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Child of Rage

by Scott Lawlor

supported by
Karloff
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Karloff If genre is necessary, then this is the DARKEST of Dark Ambient! Favorite track: Rage That Can Kill.
Alexei Rojinski
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Alexei Rojinski Nice album. Thank you for the redeem. Good luck with your promotion, Scott!
darkcasey
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darkcasey Child of Rage is a dark ambient album that, to me, evoked a kind of 80s horror aesthetic, so even though I know what inspired it, most of the tracks conjured up images from those kinds of films. It makes great use of various tones to create sinister soundscapes that wax and wane, like the light of a full moon might when battling with a heavy fog. Piano notes add melody too, sometimes giving lightness to the mental vistas created, and sometimes adding a hint of chaotic madness as well. Favorite track: an evil shadow lurking in the night.
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about

The inspiration for this concept album is quite dark and disturbing inspired by the 1992 film of the same name which you can read about here.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Rage
If you put the phrase into google, you can even find the movie which is recommended watching to further get a sense of what I hope to convey with the 7 tracks on this album.

This film invaded my psyche for weeks, even haunting my dreams and it was at that point that I felt that I had to create my own interpretation of the movie.
at first, I was going to go for the noise approach but after some attempts, I didn't feel that it worked out so well so I scrapped what I had done and went back to the drawing board and came up with the tracks you're about to hear.

Track 4 was inspired by the original music composed for the movie by Gerald Gouriet.
Track 5 was inspired by the music of Rasalhague, in particular, his Rage inside the Window album.
malignantrecs.bandcamp.com/album/rage-inside-the-window

"Horror, darkness … and ambient music are more common bedfellows than you might expect. It’s not all Buddhas and flowing streams in this wide-ranging genre. The dark ambient genre is popular, crossing the borders between different scenes like black metal, experimental music and ambient. Scott Lawlor is a prolific ambient artist whose work crosses many borders, sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary, and he is expert in each style. This music was inspired by the film Child of Rage and is at the darkest extreme of Lawlor’s style; it could indeed function as the soundtrack to any high-quality horror flick. “An Evil Shadow Lurking in the Night” combines avant-garde string pads with an aggressively dissonant piano solo. Other tracks roar like a beast in the night, such as “Rage That Can Kill” and “Pain Can Give Access to Evil”, on which Lawlor demonstrates his aptitude for classic cold, metallic dark ambient sounds. But in a final elegant twist, the concluding “Feeling Tears” is glacially beautiful with its melancholy reverbed piano and swelling string pads; one of the best tracks of Lawlor’s career. This is darkly confident music on which the musician shows both his compositional chops and his skills as a sensitive player."
Allister Thompson
www.thegatelessgate.net

"This album is a superb horror-esque journey to the depths of the psyche."
Wings of an Angel
wingsofanangel.bandcamp.com

"the music goes beyond dark and disturbing and is full of beauty; subtle nuances and drama. A superb mix of dark ambient."
Graham McArthur
grahammcarthur.bandcamp.com

"An ambient musician from Texas sent me this one, which according to the Bandcamp page is one of several. When I mean several, I'm nearly talking Merzbow here. Why he chose Child Of Rage out of his many others, I don't know exactly, but I suppose as it is a bit more horror inspired than his other works (which constitute to around eighty million various pieces of drone and some weird act called Spank Hookers) he thought I would dig it, and indeed I do. Child Of Rage is actually a concept album based on a '92 CBS made for TV movie which is classified as a mystery, seeming like a very psychotic and strange thing for the network to air around this time period. How in the world do you even get ahold of a made for TV movie that goes back to my childhood years in this day and age? I was seven. I guess I'll not answer that question, but it resulted in this artwork and I think that's a good thing.

As for the disc, we certainly are offered quite a bit of drone as you might suspect based on the artist's repertoire, but that doesn't say anything about the creep factor of the disc, which certainly isn't wise music to play while you're playing a horror game with a bad soundtrack, or reading some sort of horror novel (with no soundtrack, obviously.) “Dark Repose” uses frighteningly distorted church organs in way that would raise the hair on the back of my neck during certain scenes in a visual novel (this has happened, with equally bone-chilling music) or while going through a certain area of a game in which you can kind of feel the fright of your surroundings. It almost goes from the sound of a church organ to something a bit more unsettling, which really kind of freaked me out. Really, you wrote this for a '92 film? You could have used this on a modern horror film and made a name for yourself in that industry, seriously. Holy shit, this is one of the most bizarrely uncomfortable pieces I've heard in a bit. I'm also reminded a little bit of the original Pennywise theme (now that we have a remake set to arrive next year) which only adds to the fright factor. Same can be said with the follow-up, “Unihabitable Conditions” which makes me wonder why this gentleman isn't composing for the film industry, or at least working with some independent filmmakers. Congratulations, Scott. You know how to scare the bejesus out of people, even with your more drone-influenced cuts.

