The Precious Dark is an invitation to drift, to dissolve, to explore the places between atoms and memory. With the promise of the precious wonder that lies in shadow, here darkness is celebrated, with surprises, haunted territories, and the tingling horror of wonderful black shadows.
A series of big colorful complexly haunting vistas
Whether it’s the full light of the Milky Way on a moonless night or the first spark of a campfire under a darkened sky, this music is about what happens when you open your mind, when you open your ears and turn off the lights. The sound of The Precious Dark is wistful and moody, also very cinematic, opening a series of big colorful complexly haunting vistas. The feeling is the ultimate journey through fantastic realms of tenebrosity, visiting a series of complex places and barely surviving unspeakable dangers, to find yourself at the end and ultimately ready to go again. After the past worlds drop away, there are caverns of horror, gentle visions of sparkling ice castles, places where the listener is slipping between atoms and planets, encountering frozen monsters, getting lost in the gloom and ultimately rising after resting in the perilous peace of precious shadow-litry.
David Helpling is a California-based musical pioneer, his soundcraft reaches into new dimensions, he began his journey in the late 1990s as a musician with a fully formed knack for cinematic full spectrum imagineering. His catalog shows a blending of world cultures, from shimmering mysticism to visionary and synesthetic influences. His liquid guitar can open a hall of mirrors, his haunting melodic keyboard work elevates the soul, causing the constant listener to experience more than one sensation simultaneously. His solo work and his collaborations continue to surprise and enchant, blending silken synthesizers and textural electric guitars. For The Precious Dark, David uses a 1979 Yamaha CP-70B Electric Grand Piano. Custom Kiesel and Ibanez guitars. Effect pedals from Union Tube & Transistor, Lehle, Vongon and Strymon. Synthesizers: Sequential Prophet 6, UDO SUPER 6, Waldorf Iridium, Access Virus TI2. All Instruments recorded through an SSL BiG SiX Mixing Console. Mixed on Genelec “Ones” and 1031A Studio Monitors. Special Sauce from the Eventide H7600 Processor.
Architect of ambient soundscapes Eric “the” Taylor is originally a drummer in Upstate NY’s early ’90s alternative scene. His collaborations include work with Tony Levin, Robert Rich, Architects of Existence, Futuregrapher and others. In Woodstock, NY, he refined his skills collaborating with Jerry Marotta and Rupert Greenall, and co-founded the ambient group The Fragile Fate. Their debut, Lilliam Ocean, was re-released by Trey Gunn‘s 7D Media. Recently Taylor joined the supergroup Dark Sky Alliance, with David Helping, Rupert Greenall, and Jerry Marotta, under Spotted Peccary Music, releasing their first album, a vivid inspiring odyssey with the title Interdwell. For The Precious Dark, Eric used a 1981 Sequential Circuits Prophet V rev3.3, 1981 Korg MonoPoly, 1984 Sequential Circuits Six-Track, a MicroMoog.
An ominous glow ::
With an ominous glow, we begin with a scale-shifting vision of “The Space Between Atoms” (9:34). I am floating again with large forms looming in the distance and always in motion. Slowly the beat opens and then abruptly takes off. There is a moment when things break and the kinetic velocity is out of this world, a perfect soundtrack for getting things done. I want to stay in continuous motion, and the scene goes into a quiet interlude. Throughout we experience several refreshing kinetic changes, it seems as if now we are returning to darkness and floating peacefully. The title track, “The Precious Dark” (9:59) brings together electronic guitars and melodic echoes. At one point I was soaring over a glass lake with lots of tiny details, and somehow I found a new tunnel of mirrors with eternal dimensions, a place I will call the Hall of Forever. The pace of calming peace is slow, there are countless moments of quiet, haunting gentle drifting.
The sound of an orchestra is coming into focus, synthetic strings and winds plus electronics, which leads into a vast quiet expanse. “Cavernous Heart” (8:29) has a haunting melody that is keyboard driven, and explores a very wide range of echoes that eventually slow up in space. There’s a deep emotional current here, a reverence for silence and the unknown, that recalls the most introspective moments of certain horror movie soundtracks. Now it is time to calmly prepare for your own doom. Helpling says that this track originally was inspired as a direct homage to John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing. What I hear is a bleak and beautiful ambient tone set throughout the entire story and the combination of the synthesizers and sparse orchestral work is just haunting and unforgettable. The monster is present. This track, the fourth on the album, is nothing like the music from the film at all, but this new direction is absolutely gorgeous.
A distant drone rumbles beneath glassy textures, evoking the slow thaw of something ancient and dangerous. “The Ice Has Dreams” (8:06) might be what the creature experienced as it was being uncovered in the ice and snow. A sinister hum grows, a blade’s edge shivers with tension, things build until the monster suddenly appears, it shivers in its sleep under the ice. The human explorers are about to release this strange killer upon themselves, they know nothing of the imminent transforming terror (but we do, constant listener) as the monster wakens and calls, then drifts in strange dreams slowing down into a lingering lub dub bass, until the horror kind of slinks off, to regroup and go again. All must be assimilated.
New psychological dimensions ::
“Her Endless Cold Embrace” (9:49) brings new psychological dimensions, suggesting the darkness that comes with the experience of intimate loss, a long slow hum that builds into an electronic beat. New hope flickers in, somehow upbeat under the once crushing quiet slow depth. I feel that old darkness all around. Now things are pulling towards the promise of new heat. I am exploring the warm caves, some passages are uncomfortably close and then the walls open wide, discovering rushes of renewing warmth that come from a place slower and lower, shifting from frozen death towards the possibility of warm life again. As the tempo accelerates and textures expand outward, there’s a feeling of slipping into orbit, somehow kinetic, celestial, and ultimately redemptive. Perhaps now we have come to the darkest place of all, going even deeper into the infinite caves, “For Those in Shadow” (6:44) makes me think of something calm summoning my ears steadily onwards.
The conclusion of the album, “We Rise in a Harmonious System” (10:21), starts in the gloam. The orchestra enters and warms, the cosmic transportive machine starts up. I seek a clearing sky, the feeling gets warmer and warmer, always calm and perpetually flowing homeward. The Precious Dark is a new exploration of our oldest mystery, the secret of what is hidden in the darkness so close to our hearts. The Precious Dark is an invitation to drift, to dissolve, to explore the places between atoms and memory. With the promise of the precious wonder that lies in shadow, here darkness is celebrated, with surprises, haunted territories, and the tingling horror of wonderful black shadows. Embrace the monstrous macabre, a cinematic, slow-burning immersion into the void, where colorful crystalline structures shimmer for a moment before vanishing into the inky aether.
The Precious Dark is available on Spotted Peccary Music. [Bandcamp]
