The Vision Bleak - Set Sail To Mystery - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

2010 , the fourth album from the Horror Metal outfit. Schwadorf and Konstanz are coming full circle in 2010 as they once again set the tattered, ashen sails of the deathship and head towards midnight, death, and doom. Set sails, cast a final glance ashore whosoever hires on the deathship shall never return again.

On their fourth studio album, The Vision Bleak are coming full circle. InchSet Sail To MysteryInch unites the driving Goth-rock energy of InchThe Deathship Has A New CaptainInch, the dramatic heaviness of their sophomore InchCarpathia - A Dramatic PoemInch, and the Nordic aggression of InchThe Wolves Go Hunt Their PreyInch. Lyrically, it is a journey into the realms of the supernatural and the abysses of the human mind, once more inspired by masters of weird fiction such as H. P. Lovecraft and E. A. Poe. This year will see The Vision Bleak return to the stage of Horror Metal - more ghoulish and more poetic than ever before. After they journeyed through the underworld on the rotten planks of a deathship in the year 2004 (on InchThe Deathship Has A New CaptainInch), befittingly travelled the calamitous Carpathians in a black carriage in 2005 (on InchCarpathia - A Dramatic PoemInch), and sorted with wolves in 2007 (on InchThe Wolves Go Hunt Their PreyInch), our necromancers Schwadorf and Konstanz are coming full circle in 2010. On InchSet Sail To MysteryInch, they once again set the tattered, ashen sails of the deathship and head towards midnight, death, and doom. Of course, the last few years have left their mark on the ferrymen. As if The Vision Bleak were leafing through the pages of a leather-bound tome on their history thus far, InchSet Sail To MysteryInch is cruising through many of the lethal waters they have sailed through in previous lifes the driving gothic-rock energy of their debut, the dramatic heaviness of their sophomore, and the Nordic aggression of the last album are resonating on this, their fourth opus, like the death-knell of a cemetery chapel. Yet, InchSet Sail To MysteryInch is much more than just the sum of it's predecessors. Proof for this is the foreboding introduction, InchA Curse Of The Grandest KindInch, where a magical invocation written by

The appearance of Fauré's Requiem in the 1880s, a decade during which the composer's most successful compositions were songs and piano pieces, can on I y be explained by the fine choral music which preceded it. The Messe basse represents Fauré at his most practical. Written in conjunction with the French composer and organist André Messager (also at one time assistant to Widor at St Sulpice) during a holiday in Normandy in 1881, the Messe basse was composed for the modest forces of a local church. A setting of the motet O salutaris hostia and the Kyrie were Messager's contribution; the remaining movements of the Ordinary, without the Credo, were set by Fauré. When revising the score in 1906 Fauré adapted the violin and harmonium accompaniment for organ, at the same time excising the Gloria and replacing Messager's Kyrie with one of his own. The final version of the Messe basse is one of the few existing settings of the mass for female voices and organ. The youthful Cantique de Jean Racine dates from 1865 when Fauré was studying with Saint-Saëns at the Ecole Niedermeyer in Paris. The Cantique earned Fauré a premier prix in composition and is a testament to the young composer's melodic genius and to his penchant for rich textures. This recording is an attempt to move Fauré's liturgical music from the concert hall to the church. In particular, the reconstruction of nineteenth-century French ecclesiastical pronunciation and the restoration of Fauré's preferred phrasing are just two of the most useful elements in the search for the composer's intentions. To those familiar with the more expansive versions of Fauré's Requiem there will inevitably be unfamiliar textures in this performance. However, few of Fauré's romantic gestures are lost in the chamber version, and moreover, the reserved translucence of the instrumentation emphasizes the fact that the Requiem -and indeed a