The night is upon us. Traditions that have been observed for centuries, and in some cases millennia, continue on this eve.
Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, Día de los Muertos, Fe Gede, Pchum Ben, Obon, Diwali and Halloween: This time of year carries with it a wealth of long-standing traditions and celebrations shared by many different cultures. Some honor the dead and ancestors, others mark seasonal transitions or celebrate the triumph of light over darkness. Each carries its own distinct history and significance.
Although considered here in very broad terms, these observances stretch back through history and continue to this day. In their many forms, they act as threads weaving through time, connecting antiquity to the present.
These traditions serve as reminders of the significance of seasonal change and the collective reverence for this chapter in the human experience.
Just as these traditions are connected by their relationship to the season, they are also linked in song.
From folk tunes to ceremonial pieces and now cyclical popular hits, music offers another collective throughline that touches every incarnation of these traditions.
In recognition and celebration of these communal customs, Sound Dissection has collected a set of pieces that celebrate the harvest season, offer reverence for death and dare to cast out the evil spirits that haunt us all.
ATABET | Old Forests
ATABET is an experimental electronic project that blends dark ambient textures from synthesizers and sound design to create an uncanny soundscape.
Unveiled earlier this month, Old Forests is the latest collection of compositions from the mysterious artist, whose identity has yet to be revealed.
A relative newcomer, this New York-based project has released nearly a dozen recordings since becoming active this July.
The project is centered on long, winding drones that shift between minor intervals, creating a meditative but preternatural experience.
With far-reaching textures and long, distant rumbles, the project is bound to provide a stirring soundtrack to the evening, whether you are planning a spooky yoga session or a walk through the woods.
Autolysia | Hen (τὸ ἕν)
A cornerstone of the woman-led solo black metal landscape, Germany’s Autolysia has built a reputation for offering deeply atmospheric, heavy and genre-defying projects within a dark, meditative aesthetic.
The anonymous artist, who operates under the artistic pseudonym Mirusbella, has achieved an artistic milestone with their latest release, Hen (τὸ ἕν).
The album does not disappoint, offering the low-fidelity chaos that the best of black metal has to offer. However, this undertaking stretches beyond the wraithlike fringes of the genre, incorporating haunting, music-box-inspired symphonic textures alongside elements of industrial electronic composition and progressive, psychedelic rock.
The album offers another example of the sometimes-dogmatic genre’s ability to branch out and draw on a wide range of outside influences.
As a result, the project marks an outstanding meeting point for headbanging listeners seeking a heavier sonic palette for the celebration, while also serving as a flavorful introduction to the form for newcomers.
Ara Cristina Hernandez | “Appearance (A Clearing)”
This haunting piece from Austin’s Ara Cristina Hernandez is bound to ward off any evil spirit that follows. This composition offers a clear example of Hernandez’s ability to craft dark textures.
The second single from Hernandez’s upcoming album, Imminence, the piece offers a glimpse of the work yet to come from this skilled multi-instrumentalist.
Released Oct. 2, the composition is a deeply personal and reflective work that chronicles the artist’s struggle with the emotional weight of the moment.
“It is about the weight and the difficulty of staying present and open in these harsh times,” Hernandez stated. “It’s very hard to see the beauty and the love in all things, but I try again and again to show up. I haven’t truly reconciled or solved any of this, except I try as much as possible to show up honestly to every situation, to see and allow myself to be seen.”
Hernandez’s piece reminds us that the weight and darkness are things we all feel and that we should face together.
DIM | Black Wool
Hailing from Nova Scotia, DIM’s most recent recording, Black Wool, is a haunting collection of theatrical dark folk music.
The project serves as a soundtrack to a medieval landscape where hardworking farmers continue to practice their pagan traditions out of sight of oppressive church leaders.
“There is no lantern to guide you here,” Josiah Wilkinson, the artist behind the project, states in the album’s liner notes, calling the album folk music for the “doomed and weary.”
Leaning heavily into the Dungeons & Dragons-fueled dungeon synth and medieval fantasy aesthetic, the artist provides an outstanding accompaniment for anyone celebrating the holiday with good friends and tabletop role-playing games.
Anes Haus | Eidolon
Brighton-based audio-visual artist and composer Agnes Haus’s Eidolon is a spectral investigation of the most omnipresent yet intangible condition that defines the state of being – time.
The released this month under Richard Chartier’s LINE imprint, the project, an exercise in minimalism, was crafted using a modular synthesizer and the occasional bowed tone from a makeshift 2-string self-built violin-like instrument. Together, the two instruments speak an ancient unrecognizable, yet entirely familiar language.
Abundantly rich in expression, it is a vocabulary that inspires as much unease as it encourages calm.
As a recording, Eidolon serves as a non-linear accompaniment to a visual component described by Haus as “a ghost of a film.”
“The visual of a hovering vibration to accompany the intonation of a shapeless location,” Haus states. “Beatless but heavy, timeless but aged, created for the darkness and the stillness amid lost futures: the sound of the eye of the storm; the sound of phantasms among the living, unconvinced of the linear aspect of motion.”
Reflecting this evocative imagery is a soundtrack of static, drones and whimpers that inspire chills, and remind the lister of the finality of being.
Maisy Owen | Dark on a Sunny Day
Released this past spring on the San Francisco-based Tompkins Square, Maisy Owen’s debut album, Dark on a Sunny Day, carries with it an overwhelming emotional heaviness.
This acoustic, folk-centered singer-songwriter chronicles the human condition with astute lyrics and chilling fingerstyle guitar playing that cuts through the noise of life and reminds each listener of the darkness that surrounds us all.
Owen’s gentle voice lends the album an enchanting quality, conveying dark, poetic imagery. Their gentle but resilient presence carries a spirit that lingers long after the record is done spinning.
Vines | “500 Miles”
The vision of composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Cassie Wieland, Vines is an exploration of the relationship between voice and synthesis.
Through Wieland’s lens, that relationship is calm and peaceful but equally unsettling.
The New York artist’s latest single, “500 Miles,” is a modern dirge that carries with it a heavy, mournful beauty.
The piece was made popular across the United States Western Europe amid the folk revival movement of the 1960s. Written by the singer-songwriter Hedy West in 1961, the composition was widely popularized by the trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who featured the song on their breakthrough 1962 self-titled debut album.
Wieland’s rendition now occupies the same emotional space that that carries an acceptance for the coming winter, and embraces the cold, dark months ahead.
Moving beyond this recent cover, in its entirety, Wieland’s wider catalogue of compositions offer an ideal accompaniment for a walk among rustling, colorful trees in the afternoon light or deep in the night, when the evening’s festivities have long come to an end.
The acknowledgment of these works complete a series of recent posts that, in keeping with the festive spirt, examined the dark musical palettes of Hexpartner, Mimi Pretend and Emma Ruth Rundle.
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