Music

[Review] White Willow ‘Terminal Twilight’

Published

13 years ago

October 1, 2011

Let me paint a picture for you: my windows are streaked with rivulets of rain. The skies are a bluish-grey. The water on the lake behind my house is rippling from shore to shore. The wind is howling and the trees are not so much swaying as dancing, dead leaves flying through the air, spinning and circling aimlessly. Inside, I have a glass of red wine poured and Terminal Twilight, the latest album from White Willow, playing. Join me after the jump to hear my thoughts on this latest venture from the Norwegian prog-rock band.

Opening with Hawks Circle, the immediate feeling I got was of a classic Argento horror film. The synths and tones used, as well as the melody, sounded like something out of Suspiria or Dawn Of The Dead. The track sounds like a mixture of the artiness of classic King Crimson and the sludge rock elements of Mastodon, all mixed underneath swirling synths and moody mellotrons. It’s a song that perfectly encompasses all that the listener is about to hear.

The production is gorgeous, lush and warm. It’s albums like this that make me remember why I loved truly listening to music in the first place. There is a wide variety of instrumentation going on as well as multiple tones from each instrument. Terminal Twilight is an album that begs for attention and is more than deserving of it.

Terminal Twilight is an album full of gorgeous passages and haunting melodies. A Rumor Of Twilight is an instrumental with a lovely acoustic guitar and an almost churchlike choir towards the end. Famed English musician Tim Bowness joins White Willow on the sublime Kansas Regrets, a beautiful, subtle song.

The Final Word: Should you every find yourself in a day like the one I described above, this album matches the mood perfectly. Stunningly beautiful, almost heart achingly so, Terminal Twilight unfolds and reveals itself like a painting that shows more and more with each viewing. White Willow may very well have delivered an album that stands next to Leprous’ Bilateral as my Album of the Year.

JonathanBarkan

Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

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Music

“He Walks By Night” – Listen to a Brand New John Carpenter Song NOW!

Published

2 weeks ago

April 9, 2024

John Squires

It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.

“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…