Maelstroms and lighthouses: an early FOTW audio story

E. A. Poe and the Krautrock Connection is an audio story I made about six years ago. It was the first original story that I made where I had written the story from scratch before recording it, working it up with music and sound effects.

I was actually very proud of it at the time. It took me a few months to make. But I couldn’t really get it out there in the way that I hoped to. Part of the problem, I’ve realised, is that the beginning is too slow; listeners get bored too quickly, or do not realise that it is going to take a good turn for the worse! My home set-up wasn’t good enough back then, either, as I was mixing on a tiny netbook with headphones!

However, I still think parts of it work, particularly towards the the middle when the music kicks in. You can hear a bit of that in this short clip, a slowed down version of ‘Nothing Is True, Everything is Permitted’ by Carlos Perón, a founding member of the awesome Swiss synth-pop group Yello.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by FOTW Radio (@halloweenlisteningparty)

I’ve been discovering the joys of Instagram as a late convert!

The story was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, A Descent into the Maelström which I read at my friend Hayley’s house when I was about 18. I was absolutely stunned by how evocative the story was. In no time at all, it had completely taken hold of my mind and attention, as the story unfolded very quickly in my imagination. I’ve never been a greatly visual person, but this story was very vivid in my mind’s eye – the mark, I believe now, of a great writer.

Anyway, this experience stuck with me, and I always wanted to turn it into a story, along with the whole idea of listening to krautrock — or kosmiche music — which I also think of as ‘epic journey music’. You don’t need drugs to listen to this kind of music, however the two things really do seem to go together.

Below is the story in full. I would really one day like to come back to it, and incorporate it into a much bigger story, as most of my ideas run along these lines, either through dreams or imagination.