Melancholia EP by Wilderness of Mirrors

This EP was inspired by the 2011 movie "Melancholia".

I feel this film captures what it is like to feel helplessly depressed in a way that few other movies ever could (I would argue that Olivier Assayas' "Personal Shopper" is right up there with how it portrays grief, but I feel "Melancholia" surpasses it with regards to outright depression).

When the movie was first released, I saw it and it really hit home with me. It haunted me. It is strange to describe; it made me feel utterly hopeless, yet it also made me feel less like I was alone in the world, as it showed that other people feel like this. 10 years later, I felt it a good inspiration for my second EP.

The movie has 3 sections; an almost poetically shot prologue (which is actually the end of the story placed at the start, so like an epilogue acting as a prologue), a section from the point of view of Justine, and a section from the point of view of Claire. As such, my EP follows suit in that there are 3 tracks to mirror these sections (albeit my epilogue is at the end of the EP, not the beginning, but functions in a similar manner as it acts as a strangely calm depiction of utter devastation).

I have tried my best to make the tracks evolve in ways that echo that of the thoughts of their respective characters within the movie; Justine starting with foreboding dread, going to introverted pseudo calm, going into her fully helpless, depressive stage (blast beats!), and ending with her stoically accepting fate, Claire starting with an uneasy calm, building to anxious thoughts of doom, momentarily dropping back to a deluded calm, but which gets increasingly bleak and builds back into thoughts of dread & terror, leading to the final impact and the serenity that follows obliteration.

On my previous 2 recordings I focussed on the guitars, bass, drums, and layers of droning, ghostly synths (which made sense in the context of "Woodland Ghosts"), on this releases, the ghostly synths have been replaced by big, grandiose orchestras, which are inspired by the Wagner soundtrack to the movie.

The artwork is a departure from the style of my previous 2 releases, but ties in with the movie; the sad woman crying in despair & hiding from life, the apple is relevant as Michael bought Justine an orchard to sit in if her dark thoughts were becoming too overwhelming.

Self recorded at home.
Intentionally lo-fi.
As ever, I left in all of the little imperfections, like string scrapes and chokes etc

I recommend a good set of bass heavy speakers to listen to this.

The sounds on this recording were created using cello, violin, viola, double bass, felt piano, analogue synths, drums, bass, guitars, and effects pedals. No vocals were used.

Wilderness of Mirrors is Andie Gill

Also play in:
dinofcelestialbirds.bandcamp.com/releases

vermian.bandcamp.com/releases

andiegillmusic.bandcamp.com

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