Imagine you're driving down the road at night while this is playing in your car. You roll up on a dead body in the middle of the road and all of a sudden a sharp effect starts playing from the disc. You'd nearly shit yourself or have a heart attack when you came upon that grisly scene while having this music play in the background. The same can be said of maggot covered roadkill (it doesn't have to be a human body, after all) which will still come off quite frightening when coupled with that sound. Yes, the record comes with it's own jump scares, which isn't something I can say I've ever heard from a horror-influenced ambient before. This thing is legitimately scary and people are going to think they're in a horror movie if you place this in the background. For all you collegiates reading this, (of which there are none) try switching out the party mix with that of Child Of Rage and then walk off into the background. Immediately, you'll freak some people out at the party, especially some of those who are drunk and start a sort of frenzy. Apparently certain sounds cause fright and among normal people who aren't used to this sort of thing, you can make them go pretty nuts. (Just don't do that right now as things are a little fucked up in this country, especially for collegiates who are no doubt playing a soundtrack similar to Child Of Fire in their heads while imagining horrifying scenes from our new president elect.) At the very end of the day, Lawlor proves that he can scare the shit out of me, and in a way that I've never experienced before. I'm not putting on this record EVER while I read anything frightening, as this disc will only add to it. But there are some rather sad moments to the album as well, which I can equate heavily with visual novel soundtracks of course, which contain quite similar music in tone and atmosphere. That being said, it's just as frightening as anything I've heard from the best horror visual novels (there are very few in English, unfortunately) and I'd certainly recommend it to those looking for a good scare."

The Grim Tower (Of Observation):
thegrimtower.blogspot.com/2016/11/scott-lawlor-child-of-rage-2016.html

"Scott got in contact with me at Sigil Of Brass using the album upload facility on the
About / Contact page.
It only took a quick Google search to find his Bandcamp. Scott’s work is a bit of a mystery
to me – I had not heard of him as a recording artist before he got in contact, so – what can you expect with this album?
“Child Of Rage” has a brooding malevolence that bubbles under the surface with every keystroke of the piano and with every synthesiser drone. Most people
associate ambient music with crystal healing and new-age mumbo-jumbo but Lawlor has produced an ambient album of such magnificently malignant darkness
that it would be a suitable sound track to any psychological horror.

Lawlor admits in his Bandcamp blurb that the film stayed with him, haunting his dreams in the wake of watching it.

This album, Child of Rage will stay with me for the duration of my waking vigil. At times cinematic, at times spontaneous Child Of Rage is a stand alone
work from the film.

The final track, Feeling Tears, is almost one of acceptance and healing. It is like the light after the storm. It is the most beautiful track on the album
and also the most accomplished musically. Lawlor really has his chops together as a composer and as a performer. Feeling Tears is almost closure on the album."
www.sigilofbrass.com/2016/09/scott-lawlor-child-rage/

"I’d not heard of the film that inspired Scott in the creation of Child of Rage, but a few minutes spent searching the web soon showed it to be something
that would likely stick with anyone. Unlike a good number of people though, rather than just shrug it off as time passed, Scott created something that
channelled his own feelings and ideas, re-framing it with his own take on the subject, and that’s always a very cool thing.
Child of Rage is a dark ambient album that, to me, evoked a kind of 80s horror aesthetic, so even though I know what inspired it, most of the tracks conjured
up images from those kinds of films. It makes great use of various tones to create sinister soundscapes that wax and wane, like the light of a full moon
might when battling with a heavy fog. Piano notes add melody too, sometimes giving lightness to the mental vistas created, and sometimes adding a hint
of chaotic madness as well.
The first track, An Evil Shadow Lurking in the Night, is one of my favourites and typifies what I mean in the previous paragraph, creating and growing
a swell of subtle threat that taps into that old school horror vibe. Pulsing bass, high tones, and piano notes stretch the soundscape into something in
which you can almost taste the mist and detect the shifting shadow of a silhouette that wasn't there when you last looked. The piano notes turn frenetic
and discordant later in the track, keeping a rhythm but adding lashings of mad energy to things. The last part of the track holds a high tone, like a hang-man’s
noose waiting for a neck to choke, before quietening into a quieter state of menace.
Rage That Can Kill, the third track, is another I wanted to mention specifically. It begins with a pulsing vibrating drone, a bit like the insane idling
a strange kind of hell-machine might make. A resonant tone builds to a fairly steady ‘ahhh’ like sound, a hollowness entering into the mixture shortly
after. The crashing of cymbals grabs the attention more tightly, and a high pitched sound pierces the soundscape like a moth being impaled by a pin. This
track gave me the notion of a killer finally getting the victim, the subtle lightness that emerges after the violence of the cymbals seeming to hint at
the ‘peace’ the victim might now have. This lightness dimmed or soured a little near the end though, so maybe they didn’t find the peace they were looking
for.
Track five, Uninhabitable Conditions, is another track with a dark, vibratory opening, but also has a buzzing swarm-like tone. What I most liked about
this track was that the whole thing seemed to be underpinned by a relatively fast pulsing effect, every swell of tone or rumble of bass imbued with this
energy. It gives the whole track a pace and punchiness that rocks the brain. I enjoyed this immensely.
These were the tracks that I wanted to be most detailed about, but the others on Child of Rage all fit and expand on the themes and textures that run throughout.
I will give a little shout out to Dark Repose for its creepy and warped music-box tones though.
Child of Rage is an atmospheric and moody album that, if your brain was a nice bowl of cereal, would pour over just the right amount of rich, hair-tangled blood. Not enough to make the cereal too soggy, but enough to make it something that seeps into the mind in a most agreeable way."
Casey Douglass: Dark Music Review
www.casey-douglass.com/2017/09/dark-music-review-child-of-rage.html

credits

released April 21, 2016

Mastered by Wings of an Angel
wingsofanangel.bandcamp.com
Artwork by Bill Helms
aovi-ontol.deviantart.com

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Scott Lawlor Albuquerque, New Mexico

I am an ambient artist who composes in many sub-genres such as dark and light ambient, solo piano, cosmic drone, avant-garde and noise music both as a solo artist and as a collaborating partner. My music is created with intentionality, creating a sonic space for the unfolding of personal stories as well as exploration of spiritual and cultural themes which profoundly influence our society. ... more

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