THE BEAST

Photosensitive warning: this video contains flashing images and strobe lighting throughout https://dscm.bandcamp.com/album/the-black-hours Ion is taken from the album The Black Hours, which is inspired by a medieval devotional ‘book of hours’ of the same name — a unique and intimate book of prayers, created between 1460-1475 on black vellum and handcrafted with silver, gold and (the most valuable of the three) turquoise. The book marks The Liturgy of the Hours, or The Office of the Dead: prayers that could carry a soul in need from dusk through to dawn, through the darkest of nights. Working on the album from late 2019 through to the middle of 2021, the group kept the flame burning throughout the pandemic by leaning into the theme of the marking of time as a sacred act — the focused dedication to prayer being akin to the focus of creating and crafting music. The video offers a deeper delve into the visual world of the album through the sequence of three ‘miniatures’. These are highly symbolic diorama-style band portraits — rich with secret messages and hidden meanings — which feature in the booklet created to accompany the release. In the video, the viewer is thrust into a mysterious and intoxicating world where scale is uncertain, centuries collide, and the ground shakes beneath. The band are seen fixed and memorial-like amongst an array of architectural features, obscure creatures, and fragments of collage, placing them in an exploded, then suspended, alternate form of the original prayer book.  Credits: Dead Space Chamber Music - Tom Bush: guitar, Liz Muir: cello, Katie Murt: percussion / bowed cymbal, Ellen Southern: voice / found sounds Thank you to Ed McGregor at the Churches Conservation Trust for making it possible for us to film & photograph in the medieval crypt of St John on the Wall, Bristol UK. Filming and editing: Katie Murt Photography Artwork: Ellen Southern Recorded, mixed and mastered by Tom Berry at The Premises Studio, London. https://www.thecornerproductions.com/ Vinyl mastering by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven Mastering. Pressed at The Vinyl Factory, London. Vinyl co-released with Avon Terror Corps The Black Hours - available as download / cassette / CD / vinyl: https://dscm.bandcamp.com/ https://avonterrorcorps.bandcamp.com/ https://rwdfwd.com/products/dead-space-chamber-music-the-black-hours-1 Stream on all major platforms https://www.instagram.com/deadspacechambermusic/ https://twitter.com/DeadSpaceCM https://www.facebook.com/DeadSpaceChamberMusic/