Enslaved by Owls

A randomly timed visit to Odyssey and Oracle records in Portsmouth, NH, led to my meeting with the one-man musical über-project that is Enslaved by Owls. Here's how it went.... My friend Claudia herded me to the shop, a bit off Portsmouth's beaten path. O and O is a small store, with a lot of vinyl, and no particular genre slant. We walked in, and the clerk at the register was playing Satanic Warmaster clips on YouTube—a very good start, I thought. It seemed only sensible to present him with one of my business cards (yes, there are My Castle of Quiet business cards) and we talked black metal for a bit. Then, he said, "you should give one of your cards to my friend; he was in here a minute ago." The friend turned out to be Timothy Lang-Grannan, who walked up to me moments later with his CD in hand. "People tell me my music sounds like a combination of Vangelis and Burzum," he said. Timothy had no way of knowing who he was talking to, or that these were essentially the magic words. My attention commanded, I snapped up the first Enslaved by Owls CD (which I later learned was EBO IV), and it turned out to be by far the finest purchase of my mini-tour of New England.

Enslaved by Owls' music is a cinematic brooding of analog synths, eerie melodies, doom-laden rhythms and black metal vibes. These are horror soundtracks for films that don't exist yet, masterfully rendered in a home studio, and most certainly a perfect fit for my personal broadcasting niche. You can check out and buy the Enslaved by Owls CD at Timothy's Earth Human Records, as well as the forthcoming split release with Bad Life (Charles Hawkins of Memphis, TN.) You can also check out the EBO MySpace page, where the music is self-described as "scifi loner doom." There are four other EBO albums (I, II, III, and ITI), which were previously available for free as mp3 downloads (I am especially fond of EBO I - a perfect soundtrack vision, on a par with the works of Goblin and the aforementioned Vangelis.) All the EBO albums are excellent, and will be released in full or partial form in the near future by Earth Human. The Bad Life/Enslaved by Owls split will be available 1.2.2010.

Below are a few tracks on mp3 from EBO's cache of unreleased material.

Before the Ocean from EBO I
The Mold Standard from EBO III
The Future Is Looking Grim in F Major from ITI

Enslaved by Owls have also committed to contribute an exclusive track to the My Castle of Quiet WFMU 2010 Marathon premium, I Will Live Only Within the Fraction of a Second That Is This Moment.

Comments

[Sven]

Yeah, Vangelis chilling with Burzum sounds about right. Bohemian Grove! Icke says that owls are a symbol of the reptilians, which is weird, I would think that reptiles would be the symbol of reptilians, and owls are the symbol of, well, owls.

[Bryan]

Crazy. I have an Enslaved By Owls album, given to me because of my hangup on synthy horror movie scores. It's not bad, though wildly inconsistent. when it hits, it hits but when it's bad it is baaaaaaaad. It's a long disc and seems to have as many tracks as an early DRI album.

It's cool to see this article up, though. I used to work at the record store downtown in Portsmouth with Jayson Kohl, who managed that store for a long time and opened The Oddyssey and The Oracle. The old store, Bull Moose Music, sucks a dog's cock these days but O&O is a real crap shoot and needs some organization. He broke his back when he got drunk and fell asleep in a tree. Now he dresses like Greg Brady and knows absolutely everything there is to know about psych, garage and prog and he's not even autistic.

[mahhhhk]

good stuff. now if he would only cut that hair.

[moth]

glad to see EBO getting some much deserved recognition. this guy has been making some of my favorite music for the past 9 years.

[lunadude]

After a short search, I found EBO I, II, & III are on the Internet Archive.
http://www.archive.org/details/EBO_I
http://www.archive.org/details/EBOII
http://www.archive.org/details/EBOIII

Fun stuff! Thanks again WFMU.