Hellenica’s newest album, set to release on Somewherecold Records, invites the listener on an audio journey that is inspired by and intended as an imaginary soundtrack to accompany the 1985 barbaric western novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
These eleven, bite-sized ambient instrumentals pull the listener into a world of death, hallucinations, blood and guns, creating a surreal backdrop that accentuates not only the book’s gothic-western qualities but the character’s introspective journeys through the desert, using twangy electric guitars, tape machines, synthesizers, and drum machines instead of banjos and harmonicas.
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"You can’t read everything. And so now wishing I had read the evangelised Cormac McCarthy’s supernatural anti-Western Blood Meridian tome, I’m left feeling out-of-the-loop with Jim Demos (aka Hellenica since 2009) imaginative soundtrack for that acclaimed novel. Like one of those “what could have been” fandom generated homages, Jim’s cinematic score graces the movie yet to be made of that violent story – think Peckinpah totally uncensored and off the leash.
I admit I’ve had to do my research – yeah it’s a book friends have championed in the past, but never made my reading list. But in brief, Blood Meridian is at least tenuously based on the all too real horrifying exploits of the Glanton gang of miscreants; led by the early Mexican-Texas settler, ranger and mercenary John Joel Glanton. Scalp-hunters for hire, accustomed to blood bath massacres of not just the indigenous people but also anyone that crossed their path, this notorious skulk ran riot in the old West. Told from the perspective of a volunteer (I say volunteer, it was this or the rope) known only as “the kid”, the reader’s immersed in a old Western story of hurt and pain, and introduced to the gang’s leader “The Judge”; a sort of daemonic magnetism of a character, half gory guru, half Kurtz, who every character in the book meets and leaves the presence of in some state of semi-spiritual conversion and menace.
Jim loosely makes references to various chapters, scenes from the story; the most obvious being the opener ‘The Blood Of Toadvine’, which refers to the character of the same name, an acquaintance of “the kid”, member of the gang and the link in the chain of events that lands our protagonist towards almost esoteric barbarity. Here it’s scored with a yearning Western vibrato twanged arrangement that takes us across a supernatural-desert landscape. Hints of a voiceless Crime & The City Solution, the Bad Seeds, Alex Puddu and a very removed Roy Budd merge into that setting.
A re-imagined Morricone rubs shoulders with John Carpenter, Mandy soundtrack Jóhana Jóhannson, Wovenhand and Belbury Poly on this intrepid gothic, often eerie album of bloodletting. Yet amongst the Western tremolo and rattles, the mirages and warbles, there’s a suffused current of 80s sci-fi, adventure, and a dream-realism spell of Gallo thriller/horror. There’s even a touch of early Mute Records synthesized drums, and an air of new romanticism Visage on the deep groaning, skeleton bones traced ‘Parallax And False Guidance’. And the “169” frequency broadcasting, soft cantered ‘Westward Again’ sounds like a meeting between Kavinsky and Moroder.
Despite the material at its core, this soundtrack is peppered with sounds of celeste like chimes, soft walking melodies and dreamy halftime progressive jazz drums.
If they do ever get past all the issues and actually get this book on the screen, Jim’s got the soundtrack ready to go. Western scores have rarely sounded so different and mysterious; tragic and esoteric."
~ Dominic Valvona
monolithcocktail.com/2021/11/04/the-perusal-22-dear-laika-stereo-total-boom-diwan-ft-nduduzo-makhathini-spacelab/
released November 15, 2021
Music written, recorded, and mixed by Jim Demos
Recorded between 2018-2020 in Montreal, Quebec at Hellenica HQ
Viola on tracks 1 and 11 played by Brandon Gibson-DeGroote, Arranged by Jim Demos.
Drums on track 5 played by Joe Fiola
For Sync and Licensing Contact:
Patrick@libertylicensing.com
Label contact:
somewherecold16@gmail.com
hellenicamusic.com