Author Roan Parrish has been served well by these themes, although the listener of the album must make do with descriptive titles: “A Stroll Among the Tombs,” “Two Days Till Halloween,” “A Blank and Staring Eye.”
The set begins with a bang, as “Company” serves up drama with drums, an overture of the entire collection. From here the music will travel down all sorts of corridors, ranging from the sweet (“A Kiss Like Soils Smells After the Rain”) to the downright frightening (the title track, complete with circling crows). The piano of “Sea Legs” suggests the melody of “She’s a Rainbow,” which matches the cover art and imagined time frame: The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967).
The cumulative effect of this music is to cast a spell, to put one at ease even though one knows the last thing one should feel is at ease ~ as though the irresistible banquet has been poisoned and the antique portrait on the wall has moving eyes. The flute of “Flesh and Flies” soothes and unnerves in equal measure. Tracks flow together, preserving the spell: “A Powerful Beast of the Universe” and “Secrets” seem like two parts of one piece. The whiplike percussion of “Rose Window” suggests a secret dungeon; oh, why did the traveler have to look in the basement?
The charm of this sort of score, which we associate with pulp fiction and retro-minded horror, is that it was born in a different sort of era, during which horror tales were often morality lessons, even if censors never dug that deep. There’s something quaint about this phase, in which evil was portrayed by witches in black hats and swamp creatures rising from the muck, instead of the more widespread evils of climate ignorance and receding democracy. Strangely, there is now comfort to be found in what was once designed to frighten and unnerve: a seeming incongruity that Meskers captures perfectly here. (Richard Allen)
Thu Mar 28 00:01:57 GMT 2024