So first of all you should all watch Dreyer's Vampyr because apparently it's a horror classic.
OK now you're ready for Dismantle. The EP is meant as a soundtrack for this film.
Here's my favorite track:
Morphosis is Rabih Beaini's project. Dismantle was released on Honest Jon's Records in June 2013. You can also read this interview he did with RA in 2011.
One of the first times Max Fleischer's rotoscoping technique is used to plug both Cab Calloway's voice and moving figure into an animated space; Allowing the performance to exist in a dark, surreal realm that taps into blues mysticism and the occult. It's not hell but certainly grim, there's morphing body horror, drugs and boooooooozing. The song itself is sung from the perspective of a soldier who, after emptying his pockets on prostitutes, dies of a venereal disease :( It's a relative of an old english folk tune "The Unfortunate Rake." For good measure I'm including the Minnie the Moocher episode. Both are fantastical depictions of the horror embedded in Blues and Jazz music, and watching these characters do "the Buzz" is endlessly entertaining to me.
Shirley and Dolly Collins- The Oxford Girl One of my long time favourites. This is about a man who wishes to marry a young girl. He at least has the morality to accept she is too young. But then finds himself murdering her and floating her off down a river. And then goes on to say how self pitying he is. It wouldnt have happened if she was older I guess.. Silly girl tut tut. Its a good one.
I really love this folk tradition of horrific stories told as perky, sing-a-long melodies
Down in the Willow Garden "Down in the Willow Garden", also known as "Rose Connelly" is a traditional Appalachian murder ballad about a man facing the gallows for the murder of his lover: he gave her poisoned wine, stabbed her, and threw her in a river.
Pretty Polly
"The song is a murder ballad, telling of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and buried in a shallow grave. Many variants of the story have the villain as a ship's carpenter who promises to marry Polly but murders her when she becomes pregnant. When he goes back to sea, he is haunted by her ghost, confesses to the murder, goes mad and dies."
