Carcosa

CADABR-64 2020
7"
Selections from Robert W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow are voiced by Anthony D. P. Mann and scored by Chris Bozzone. When Cadabra Records previously delved into Chambers’ work, it was with the writer’s most famous work, “The Yellow Sign.” Here, however, we hear two excerpts from the lost play bookend The Prophets’ Paradise, and explore the world of Carcosa, that fabled ancient city where “shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon.”
“Cassilda’s Song,” in the words of Hildred Castaigne, demonstrates the “very banality and innocence of the first act” of the play, The King in Yellow, as Mann reads “Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed” over Bozzone’s guitar and violin. The very simplicity of the lines in each quatrain is meant to lure the listener into a false sense of security, as is the quietly relaxing music. No sense of menace is at all implied.
However, once the record moves into the eight pieces which comprise “The Prophets’ Paradise,” immediately, the listener knows that things have changed, and that we are moving into a world wherein things are not what they seem to be on the surface. The words will be opaque, nearly obscuring the true meaning of what lies behind them.
Carcosa will take the listener on a journey, wherein they explore the world, and meet several of its denizens – The Phantom of the Past, The Throng, The Jester, and The Clown, among others – with meditations upon blood, lamentation, death, and even the personification of Love itself. It is a brief, but tempestuous travel upon the waves of sound emitting from the speaker.
The music which accompanies Mann’s reading of Chambers’ words is no less diverse than the brief lines of each segment. “Sacrifice” contains lustrous streaks of violin foregrounding finger-picked guitar, while “Destiny” has liquid guitar chords. “The Jester” inverts the sound of “Sacrifice,” emphasizing the finger-picked guitar, with the violin in the background. As one of the speakers says in “The Studio,” which begins this journey, “the song is the same , the voice and steps have but changed with years.”
As the record comes to a close, we once again return to the play, and a brief excerpt from The King in Yellow’s Act 1, Scene 2 ends with single note upon the violin which rings long, bringing it all home as Chambers suggests that terror might not – as suggested at the outset – come disguised, but indeed, wear no mask at all.
Credits:
Written by Robert W. Chambers
Artwork by Jonathan Dennison
Read by Anthony D.P. Mann
Score by Chris Bozzone
A1	Cassilda's Song 	
A2	The Studio 	
A3	The Phantom 	
A4	The Sacrifice 	
A5	Destiny 	
B1	The Throng 	
B2	The Jester 	
B3	The Green Room 	
B4	The Love Test 	
B5	(Introduction To The Mask) The King In Yellow, Act 1, Scene 2	
Includes a numbered fold-over card and fold-over outer sleeve
Variants:
Transparent yellow with black swirl (200 numbered copies)
Lost Carcosa (Coke clear with yellow swirl, 100 copies)
Clear with black & yellow splatter (xx copies)Wax mage (31 numbered copies)
Test pressing (25 numbered copies)