CD: Doll, The (2014)
Score: Excellent
Label: MVD Audio / Elite Entertainment
Released: April 15, 2014
Tracks / Album Length: 10 tracks / (60:00)
Composer: Dante Tomaselli
Special Notes: n/a
Review:
Whereas most writer-directors may obsess over script details prior to filming a nightmarish shocker, Dante Tomaselli’s attention is on assembling a carnival of sounds that may inspire a film’s images, but may not even materialize in the final sound mix. It’s an unusual approach gives this first sonic draft of The Doll an impressionistic narrative with free-flowing drones, processed / reprocessed / effects, mangled remnants of dialogue, and looped music fragments which collectively seem to drag the listener into a murky chamber for 65 minutes.
Unlike his prior CDs, The Doll isn’t a concept album but an organic creature that breathes, and the density of material should provoke some intriguing subjective responses (especially in the dark). It doesn’t matter what The Doll is about, but how the transformative sonics never rest, shifting and occasionally colliding, and morphing into rather hypnotic sound sculptures. The lurid quality of this sonic journey is a testament to Tomaselli’s fastidiousness in marrying the common with the surreal.
The Doll CD was preceded by Scream in the Dark (2014) and followed by Nightmare (2015).
Note: Interviews with Dante Tomaselli from 2014 and 2007 are also available.
© 2014 Mark R. Hasan; this review originally appeared in the November 2014 issue of Rue Morgue magazine.
Additional Links:
Editor’s Blog — Composer on IMDB
Select Merchants:
Amazon.ca
Category: Soundtrack Reviews
Connect