Nox Arcana

Nox Arcana is an American Neoclassical darkwave/dark ambient musical duo, formed in 2003 by Joseph Vargo and William Piotrowski. Nox Arcana specializes in concept albums based on gothic fiction and classic horror literature. Such literary references include H. P. Lovecraft, The Brothers Grimm, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allan Poe. Some of their albums also make reference to medieval themes and ancient mythology.

Their music is used by famous american theme parks such as Busch Gardens, Knott's Scary Farm and Universal Studios during Halloween for scenes and haunted houses based upon Nox Arcana album themes. 

Nox Arcana is influenced by New Age, classical, ambient music, rock music, and film soundtracks, citing other composers such as John Carpenter, Danny Elfman, AC/DC, Wojciech Kilar, Enya, Loreena McKennitt, Beethoven, Jerry Goldsmith, and Hans Zimmer.

Nox Arcana's music is melodic and moody, focusing on a dominant melody line. Instrumentation varies with each album as appropriate to the theme or time period of the album concept, and typically includes piano, bells, violin, pipe organ, harpsichord, timpani drums and other percussion.

Some albums also include cymbals, lutes, acoustic guitars, bagpipes and glockenspiel, depending on the theme of a given album. Enforcing the theme and the narrative is the use of sound effects, such as, for instance, a door creaking or a pendulum swinging on the Poe-inspired Shadow of the Raven.

Vocals and narratives are also used sparingly to help relate a story or serve as introduction to a musical piece, for example, the voice of "Jonathan Harker" and whispered female voices of "Dracula's brides" that beckon to the listener, a carnival barker with the indistinct sounds of an audience in the distance, or "Edgar Allan Poe" and a voice calling out from the grave after being prematurely buried, the gravelly voice of a "witch" casting a spell, and a variety of low Gregorian-style chanting and ethereal choirs.

Joseph Vargo is a renowned gothic-fantasy artist who has created an extensive portfolio of work ranging from album covers and books to posters, music cds, and other products that are distributed through his publishing company Monolith Graphics. Before forming Nox Arcana in 2003, Joseph Vargo produced two albums for Midnight Syndicate but left the band in 2000 to co-write Tales From The Dark Tower, a book that follows the exploits of a vampire during the First Crusade. He later published Dark Realms magazine and released a best-selling card deck, The Gothic Tarot. William Piotrowski had previously written the score for a video production entitled "Ghosts of Ohio", a video documentary about Mary Ann Winkowski, a medium who inspired the CBS television show Ghost Whisperer.

official site: www.noxarcana.com

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WGT 2012 - For those who missed it

Last month from 25th to 28th May, one of the world most famous and biggest gothic festival, the Wave-Gotik-Treffen , took place in Leipzig, Germany. I didn't have the chance to go there but for those who missed it like me, here's a site with almost 2000 professional photos of the event:

click this link --> WGT 2012 PHOTOS

official WGT site: http://www.wave-gotik-treffen.de

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The Dresden Dolls - When theater, music and dark aesthetics combine

The Dresden Dolls are an American musical duo from Boston, Massachusetts. Formed in 2000, the group consists of Amanda Palmer (vocals, piano, harmonica, ukulele) and Brian Viglione (drums, percussion, guitar, bass guitar, vocals). The two describe their style as "Brechtian punk cabaret", a phrase invented by Palmer because she was "terrified" that the press would invent a name that "would involve the word gothic". The Dresden Dolls are part of an underground dark cabaret movement that started gaining momentum in the early 2000s. 

The duo formed a week after Brian Viglione witnessed Amanda Palmer perform solo at a Halloween party in 2000. Their live performances soon gained them a cult following. During these performances the two band members often wore dramatic make-up and fancy clothing that push their cabaret/theater aesthetic. They encourage fans to become involved at their shows, with the fans' own stilt walking, living statues, fire breathers, and other performance artbecoming an integral part of the show. The Dirty Business Brigade coordinated the fans' performances.

