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Released on the final day of 2018, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is the long-awaited follow-up of Nostalgia’s album “House on the Borderland”. It was successful Italian film composer Luigi Seviroli who came up with the idea to transfer Edgar Allan Poe’s classic horror story into music, inviting accomplished German artists Mathias Grassow and Rüdiger Gleisberg to the creative process. According Luigi Seviroli, the album stems from the attempt to re-propose Poe’s story in a more articulate and obscure version than, for example, the patinated version by Alan Parsons in the ‘70s. Thus, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a true concept album aiming to reproduce the unhealthy atmosphere of Poe’s work for which the three composers put their different musical backgrounds on the table with the goal to create a very homogeneous result hard to label. The 80-minute/12-track “The Fall of the House of Usher” features Mathias drone textures, Luigi’s dark-flavoured orchestral soundings and Rüdiger’s signature sound architecture, each musician composing a theme or music to a chapter of the story, all mixed and blended sophisticatedly to form a cohesive whole. Well, profound cinematic, gloomy, gothic, feverish and haunting spheres accompanied by a vast range of startling sound effects, crispy environmental recordings and occasional tribal rhythms shine vibrant on “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Next to the created dramatic, sometimes creeping suspense and total effect, opener “The Letter” and “Lady Madeleins Song” (found a bit further into the story) turn out gentle, almost baroque ambient-orchestral. The apocalypse of the narrative happens in the end on the intense “The Fall” and “Resurrection”. Above all this intriguing music is to be listened to in one go without pause (preferably with headphones) to sense its impact to the fullest. Note: purchasers of this download-only release will also receive three hidden bonus tracks. |
| Website: http://mathiasgrassow.bandcamp.com
You can see what reviews I have done of these artists on the Mathias Grassow, Rüdiger Gleisberg artist pages
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