Megalith
Before Megalith, there was only a pair of
rave tech-heads who performed under the name of “DJ Savaged”, a New England
outfit that seemed to be just a ‘flash in the pan’; however, their sound was
picked up in Europe and they went viral before the term was even coined: their
gig – “Ms. Be-Raved” - with Germany’s “dj ms-rule” was recorded and sold online
in the tens of millions during their tour of mainland Europe and set their
title as kings of the rave set.
Sadly for their fans, it was to be their last:
the duo split and went their separate ways shortly after landing in England at
the end of their tour, when the fact of how much money they’d made hadn’t yet
settled in. Graham Pennick went home to the US and settled in Los Angeles where
he became a successful soundtrack producer in Hollywood; meanwhile, his band
mate ‘Herb Dingo’ went on an extended tour of Scandinavia, before returning to
a reclusive lifestyle as an electronica hermit in Washington State. During that
holiday he claims to have perceived a connexion with the ancient standing
stones of the Viking cultures and henceforward produced his music under the
band name “Megalith”.
As any Megalith fan can tell you, this
performer has no lack of genetic talent to draw from, but his music came strictly
from the cutting edge of technology and rode the wave of synthetic music and
electronica throughout the ‘Nineties.
The first album to be released with
critical acclaim was “Times to Come” which, given the artist’s recent marriage
was replete with all of the innuendo that such an album required. Two more
albums passed before the chart-topping “In Out of the Ages” appeared and
reinforced the power that Megalith commanded from its audience: very few dance
parties in 2003 failed to sample from this colossal source. After two more
albums 2005 saw the release of “Pure Ritual” with the artist’s first Top Ten
hit – “Let it Bleed” sold 50 million copies as a single on the dance charts in
that year. After that, Megalith went into hiatus.
When Megalith returned it was in the form
of a soundtrack to 2007’s little-known animated short “Rock Fall” which won a
Golden Globe for sound design, a component with which Megalith assisted. In
2008 he was approached to do the score for a high-budget art film called
“Subterrania” and this was the culmination of Megalith’s work as a soundscape
artist: the soundtrack borrowed from such sources as the re-constituted radio
emissions of various stellar bodies combined with the sounds of panicked prey
animals. The result, put before three different editors (who incidentally,
killed each other with their bare hands afterwards), was a deeply disturbing
soundtrack which waited two years before being released – after Graham
Pennick’s substantial edits.
Subterrania is a strange melange of sounds
which only tangentially resolves itself as the narrative music behind the
filmic input. The soundscape is brutal in its delivery and unrelenting in its
drive, hearkening back to its originator’s days as a rave artiste. The
base-line is built up from the pulsing radiation of stars - reduced to a point
where it is discernible by the human ear – covered by a sonic attack composed
of the shrilling of various species of bats and other predators, and the ‘dead
sound’ of various unoccupied empty spaces recorded under the Pyrenees. The
combined sub/extra/inaudible sound-mix, beneath the composed audible input, had
sonic investigators from MIT falling over themselves shortly after its aborted
release. Only two living people have heard the soundtrack in its unadulterated
form; both are now certifiably insane.
Megalith nowadays resides behind bars in
Oslo, Norway, in light of his wife’s hideous death and is awaiting extradition
proceedings to the US on a charge of murder in the first degree. His fans are
determined to see his release and the cash which has flowed to his defence is
of a magnitude such as to cause various jurisprudential figures to question the
power of money in the cause of justice. His trial is still pending.
(Source: Brian Hodge – “The Firebrand Symphony”,
The Children of Cthulhu, 2002)
“Subterrania”: Electronic sound collage;
‘Megalith’; CD sound recording, 2008; 1d4/1d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3
percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
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