The band's first name was Out of Arms. At some point, the name became The Dresden Dolls. The name, according to Palmer, was "inspired by a combination of things," including the firebombing of Dresden, Germany and the porcelain dolls that were a hallmark of pre-war Dresden industry; an early song of the same name by The Fall; and a reference to the V. C. Andrews novel Flowers in the Attic, where the classically blond-haired and blue-eyed protagonists are called "the Dresden dolls". The name also evokes Weimar Germany and its cabaret culture. Additionally, Palmer "liked the parallel between Dresden (destruction) and Dolls (innocence, delicacy), because it is very much in keeping with the dynamics of the music, which sometimes goes from a childlike whisper to a banshee scream within a few seconds."

DISCOGRAPHY:

The Dresden Dolls (2003)

Yes, Virginia... (2006)

My personal favourite songs by The Dresden Dolls:

-Girl Anachronism

-Modern Moonlight

Official band site: 

www.dresdendolls.com

(isn't the site amazing? :P)

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About that famous BatCave Club

The Batcave was a nightclub in London, England at Meard Street, Soho. It is considered to be the birthplace of the English goth subculture. As one of the most famous meeting points for early goths, it lent its name to the term Batcaver, used to describe fans of the original gothic rock music. The term Batcave is also still used by Europeansto refer to Gothic music with a prominent Post-Punk sound and spooky atmospheres.

The club opened in July 1982. Originally specialising in New Wave and Glam rock, it later focused on Gothic rock. Ollie Wisdom, the lead singer in the house band,Specimen, ran the club with Specimen's Jon Klein as Art Director, and initially with the assistance of production manager Hugh Jones. Famous regulars at the Batcave included musicians such as Bauhaus, Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Foetus, Marc Almond and Nick Cave.

 

"SPECIMEN were a glam horror post-punk band, who became most known for launching the 'Batcave' club in London around 1982 or so. The club became a fertile dark arts club where interesting artists of the time would perform to the nightlife in-crowd. It was just the new hip post-punk scene; only in retrospect tagged 'goth'. "

A diverse array of bands would play at the club, backed up by their resident DJs Hamish 'the paranoid' McDonald and Annie Hogan (Marc Almond band member). The bands involved included electronic leading act Alien Sex Fiend. The host's band Specimen, who took ample influence from 1970s glam rock and Sex Gang Children, is a group that would go on to prove influential in the gothic rock, dark cabaret and deathrock movements. The club also showed 8mm movies in the old theatre and occasionally featured unusual cabaret such as Mr Swing the fakir. Much of the image and fashion used by the subculture can be traced back to the bands who played at the Batcave.

In 1983, a vinyl record entitled The Bat Cave, Young Limbs & Numb Hymns was released on the London recording label. The compilation included Specimen ("Dead Mans Autochop"), Sexbeat ("Sex Beat"), Test Dept. ("Shockwork"), Patti Palladin ("The Nuns New Clothes"), James T. Pursey ("Eyes Shine Killidiscope"), Meat of Youth ("Meat of Youth"), Brilliant ("oming Up For The Downstroke"), Alien Sex Fiend ("R.I.P."), and The Venomettes ("The Dance of Death").

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Dario Argento & Lucio Fulci - Masters Of Horror

For those passionate about horror thriller movies, a post about 2 film directors whose creations are absolutely a must-see..

Dario Argento was born on September 7, 1940 in Rome, Italy. The first born son of famed Italian producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian fashion model Elda Luxardo. Argento recalls getting his ideas for film making from his close knit family from Italian folk tales told by his parents and other family members including an aunt who told him frighting bedtime stories. Argento based most of his thriller movies on childhood trauma, yet his own, according to him, was a normal one. Along with tales spun by his aunt, Argento was impressed by stories from The Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, and Edgar Allan Poe.



[...] Argento then went back to directing the so-called "giallo" thrillers starting with Profondo rosso (1975), a violent mystery-thriller with inspired a number of international directors with the thriller-horror genre. His next work was Suspiria (1977), a surreal horror film about a witch's covenent which was inspired by the Gothic fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers and Andersen which were collaborated by his girlfriend, screenwriter/actress Daria Nicolodi, who acted in "Profondo Rosso" ("Deep Red") and most of Argento's films from then on to the late 1980s. Argento advanced the unfinished trilogy with Inferno (1980), before returning to the "giallo" thrillers with the gory Tenebre (1982), and then with the haunting Phenomena (1985).


