photo by Erik Thybony
Oakland, California-based synthwave act S.C.R.A.M. (Safety Control Rod Axe Man) presents its latest output with the ambient sci-fi horror-inspired Coma Filament full-length, confirmed for release on the Fall Equinox.
Formed in the isolation of the 2020 COVID lockdowns, S.C.R.A.M. is the solo project of Pranjal Tiwari. Known for his work with the long-running cult doom metal band Cardinal Wyrm, Finnish-language hardcore band Ransu’s Revenge, psychotropic techno outfit Warday, and more, Tiwari utilizes this project to create cinematic, experimental, ambient, electronic, and heavily instrumental passages, focusing tension and negative space to create immersive auras. With four albums, an EP, and a split record with Gridfailure, the outfit’s fifth album arrives with Coma Filament.
The inspiration behind S.C.R.A.M. has always been to make soundtracks for the movies in Tiwari’s head. The prior album, The Inner City, was bathed in a retro-futuristic film noir sound inspired by Blade Runner and The Terminator. An earlier album, America, The Ritual, was channeling the atmosphere of David Lynch and John Carpenter movies.
Coma Filament was inspired by a single image – a ghost ship in space. The idea of traveling in the outer reaches of space light years away from where any human has been before and encountering an abandoned spaceship became such an evocative and terrifying image, that it inspired the entire album. The album’s atmosphere draws from Alien and Event Horizon. Space horror, in a loose sense. But there’s also an underlying sense of brooding and existential terror that comes from being in space, a vibe inspired directly by the Andrei Tarkovsky classic film, Solaris.
Tiwari performed all music on Coma Filament utilizing multiple synths, a sampler, guitar, bass, a mini-saxophone, and an array of effects and pedals. Additionally, Berlin-based American visual and musical artist, author, and the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement Zeena Schreck provides ambient vocals in the opening track “Forgotten Language.” The album was mixed and mastered by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios (Autopsy, Ulthar, Leila Abdul-Rauf).
The fifth track, “UR.IDIM,” arrives as the first preview of the album. Tiwari states, “I asked myself, ‘What if Andrei Tarkovsky directed the first Alien movie?’”
S.C.R.A.M.’s harrowing “UR.IDIM” is now playing on Bandcamp RIGHT HERE and YouTube HERE.
Coma Filament will be digitally released on the Fall Equinox, Wednesday, September 23rd. Find preorders HERE.
Coma Filament Track Listing:
1. Forgotten Language
2. Derelict Spacecraft
3. The Hunter
4. UR.IDIM
5. Seven Mansions Of The Black Tortoise
6. Great Dragon Rouses
7. Haris al-Sama (The Keeper Of Heaven)
8. Flight Of The Vermillion Bird
The album title Coma Filament is named for a galaxy thread that forms part of the Coma Wall, one of the largest known superstructures in the observable universe. Most of the track titles are based on deep space objects like planets, galaxy clusters, and constellations. “The Hunter” is another name for Aries, a constellation that we all know from the Western zodiac. The tracks “Seven Mansions Of The Black Tortoise” and “Flight Of The Vermillion Bird” are both based on Chinese asterisms, the names of constellations from traditional Chinese astronomy. “Haris al-Sama” means “the keeper of heaven” and is an old Arabic name for the red giant star Arcturus. Tiwari felt that naming the album and its tracks after these astronomical objects, and alluding to their historical and mythological significance, helped create an overarching structure and a background of awe and dread, a setting for the space horror story within the music.
The “Tarkovsky directing Alien” idea also indirectly led to the collaboration with Zeena Schreck on this album.
Tiwari reveals, “Zeena and I have talked a lot in the past few years, over email and on the phone, about collaborating on a piece of music. Either that or one of us contributing music or vocals to the other’s project. What ended up happening is something in between. I contributed music to a single called The Journey that Zeena released this July, on the Summer Solstice. The lyrics to that single are words from an interview by Andrei Tarkovsky that we had both read, loved, and discussed a lot. Then, Zeena contributed vocals to the opening track on Coma Filament – the performance she sent me was so haunting and almost sounded like an alien language. It was so evocative that I used the vocals on their own to open the album, with no backing music. The effect of isolating the vocals was so strange and mysterious, I think the opening track really sounds like a transmission being beamed out from a ghost ship in space, a distress signal sent out like a siren song to lure unwitting travelers into its trap. Also, as a fitting mirror image to Zeena’s Summer Solstice release, I’m putting out Coma Filament on the Autumn Equinox.
“I’ve admired Zeena for a long time, as an artist and just as a human being who has been on a crazy journey in the course of her life. I’m so excited that we finally got to collaborate on a musical piece together and so pleased with how it turned out.”
Expect additional previews and news to drop over the weeks ahead.
photo by Joelle Garson
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