Mythos and Music 201
How do musicians incorporate the Mythos into their music? This is an advanced discussion, focused on techniques musicians use to bring the Weird to their soundscapes. What is it that makes some music sound Lovecraftian? Griffin, Mars, Atkinson, Gulbranson, Morris, Clark
Michael Griffin has released a novel, Hieroglyphs of Blood and Bone (Journalstone, 2017), and a short fiction collection, The Lure of Devouring Light (Word Horde, 2016), and the novella "An Ideal Retreat" (Dim Shores, 2016). His short stories have appeared in magazines like Apex, Black Static, Lovecraft eZine and Strange Aeons, and the anthologies The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Autumn Cthulhu, the Shirley Jackson Award winner The Grimscribe's Puppets, The Children of Old Leech and Eternal Frankenstein. He's an ambient musician and founder of Hypnos Recordings, an ambient record label he operates with his wife in Portland, Oregon. Michael blogs at griffinwords.com. On Twitter, he posts as @mgsoundvisions.
Mars is a multi - instrumentalist who has performed with symphony orchestras, as well as jazz, metal and goth bands on tours through Canada, and the United States. He is an accomplished session musician, voice artist and recording engineer. Combining his two greatest loves; music and horror films, Mars founded Dead House Music in 2005 as a company specializing in original, high quality music for independent genre film. With 38 projects (feature films, shorts, TV programs, DVD, and video games) to his credit to date; Mars has worked with genre veterans, as well as talented young directors alike. His music has been featured in films that have received theatrical release, as well as projects that have secured worldwide distribution on DVD, Video-On-Demand, Internet, and Television.
Toren Atkinson is the lead singer for the H.P. Lovecraft inspired band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, as played on the video game Rock Band 2. Toren also co-designed and illustrated the award winning tabletop roleplaying game Spaceship Zero, and provided on-screen and voice acting talent to such properties as Stargate: Atlantis, Sword of the Stars (VG), Fort Zombie (VG), and Penny Arcade’s Cardboard Tube Samurai. He is one of the creators and co-hosts of the Caustic Soda podcast. Toren is an accomplished illustrator, with credits in tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu, design work for video games like [PROTOTYPE] by Radical. In his current position as storyboard artist he has worked on Marvel's Avengers Assemble and Rocket Monkeys.
Jess Gulbranson is an author, artist, critic, and composer. At his most recent appearance at The Hour That Stretches, he and coauthor Garrett Cook had an audience feed their mana to an egregore called "Tony Shrapnel". Current projects include children's books, a grimoire, and the unofficial Dark Souls manga. He lives in Portland with his wife and daughters.
Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, also nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and the 2005 British Science Fiction Association Award. His Cosmic Horror fiction has appeared in Dark Regions' THE CHILDREN OF GLA'AKI: TRIBUTE STORIES TO RAMSEY CAMPBELL and RETURN OF THE OLD ONES, as well as PS Publishing's THE STARRY WISDOM LIBRARY and Chaosium's LEGACY OF THE REANIMATOR, among many other fine and horrific collections.Mr. Morris also runs a local spoken-word event called The Hour That Stretches at the Clinton St. Theatre: http://the.hourthatstretches.com
As composer for the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre Reber, Clark has composed music for Dagon: War of Worlds, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and Herbert West: Reanimator. His movie, Lovecraft Paragraphs, premiered at the 2009 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. His music is featured on The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. His music for wind ensemble is published worldwide by C. Alan Publications, Columbia Pictures Publications and Warner Brothers Music Publications.
Most recent work includes music for Chris Lackey and Greig Johnson’s Lovecraft video trilogy of The Ordeal of Randolph Carter, From Beyond the Beyond, and Pickman’s Guest, The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre production of Dagon: War of Worlds, Hassan & Lavender’s film productions of Walk Away and Dark Chocolate, Christoph Angehrn’s animated short INVASION! Robert Cappelletto’s film The Last Man After the War, original music and orchestrations for the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, Mass., reorchestrating the prelude to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica for wind ensemble, fulfilling a commission for the Concordia University of Chicago Wind Symphony. He has many music and movie projects in active development.
He currently resides in suburban Chicago.