Please, DO watch:




Suspiria is a 1977 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento . The film follows an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy in Germany, only to discover that it is controlled by a coven of witches..




Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) is another thriller movie by Argento shot in 1975.A true GIALLO* It tells the story of a musician who witnesses the murder of a famous psychic, and then teams up with a fiesty reporter to find the killer while evading attempts on their lives by the unseen killer bent on keeping a dark secret buried.


*Many of his films are considered to be ‘giallo’. Giallo meaning yellow, which in turn came from the yellow covers of the penny-dreadful horror/thriller paperbacks that were sold in Italy.

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Lucio Fulci, born in Rome in 1927, remains as controversial in death as he was in life. A gifted craftsman with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of dark humor, Fulci achieved some measure of notoriety for his gore epics of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 

In 1979, Fulci's filmmaking career hit another high point with him breaking into the international market with Zombi 2 (1979), an in-name-only sequel to George A. Romero's Zombi (1978), which had been released in Italy as 'Zombi'. With its flamboyant imagery, graphic gore and moody atmospherics, the film established Fulci as a gore director par excellence. It was a role he accepted, but with some reservations.

Over the next three years, Fulci plied his trade with finesse and flair, rivaling even the popularity of his "opponent" Dario Argento, with such sanguine classics as City of the Living Dead (1980) and ...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (The Beyond) (1981). High on vivid imagery and pure cinematic style, Fulci's films from this period of the early 1980s represent some of his most popular work in America and abroad, even if they do pale in comparison to his 1972 masterpiece and personal favorite Don't torture a Duckling (1972) (an impossible act to follow, as it happens).

Image from the movie "The Beyond"

 

I personally suggest you to watch:

The Black Cat

A Scotland Yard detective and a nosy American photographer investigate a series of bizarre deaths in a small English village which are connected to a local literacy professor whom has the psychic ability to talk to dead spirits and somehow uses his gift to direct the entities to his pet black cat who becomes his instrument for revenge against those who have wronged him. This movie was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's omonymous novel.

Memento Mori - Remember the dead

WARNING! If you are a susceptible, sensitive person, who's deeply scared of death and doesn't want to know nothing about it. DO NOT READ and especially DO NOT WATCH THE VIDEO!

This post is dedicated to POST MORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY. It was of great use during the Victorian era, so I thought it could be interesting for those of you into the 18th century or/and fascinated by death to know something about it. I'm not going to post pictures because the ones I found were mainly dead children which could really impress you. I actually felt bad myself seeing them. I am just posting the video that inspired the making of this article.

Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die". It refers to a genre of artworks that vary widely but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their mortality, an artistic theme dating back to antiquity. 

The earliest post-mortem photographs are usually close-ups of the face or shots of the full body and rarely include the coffin. The subject is usually depicted so as to seem in a deep sleep, or else arranged to appear more lifelike. Children were often shown in repose on a couch or in a crib, sometimes posed with a favorite toy or other plaything. It was not uncommon to photograph very young children with a family member, most frequently the mother. Adults were more commonly posed in chairs or even braced on specially-designed frames. Flowers were also a common prop in post-mortem photography of all types.

The effect of life was sometimes enhanced by either propping the subject's eyes open or painting pupils onto the photographic print, and many early images (especially tintypes and ambrotypes) have a rosy tint added to the cheeks of the corpse.

Later examples show less effort at a lifelike appearance, and often show the subject in a coffin. Some very late examples show the deceased in a coffin with a large group of funeral attendees; this type of photograph was especially popular in Europe and less common in the United States.

Post-mortem photography is still practiced in some areas of the world, such as Eastern Europe. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.

A variation of the memorial portrait involves photographing the family with a shrine (usually including a living portrait) dedicated to the deceased.

The invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 made portraiture much more commonplace, as many of those who were unable to afford the commission of a painted portrait could afford to sit for a photography session. This cheaper and quicker method also provided the middle class with a means for memorializing dead loved ones.

