* Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses are a British instrumental quintet whose dark, antiquated-sounding music encompasses elements of Eastern European folk, avant-rock, broken-down calliope music, and neo-classical film composition. In keeping with Mimicry tradition, their music can only be compared to many artists at once: in this case Angelo Badalamenti, Astor Piazzolla, Goblin, Art Bears, Burzum, Tom Waits, Antioch Arrow, King Crimson, Bach and Univers Zero. More a trip to an anachronistic world of neo-baroque psychedelia than a simple study in diced-up eclecticism, the music on Perils sways between lush chamber-oriented melancholia, apocalyptic bombast, and epic ghost train high-drama. With their harmoniums, autoharps, violins, violas, pianos, organs and glockenspiels added to a top of the line rhythm section, Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses very deliberately adhere to a Faustian melodrama of the angelic. Their dark, harrowing visions of some dense hellish musico-psychological dystopia shapeshift frequently and become a very capable and Elizabethan sounding prog-baroque meteorite at the drop of a hat. This instrumental music would find a happy home in a Jan Svankmajer or Fritz Lang film, and will find a prominent place on the shelf of any connoisseur of occultist highbrow, right next to his/her John Dee volumes. The group consists of Daniel O’Sullivan and Dave Smith from the trio Guapo (a recent offspring from the hereditary line of Magma and The Ruins (Cuneiform/Ipecac); Orlando Harrison from the pop band Alabama 3 and Amal Gamal Ensemble (members of Coil, Cyclobe, and Shockheaded Peters); David Ledden...
CD $12.00
04/19/2005
MP3 $9.90
04/19/2005