Phantom Cities - The Sodality of the Shadows

 

 

 

Phantom Cities is a collection of twelve musical pieces augmented by twelve prose vignettes and atmospheric artwork, in a crepuscular, noir style. It is the work of The Sodality of the Shadows, a group who take their name from the mysterious esoteric order founded by Arthur Machen and his close friend, the occult scholar A E Waite.

The music offers plangent, echoing vistas of dark uncanny passages, a brittle hovering on the twilight borderlands of the city and its Other, a world of eccentric recluses in attic rooms, narrow shops selling curious wares, cloaked figures, abandoned houses.

The album is available via Bandcamp as a compact disc, limited to 100 copies, or as a vinyl album, limited to 200 copies, and as a digital album available for download. You also get digital access with the CD,  and digital access and a CD with the record. The CD comes with a 24 page booklet and the album with a full size insert.

‘Sir', he said, shuffling the loose blotting-paper pages of the A-Z compulsively, and watching them narrowly as they moved, 'I will have none of the official tube map, that well-loved but treacherous wiring diagram, in its bright primary colours, that illusion of light and order. I have instead charted the lines alongside the streets, sir, you will see them here in my black ink . . .’ 

(from ‘And there are other stations’)