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Press Releases

L.A.-based Experimental Rock Musician Extraordinaire Arthur Mountaniol Has Released His New Album “Music of Hell” (2013).

January 17, 2013 | By Benjamin Grant
PR, The Moon Pierrot Republic (ASCAP)
Arthur Mountaniol's new album "MUSIC of HELL" is something literally from some wildest, weirdest nightmare. As a matter of fact, the idea of it came to the musician exactly from his dream. As he now recalls, the night before he had that strange dream, he was listening to his experiments on his old Tascam 8 track tape recorder, when all of a sudden something odd happened and a bunch of weird voices came up growling, followed by a lot of static and then some freakish music started playing just for a few seconds. Then everything stopped. Those were sounds he doesn't believe he had recorded himself. The following night, in his dream, he heard all this music in its entirety. Much of it sounded like it was played in reverse, having an altered pitch and a time stretch. But the voices were the most memorable. They were monstrously low, slow and dead, uttering something like strange, evil invocations. Since then the musician was under the strong impression of it and he came to believe that it was nothing but the omen from the Netherworld. He felt greatly disturbed and frightened for 13 days. But then, for some mysterious reason, his mood has changed and he decided to grab this rare opportunity and try to recreate those sounds in his studio.

In the summer of 2007, he started working on this project, pushing the limits of his imagination to be able to do everything the wrong way – the way no music has ever been done before. He knew that neither drummer nor bassist would be up to this work and a rhythm section had to be of a different kind. It had to be purely constructional, lifeless and complex. So he decided to create the rhythm skeleton on his drum machine, but applying a “Russian Roulette” method. He loosely arranged just one pattern and played it along with different drum kits rotating in a real time. This thing produced an unpredictable and sometimes esoteric, polyrhythmic extravaganza. Those experiments basically shaped the style of the drums and bass for this project.

The next step was the music. To compose it, he came up with a completely different approach. He literally converted his memory of that phantasmagorical dream into sounds and put them all together the way as if they would play in reverse.

The guitar style and tones were influenced by the music itself. And of course the most unusual and outrageous thing on this record would be the vocals. They are SUPER ABNORMAL. They sound like a collection of assorted freaks being tortured in Hell. Sung by Arthur Mountaniol himself and transformed into these zombie-like vocal groups and individuals. The vocal lines were pieced together taken out of the different songs from the musician’s previous works. When all of these ingredients started working together, the artist was convinced that he’s created the most surreal, grotesque and unprecedented record ever produced - the infernal parody of his own music.

If you heard Arthur Mountaniol’s music before, you may recognize some tunes from his other albums. And if you manage to play this record in reverse, you will get the hidden meaning of the lyrics which cannot be understood otherwise.

You may ask: - What the hell is that? Well, it’s something that has elements of Avant-Garde, Jazz, Heavy Metal, Rock, Psychedelic, Progressive, Electronica and God knows, or more precisely, Devil does know what else.

But no matter what it is… IT IS REALLY, REALLY OUT THERE. And nothing else has ever sounded like it. Give it a listen and see for yourselves. But be warned: LISTEN AT YOUR OWN RISK! This music is SUPER ABNORMAL and it might make you sick. So you’ve got to be seriously prepared for this. And finally, listen to it (if you really can at all) in its entirety because it’s the only way how you can receive this unbelievable, mind bending experience unlike anything else you have ever had before.

This album is available on iTunes, Amazon,CDbaby and other online music stores.

CDbaby direct link: http://www.cdbaby.co/cd/arthurmountaniol

Apple iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/music-of-hell/id591157407

Arthur Mountaniol Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/rocksurrealist

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