Wax Cylinder halloween! "Welcome To My Nightmare" by Thomas Negovan

About this project

A SPECIAL THIRTEEN-DAY HALLOWEEN PLEDGE DRIVE!

Thomas Negovan's process of recording on wax cylinder- and releasing on the same medium- has been absent from the face of the planet since 1914. His last wax cylinder recording project led to an invitation to speak at a TEDx conference on 11.11.11. As gallery director for Century Guild Thomas speaks regularly on French and German Cabaret from the 1880s-1920s and hosts an annual Grand-Guignol themed art exhibition featuring contemporary artists alongside historical artworks from the period.

Because Halloween is unquestionably the finest of all the holidays, a special recording of Macabre Madness... "Welcome To My Nightmare"!

My first record (due out in mere weeks!) was recorded entirely without electricity onto wax cylinder, using an old Thomas Edison machine from the late 19th century. I wasn't ready to quite give up on the wax cylinder ghost, and was looking for an old 1920s song to record for Halloween...

I decided to interpret an Alice Cooper song in a blues style that I think captures the descent into madness that the lyrics and chords of the song illustrate; beautiful minor ninth chords on an old 12-string, I recorded this at 3 in the morning and completely lost myself in the lyrics. I hope that whether you like it or not, you find it at least a little bit disturbing...

The 10" vinyl record (the size of old 78 rpm records!) is a unique "glow-in-the-dark" eyeball design... a "double-a side" with the flip side being an alternate recording of a song from my first record called The Divine Eye. (A silkscreen poster for the song was made by Italian poster collective Malleus.) We're pressing only 666 copies of the record, and putting them in a sleeve with a hand-silkscreened insert cover depicting an eyeball opening in terror in a Grand-Guignol style. There are also a special edition of only THIRTEEN copies on black vinyl with an original cover painted by Gail Potocki!

And best of all, we are releasing this single on the magnificent medium of Wax Cylinder, but with a special twist... it GLOWS IN THE DARK. See the photos, and the video, and be either horrified, amazed... or some beautiful combination of both!!!

Creating extremely unique glow-in-the-dark vinyl records, pressing on an outdated medium like wax cylinder, all the hand-work that we like to do to make these really special... NONE of this is inexpensive. This art project will cost well over $6,000; $1,000 alone is for hand-molding the cylinders one at a time. (There's only one person on the planet who still knows how to do this.) We're setting the pledge drive at $666, but we're not making anything for our creativity on this until we raise ten times that. If by some mad luck we DO reach that amount, I will work something out, like making sure that everyone gets an extra copy of the record or something. (I suppose I'll worry about that if we get close! But it'll be something good...I'm just thrilled to be doing this.)

I hope that you like the recording... I learned a lot while enjoying making it, and love keeping this archaic technology alive.

I sincerely appreciate your help in not just talking about history, but making recordings that capture it in a modern sense. I couldn't do this without your support. Thank You!!!

ps- this is the artwork for the wax cylinders, and below that is a photo of the first cylinder release, showing what black cylinders look like in their cases. They're even stamped with debossed text on the ends like the 19th century cylinders! The text on the glow cylinders will be black.

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This project successfully raised its funding goal on October 26, 2011.

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Want to help a great idea but are firmly in the digital age and only want to listen online? Thomas will personally send a special thank you postcard for your support!