MORTIIS "The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost" cassette tape

The one that started it all... the legendary debut demo from MORTIIS! 

"The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost materialized from the blood, woodsmoke and buzzsaw guitars at the epicentre of the Second Wave of Black Metal in Norway during the early 1990s, with Mortiis beginning his career playing bass and writing lyrics in Emperor. While Mortiis would famously cease to be a member of the band in 1992, and it was with a synthesizer that the name of Mortiis would ultimately be made, the links to Emperor and the scene in this tale are seldom far away...

Written and recorded approximately between May and June 1993, The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost was the culmination of an especially fertile year for Mortiis, spent exploring a wide range of early dark ambient music and its related styles... Despite his modest equipment, Mortiis’ vision was not lacking in ambition, emboldened by the noblest of aspirations: “My idea back then […] was to go to a Transylvanian castle and record the demo there.” While such an auspicious event did not come to pass – as he explains: “you have to remember that I was straight out of a whole extreme metal scene, with all the craziness that was going on, and that I was not realistic by any stretch” – a more mundane but no less influential venue for recording presented itself...

Generally regarded as one long track, the piece was actually recorded as several separate sections and then stitched together afterwards. Mortiis played his parts while none other than Ihsahn himself operated the controls to the 4-track tape recorder, whilst “reading Conan magazines”. To add even further weight to this legend, the 4-track in question was very possibly the device on which Emperor’s legendary demo album Wrath of the Tyrant was being recorded around this time. Both 'Wrath' and 'Song' were self-released (in 1992 and 1993, respectively) helping to forge two careers which, while very different and separate, are bound by common artistic themes and atmospheres.

Dungeon synth is suffused with Medievalism, Romanticism, the Gothic and the Fantastic; and what artists like Mortiis may lack in formal musical training and technique, they make up in the ability to convey very particular and precise musical atmospheres using little more than an intuitive sense of melody and harmony, and some basic technology. The original recording of Song is immersive, hypnotic and arresting; it is difficult to listen to without conjuring up images of warriors traversing haunted woods, armoured orcs clanking through dead fields, or – yes – Carpathian castles.

This reissue version immediately sounds crisper, louder and clearer; it has certainly been cleaned up [Remastered by Jules Siefert under supervision of Mortiis], but retains the glorious hissy, warbled feel of all low-fi cassette recordings. The most immediate difference, to my ears at least, is that the sections are joined a little more smoothly than on the original, on which – once you know that Ihsahn stopped the tape in-between – you can just about hear the gaps, albeit very briefly...." -Echoes and Dust