(written by Islander)
Pranjal Tiwari, the Oakland-based creator behind the musical project S.C.R.A.M. (which stands for Safety Control Rod Axe Man), was inspired to create S.C.R.A.M.’s new album Coma Filament by a single image — a ghost ship encountered in the outer reaches of space light years away from where any human has been before. He named the album for a galaxy thread that forms part of the Coma Wall, one of the largest known superstructures in the observable universe. And he created the music as an answer to the question, “What if Andrei Tarkovsky had directed the first Alien movie?”
If you’re a fan of science fiction, and more specifically of tales of horrors encountered in deep space, then you should be quite intrigued at this point. If you’ve actually seen Tarkovsky’s 1972 Soviet science fiction and psychological horror film Solaris, based on Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel of the same title, then you’re even more excited. I certainly was, because in this writer’s humble opinion that’s one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, based on one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written.
To be clear, Coma Filament isn’t a re-telling of Alien or any other single literary narrative. The idea of what might have resulted if Tarkovsky had directed Alien is more about what kind of soundtrack would best suit such a movie, and more broadly what kind of listening experience would evoke the physical and psychological pressures of a journey through deep space and the terrors we imagine might be encountered there, with Tarkovsky acting as the muse.
We have Pranjal Tiwari’s answers to these questions today through our full streaming premiere of Coma Filament in advance of its release this Wednesday, September 23rd, the Fall Equinox.
photo by Joelle Garson
Obviously, delving into an imagined musical soundtrack, particularly one from a project labeled an “experimental cinematic ambient/synthwave” act, is a rarity at this site. But for the reasons summarized above, the temptation to explore what S.C.R.A.M. has rendered through Coma Filament was irresistible.
As you might expect from a project devoted to making soundtracks to movies in its creator’s mind, Coma Filament is largely instrumental, but not entirely so. In fact, it begins with words… words voiced a cappella in the opening track “Forgotten Language” by Berlin-based American visual and musical artist, author, and spiritual leader Zeena Schreck. Here is Tiwari’s comment about the performance of his friend:
[T[he performance she sent me was so haunting and almost sounded like an alien language. It was so evocative that I used the vocals on their own to open the album, with no backing music. The effect of isolating the vocals was so strange and mysterious, I think the opening track really sounds like a transmission being beamed out from a ghost ship in space, a distress signal sent out like a siren song to lure unwitting travelers into its trap.
The strange reverberations of those opening vocals are indeed alien-sounding, and entrancing — as long as you don’t mind falling into spells that are viscerally chilling. They effectively mark the first step in S.C.R.A.M.’s creation of an enveloping album-length atmosphere of brooding, tension, dread, hallucination, and terror.
photo by Erik Thybony
Unfolding from “Forgotten“, Coma Filament moves through seven more tracks with their own distinctive themes. Most are named after astronomical objects, and allude to their historical and mythological significance. We’ll turn again to press materials for a summary of some of them:
Most of the track titles are based on deep space objects like planets, galaxy clusters, and constellations. “The Hunter” is another name for Aries, a constellation that we all know from the Western zodiac. The tracks “Seven Mansions Of The Black Tortoise” and “Flight Of The Vermillion Bird” are both based on Chinese asterisms, the names of constellations from traditional Chinese astronomy. “Haris al-Sama” means “the keeper of heaven” and is an old Arabic name for the red giant star Arcturus.
These pieces, along with the opener, are best heard from beginning to end. It’s the growing accretion of the experience until it becomes complete that creates the greatest impact.
Probably needless to say, it’s a changing experience, and one of many facets. The ingredients include a wide array of sweeping, “surround-sound” electronic radiations that are sometimes wondrous but almost always unsettling, as well as glitchy pulsating tones, deeply worming and warbling frequencies, shrill darting and quivering manifestations, woozy saxophone exhalations, blood-freezing drones, hideous gasps, ominously ringing piano keys, something like the sound of ruined choral voices, and more.
Just in case you worry that your head won’t reflexively move as you listen, the tracks also often include beats and throbs of varying kinds and wide-ranging tempos, ticking cymbals, and intrinsic rhythmic drives that sometimes organize the alien frequencies, all of which will have a tendency to wake up your reptile brains (even though the music is often just as likely to send them into a fugue state).
Having said that, these tracks are mainly designed to infiltrate a listener’s mind, not their muscles, and once inside, to viscerally create the afore-mentioned feelings of brooding, tension, dread, hallucination, and terror.
There must be a few pitiable souls out these who have no taste for science fiction or tales of cosmic horror. With you in mind, we’ll say that having better taste in what you read and view isn’t necessary to make Coma Filament worth your time. Not all of our nightmares are the same; whatever yours might be, Coma Filament is likely to furnish a fine soundtrack to them.
photo by Joelle Garson
Last but not least, before we turn you over to the album stream, we’ll share these further comments from S.C.R.A.M.’s creator:
S.C.R.A.M. is a true labor of love, the solo project through which I get to make soundtracks to the movies in my head. The movies I want to see. So, the simple question that inspired Coma Filament was, ‘What if Andrei Tarkovsky had directed the first Alien movie? What would that movie feel like and sound like?’ That’s the sort of question that puts my imagination on overdrive.
I love Tarkovsky, especially his film Solaris, which is set in space. I also love the more lurid, violent subgenre of ‘space horror;’ movies like Lifeforce, Event Horizon, and the first two Alien films. Very different movies, but what they all have in common is the underlying atmosphere, the sense of claustrophobic anxiety created by feeling trapped on a spaceship surrounded by the infinite, black void of space. The constant, gnawing tension lurking right outside the hull. That overarching dread feels existential, the ultimate, most intense form of megalophobia imaginable.
“In Solaris, that brooding terror alone is enough to drive the crew to the point of crisis. In Lifeforce and Alien there’s also fucking vampires and xenomorphs chasing you around the ship. It’s enough to make you feel like the walls are closing in, even though there’s the impossibly vast expanse of the universe right outside… That’s the crazy contradiction at the heart of the space horror genre that makes it so effective, and that’s the atmosphere I wanted to convey through Coma Filament.
“I’m very excited by how the album turned out. Listening back to it made me chew my fingernails, and I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for someone or something to creep up behind me. I’d say that’s a success right there. But you should go listen through the album, take the journey yourself and see what images, what monsters are conjured up for you.”
Pranjal Tiwari performed all music on Coma Filament utilizing multiple synths, a sampler, guitar, bass, a mini-saxophone, and an array of effects and pedals. The album was mixed and mastered by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios (Autopsy, Ulthar, Leila Abdul-Rauf). It’s available for pre-order now, and comes recommended for fans of Vangelis, John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Autechre, James Horner, Brad Fiedel, Eduard Artemyev.
PRE-ORDER:
https://scramofficial.bandcamp.com/album/coma-filament