D. Majestic and The Spectral Band feeling extra festive
During this time of year, it’s incredibly difficult to avoid Christmas music. You’re going to hear it coming through the loudspeakers while you’re shopping for gifts, clothes and even groceries. You’re also going to hear it being played when you go out for drinks at the local bar or when you’re having dinner at your favorite restaurant. With this happening over the past few weeks, North Kingstown native Dan Moriarty saw it as an opportunity to put his own spin on this thematic style. This resulted in the “Last Synthmas” EP, which came out courtesy of his experimental music project D. Majestic and The Spectral Band this month via Ingenii Records.
The release consists of two songs, one being a noisy and distorted rendition of Wham’s “Last Christmas” and another being an original track titled “Christmas Is Satanic”, which features a recording of a crazed evangelist talking about how he finds the festive occasion to have devilish inclinations.
“When I listen to music, I tend to seek out material that pushes boundaries and explores new territory while still retaining something fun or beautiful that engages and rewards the listener,” Moriarty says about the record. “There are two shortcuts to achieving this: One, take something weird and make it beautiful, or two, take something beautiful and make it weird. Christmas music is a great starting point for this approach. A lot of Christmas songs have really strong melodies, and they’re ingrained in the public consciousness. For similar reasons, this is why jazz covers of Beatles or Radiohead songs are so popular, for instance.”
“Wham’s classic ‘Last Christmas’ has a driving pulse and a killer melody, and is ripe for experimentation,” he adds. “Armed with a bass guitar, a baritone guitar, a glockenspiel, a Moog synthesizer, some electric drums, a fuzz pedal, and a two-track hand recorder, I built up the skeleton of the song from scratch, playing all the instruments myself. I slammed everything through a bunch of different compressors for maximum impact and crunch, and got the track hitting like a load of bricks. The final touch was adding some background vocal samples, which has become a signature part of The Spectral Band’s sound. A few months ago, I came across a recording of an unhinged-sounding preacher ranting about the satanic nature of Christmas.”
When he discovered the recording, Moriarty was so struck by its contradictory message that he felt compelled to make a reprise out of it within a song.
“Perfect,” He describes how he felt when he found the recording. “I knew I needed it barking and echoing all over this track, so I extracted some of the best bits and layered them throughout the song.”
While this release is fairly unusual, it’s also ideal for anyone who enjoys music that embraces noise, goth, avant-garde and new wave styles. To give the EP a listen, log on to D. Majestic and The Spectral Band’s Bandcamp page at thespectralband.bandcamp.com. It’s a weird and peculiar way to ring in the last couple weeks of the holiday season, but this kind of music is exactly for the folks who have a weird and peculiar music taste.