Halloween Countdown: October 3 – the dark side of Avalon

Here’s an appropriately spooky Halloween offering from my wife’s wonderful and varied music collection. It’s “The Land of Harm and Appletrees” from Aurora’s 1993 debut album of the same name. The group was a side project of the German-based Project Pitchfork, and released two albums of creepy, atmospheric music that falls under the intriguing, yet infuriatingly vague, genre banner of “darkwave”. As I understand it, darkwave means either synth music with gothic elements, or gothic music with synth elements, but, hey, it sounds really esoteric and impressive when dropped into a conversation.

I have conflicting feelings about this track. It features some haunting (if extremely simplistic) synthesizer work, marred only by the vocal stylings of Patricia Nigiani. I think she was trying to channel Nico, but the end result sounds like outtakes from karaoke night at Der Gothhaus. (Believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Sugar Walls” sung in halting, thick-throated Schwarzen-engrish.)