These photographs served less as a reminder of mortality than as a keepsake to remember the deceased. This was especially common with infants and young children; Victorian era childhood mortality rates were extremely high, and a post-mortem photograph might have been the only image of the child the family ever had. The later invention of the carte de visite, which allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative, meant that copies of the image could be mailed to relatives.

The practice eventually peaked in popularity around the end of the 19th century and died out as "snapshot" photography became more commonplace, although a few examples of formal memorial portraits were still being produced well into the 20th century.

Bela Lugosi - Legend Of Horror

As requested, a post about horror movie legendary actor Bela Lugosi. 

Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (20 October 1882 – 16 August 1956), commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarianactor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of *Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his career. 

Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born in Lugos (at the time part of Austria–Hungary, now Lugoj in Romania). He later based his last name on his hometown. He and his sister Vilma were raised in a Roman Catholic family. At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school. He began his acting career probably in 1901 or 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theaters in the 1903–1904 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He went on to Shakespeare plays and other major roles.

During World War I, he served as an infantry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916. There he rose to the rank of captain in the ski patrol and was awarded a medal for being wounded at the Russian front.

Due to his activism in the actors union in Hungary during the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, he was forced to flee his homeland. He first went to Vienna, Austria, and then settled in Berlin, Germany, in the Langestrasse where he continued acting. Eventually, he traveled to New Orleans, United States as a crewman aboard a merchant ship.

Lugosi was approached in the summer of 1927 to star in a Broadway production of Dracula adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from Bram Stoker'snovel. The Horace Liveright production was successful, running 261 performances before touring. 

Through his association with Dracula (in which he appeared with minimal makeup, using his natural, heavily accented voice), Lugosi found himself typecast as a horror villain in such movies as Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Raven, and Son of Frankenstein for Universal, and the independent White Zombie. His accent, while a part of his image, limited the roles he could play. 

Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, while lying on a couch in his Los Angeles home. He was 73. The rumor that Lugosi was clutching the script for The Final Curtain, a planned Ed Wood * project, at the time of his death is not true.

Lugosi was buried wearing one of the Dracula Cape costumes, per the request of his son and fourth wife, in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Contrary to popular belief, Lugosi never requested to be buried in his cloak; Bela G. Lugosi (his son) confirmed on numerous occasions that he and his mother, Lillian, actually made the decision but believed that it is what his father would have wanted.

Goth rock band Bauhaus composed a song dedicated to Lugosi called "Bela Lugosi's Dead"

*Edward Davis "Ed" Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American screenwriter, director, producer,actor, author, and editor, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a number of low-budget genre films, now notable for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fittingstock footage, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his projects at least a modicum of critical success.

Wood's popularity waned soon after his biggest name star Bela Lugosi died (in August 1956). He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter.

Tim Burton did a tribute movie called "Ed Wood" with Johnny Depp starring as the director.

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Angel Of Grief

A little post for the art lovers and those into statues of angels.

Angel of Grief is an 1894 sculpture by William Wetmore Story which serves as the grave stone of the artist and his wife at the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. This style of monument is also referred to as "Weeping Angel." It's made of marmor and stone.

William Wetmore Story was born to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1819, and graduated from Harvard College in 1838 and Harvard Law School in 1840. He left the practice of law to become a sculptor and relocated to Italy in 1848. His most famous sculpture is "Cleopatra," which is part of the collection of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art in New York City. 

The remarkable and emotional realism of the "Angel of Grief" has made it famous, and it has become a copied funeral monument model all over the world, especially in the United States, where many reproductions of the work can be found . 

The statue represents an angel kneeling on a tombstone with his head on his forearm while crying with his face hidden. His hand is left hanging over the tombstone like powerless due to the sadness and depression the angel is living at the moment. Some flower petals are scattered on the tombstone base like they were left falling by the miserable angel in pain. The wings are represented curved down like in pity on the back of this angel. The body of the angel is like collapsed on the tombstone like he had lost all of his hope.

Pictures of the statue appear on the covers of Evanescence EP by Evanescence (1998), Once by Nightwish (2004), Embossed Dream in Four Acts by Odes of Ecstasy(1998) and Letanías: Capítulo III by Anabantha (2006). All four bands have arguably gothic influences. It is also featured on the album art of The Edges of Twilight by The Tea Party (1995).