William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) was an English writer of weird fiction. A contemporary of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, he’s best remembered now for his 1908 novella The House On The Borderland, which cult American horror writer HP Lovecraft acknowledged as a major influence on his own work. As it happens, I have strong personal associations with The House On The Borderland, because as a morbid teenager, I had a friend read passages of it aloud to me whilst I was tripping on magic mushrooms. You might think this would lead to a bad trip, but being the headstrong hellbound hedonist that I was, I actually found visions of demon-infested plains and pits full of squirming ‘swine-things’ entertaining. Twisted but true. I did a similar thing once with Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, but that’s another story…

Anyhow, this musical adaptation of The House On The Borderland is the result of a collaboration between German musicians Rüdiger Gleisberg and Mathias Grassow, the founding duo behind Nostalgia, and Italian Luigi Seviroli, who suggested the concept to Gleisberg and Grassow. Recorded in 2004 and released by Ars Benevola Mater in 2005, the 12 tracks of The House On The Borderland add up to a hefty 70 minutes playing time. Track titles closely follow William Hope Hodgson’s original narrative, which concerns two friends on a fishing holiday in Ireland who discover a manuscript in a ruined house. The manuscript tells of its author’s encounters in the house with evil supernatural and extra-dimensional beings, culminating in the cosmic horror of helplessly watching throughout countless aeons as the earth and its solar system are consumed by the ‘Dark Sun’.

Music-wise, Nostalgia’s interpretation of The House On The Borderland tends towards instrumental neo-classical ambient in the vein of Shinjuku Thief, Penitent, Elend or Raison d’Être. Subdued orchestral strings lurk beneath woodwind and keyboard melodies, with the boundaries between electronic and acoustic instruments often hard to discern. Some tracks, such as ‘The House In The Arena’, employ percussion, but this is largely absent, and choral background vocals add background texture along with the strings. Track five, ‘The Swine-Things’, is notable for its turbulent, Stravinsky-style strings and tormented pig-squeals. ‘Time Of Waiting’ has bagpipe-like drones lending a numinous, wistful Celtic feel. ‘Fragments’ has a throbbing industrial intro, moving into a cheesy synthpop beat, which seems like an intrusive misjudgement within the broodingly gothic atmosphere of the album, even when it’s joined by a John Carpenter-like keyboard theme. Light relief is provided by ‘Pepper’, a jolly Irish jig named after the narrator’s faithful hound. There’s a strong cinematic quality to Nostalgia’s music, and although Hodgson’s tale has never been filmed, this album could provide an excellent soundtrack to such a film if it existed, combining as it does a prevailing mood of uneasy suspense with moments of high drama in the tradition of such celebrated soundtrack composers as Bernard Herrmann. (Incidentally, there is a great graphic novel adaptation of The House On The Borderland, drawn by Richard Corben and published by DC Comics in 2003.)

The House On The Borderland is available in a limited edition of 535 copies, and it comes in a very classy A5 foldout textured card sleeve.

www.arsbenevolamater.com

www.nostalgia-project.com