Hiemis – Nachtstücke
Label: Gradual Hate Records – GH04 MP3
Format: Digital
Country: Spain
Released: 2018
Style: Drone, Dark Ambient, Esoteric Ambient
Nachtstücke is a tribute to the world of the paranormal, especially to the mesmerism that permeated the exalted work of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Hoffmann was not only a man of letters, but also a musician and a painter. During his lifetime, he published many stories, some later profoundly influencing Poe. We could mention ‘The Devil’s Elixirs’, ‘The Sandman’, and «Vampirismus». History, technique and style are the tools to create a masterpiece, which the author uses to create chilling, dramatic and deep stories where many of the innovative ideas are anticipated, from which many writers and musicians would be nurtured, including Strauss at Elektra .
The environments are gloomy. The night, the silence, the inexplicable forces of nature serve as a resource to accentuate the horror. The outcome, like any good story, leaves a doubt about death and madness, since both serve as an appetizer to a constant engine: fear. As Adolfo Bioy Casares would say «old as fear, fantastic fictions come before letters».
«Nachtstücke» is a look at that universe where disturbing characters live that become oracles, supposedly trivial images that contain a mystery, as well as threatening inventions that never cease to amaze us. Thus, dreams, magnetism, telekinesis, sleepwalking, hunches, premonition, and telepathy compose the stuff of this disturbing reality. That parallel world in which we all live, and it is made of chance, intuitions, fears, mysteries. . . Hoffmann explored, in everyday life, that hidden reality that can be guessed in dreams, visions, ghosts, funeral stories, scientific machinations. In short, a world full of strange and mysterious forces, which are capable of playing with the life and illusions of all of us.
