How do you explain the inexplicable? Those things that cannot be explained which lurk where we fear to tread once that last light goes dark. Have you ever been witness to a mischief of unexplained origin knocking about an old library or farmhouse? Objects set along the mantelpiece moved to another room, or words scribbled on the wall as if a child had gotten bored(but no child ever present)? A collection of precarious moments not explained by science or logic; candles flicker with no breeze as pricks of unexplained origin travel down your spine to reveal a specter’s presence.
Do you believe in spirits that walk this earth? I do. I’ve witnessed their mischief firsthand. In my younger days I walked the line between curiosity and naiveté, rummaging through abandoned but once glorious homes looking for clues to the beyond. Walking amongst mildewed gurneys and rain-marked walls of a long closed hospital in search of clues to who wandered(and still did wander) its now grotesquely black and barren halls. I even sat in a 150-year old schoolhouse all night with no light but the moon shining through a gaping hole in the roof, waiting for the clack of chalk-to-slate for some otherworldly lesson.
To encapsulate the vibe and mood of the paranormal and unexplained musically, one needs the right compositional experts to do so. The record you are listening to now, Repeated Viewing and Timothy Fife Explore Paranormal Sounds of the Synthesizer, was written and conceived as a library record for just that. Modern electronic music composers Repeated Viewing and Timothy Fife have created a record to take you into the world of the paranormal, the unexplained, and what happens when the light goes out.
It is widely understood that electrical currents and circuital buzzes can bring specters to the surface. Electricity is a conduit to the other side, so who better to create the right musical conditions to speak with the dead? Each composer here has released a bevy of albums dipped in the melted, hot wax of ritual and dark rites.
Repeated Viewing’s musical worlds have always stayed firmly in the shadows, building sickly walls of musty synths and calculated rhythms. A mixture of Gothic melancholy and pulse-pounding existential fear. Repeated Viewing’s is a stroke of midnight, all gathered around the Ouija board kind of vibe. Claustrophobic and insatiable.
Timothy Fife’s work is more ethereal, concentrating on some kind of ascension to understanding the beasts we cannot understand. A bit of new age deep thought and ambient exorcism to capture the soul of what we don’t understand. Crystalline synths work a sort of Giallo incantation to get to something deeper.
Repeated Viewing and Timothy Fife Explore Paranormal Sounds of the Synthesizer is a “split” LP. Repeated Viewing covers side A, while Timothy Fife handles side B. Repeated Viewing’s mood is of dread and darkness. Cuts like “An Evaluation of Unexplained Events”, “The Olde Time Religion”, and “Establishing Contact With The Dead” build a musical world of haunted parlors, candles flickering, and incantations spoken in whispered tongues. A bridge between the mourning and the morning. Timothy Fife, by contrast, takes us into the world which lies between here and there. “Intro/Jamais Vu” seduces the soul with electrical pulses and droning currents. “Projection To A Former Life”, “Entering The 6th Dimension”, and “Deja Vu” make contact with the other side, giving static charge and access to afterlife conversations with those long from this earth.
Regardless of what you believe to be here for the plain eye to see, or what lies beyond that scope of sight, this LP pulls you into back room spectral indiscretions and black magic incantations. Repeated Viewing and Timothy Fife Explore Paranormal Sounds of the Synthesizer builds a musical bridge between what was, and what shall never be again.
8.2 out of 10
Repeated Viewing and Timothy Fife Explore Paranormal Sounds of the Synthesizer is available now via Burning Witches Records. Buy it here.
Complex Distractions 