Mortiis "The Shadow Of The Tower" Cassette Ancient Meadow version!!

A long lost and forgotten recording from 1997, originally used as background atmospheres for the rare live shows Mortiis was doing back then. Rediscovered 23 years later – an interesting piece of the very early Dungeon Synth history.

Professionally duplicated limited edition cassette with full-color cardstock j-card and white shell imprint.
The audio for this record is available exclusively on cassette, vinyl, or for subscribers to Mortiis' "Cult of Thee Black Wizards" patron club.

Mortiis has been getting more and more involved with what I’d call “legacy recordings” in the last couple of years, which is something you would definitely notice if you subscribed to his Bandcamp and got notifications of all the new stuff (not all music) coming out almost every week. The Shadow of the Tower is assuredly one such item, since Mortiis apparently found the recording somehow in his attic last year and has been working on an updated version that has appeared under a “work in progress” title and then - as far as I can tell - disappeared from his site, probably behind the Cult of Thee Black Wizards paywall. Anyway, this 33 minute recording comes from 1997, when Mortiis used it infrequently as a backing track during live shows. Again, The Shadow of the Tower proves to be one of those interesting yet not that worthwhile releases of random old stuff.
The music starts with only a windy kind of echo scraping in one direction across the speakers, then the noise of something metallic clunking as it is repeatedly wielded or dropped. A very distant and regular drum beat vibrates somewhere very near the bottom of the sound with a range of a couple of notes, and at times vague animal noises waft out of the darkness, what I’d say is a horse neighing becoming a constant feature by 8 minutes in. And that’s it: onwards we go for more than 20 minutes more without variation, repeating the same 3-4 second cycle again and again, ending with a simple fade-out. The clunking sound sort of suggests a digging or tool-working action, while the strongest vibe to me is of darkness, the muted breaths of instrumental wind really cranking up the bleakness and place-setting of the whole. As such, the track both does and does not have enough content, since barely any development happens yet the atmosphere continues to be effective after the course has been set and Mortiis has wandered off to have a drink.
As an aside, though I’m not much of a Lord of the Rings guy, I can’t miss the parallels between the name of this release, the really quite powerful cover art, and the musical landscape, all of which point to the location of Orthanc, the tower at Isengard where Saruman breeds an army of orcs. Those animalistic noises and the continuous sound of some heavy work, along with the foreboding atmosphere, may also suggest the same inspiration to others, seeing as Mortiis was certainly no stranger to J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. As with Lord of the Rings, however, The Shadow of the Tower will miss most people by a long way and be welcomed ecstatically by a devout few.

Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...