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Magic Lantern

by Garden Gate

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about

LP/CD release available from Clay Pipe Music at claypipemusic.greedbag.com

The first glimmer of Magic Lantern flickered over the sink, if memory serves — I was cleaning up with a dear friend, author Roan Parrish, and we were discussing horror and creative practice, an opportunity to collaborate artistically while collaborating on the dishes. Our first idea was that she would share prose to inspire my themes, and I inversely would share a few original themes to inspire her writing. The daydream blossomed with care, and before we knew it, what started as a handful of stories and songs still damp with soap suds ended up becoming a fully scored horror audiobook anthology for Audible Originals called Strange Company. 


As a longtime fan of soundtracks and library music I was thrilled by the opportunity to see just how much emotion I could compress into the often brief connecting links that would augment a furtive kiss, a painful psychic vision, or a breeze across the bones of a scorched landscape. Before long, there were enough dark macarons to fill an entire haunted patisserie, and through the wavy glass I’ve compiled my favorites of the batch.


Midway through the recording process, my long-term relationship broke down, and I’m indebted to Roan for letting me set up a field studio in her home during this transitional period. Her dining room was overrun with synthesizers and cables the October I reimagined my life, grasping at any beauty I could find in the chaos and hope that would inevitably spill into the music.

Several themes from an unrealized Garden Gate album about the life of Dion Fortune also found their way in (notably, the title track), and the score became a bit more personal than initially charted; in the doomed outsiders of Roan’s gorgeously creeping prose, it was hard not to see aspects of myself, and for me there was catharsis and healing in the creation of the dreadful and yearning wallpaper that wrapped her character’s lives (and on occasion, their deaths).

I’m similarly indebted to Frances Castle, whose collaboration has breathed new life into the works and stoked the lantern’s flame even brighter, inspiring a re-examination and discernment of the total work that has made the resulting album that much stronger; it is a gift to see the world of the music projected back through her oversight and brilliantly realized artwork. I am immensely fortunate to have collaborated with two such visionary artists, and the album would not be what it is without their influence and support.


In love or in horror (or some appropriately gothic combination of the two), I hope you’ll find some beauty for yourself in the images at play in the Magic Lantern's light.

With my sincere thanks
Timmi Meskers
Autumn 2023

credits

released February 9, 2024

Album artwork and layout by Frances Castle
Written and recorded by Timmi Meskers at Maison d’Octobre Studio
Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw Mastering
Track titles by Roan Parrish and Timmi Meskers

Timmi Meskers wishes to thank Roan Parrish and the Parrish family, the Meskers family, Jasper, Courtney Miller-Callihan and Handspun Literary Agency, Steve Feldberg and Audible Originals, Tom Mcdowell, Christian Preiß, Gabe Stuart, and Antony Ryan, with special thanks to Frances Castle

The selected pieces were sequenced from a larger body of work composed to accompany Strange Company, an Audible Original audiobook anthology written by Roan Parrish.

To stream or purchase Strange Company, visit www.audible.com/pd/Strange-Company-Audiobook/B094Q8QY96

For Dorian, who never met a patch of sunlight she didn’t like
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Garden Gate New York

IG: @overgrown.church

labels:
clay pipe music
genki xperience
library of the occult
sunstone UK
golden brown
good behavior

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