Album - Preternatural

Released On March 7th 2025

Listen on bandcamp here

Preternatural is a gothic, cinematic exploration of what lies just beyond the veil of the natural world. Born before the pause in DAW-based work during the creation of The Attic Reels, this album picks up the thread with a darker, more orchestral vision. Drawing heavily on the UVI IRCAM Solo and Prepared Piano collections, GForce’s Mellotron (M-Tron Pro), and dusty vintage textures, Preternatural lives in a liminal space between chamber music and ghost stories.

The title track sets the tone: a piano piece performed by a not-quite-human figure, slowly accelerating in tempo like a supernatural ritual. Mellotron textures swirl around a walking bassline and organic drums, conjuring an eerie sense of rising urgency.

Other tracks like Reverie, Twilight’s Dance, and Ghost Dance use cello, viola, Wurlitzer, and Mellotron patches to blur the lines between the living and the spectral. There’s a strong sense of memory, folklore, and things unsaid. Rhythms come from lo-fi drum kits and percussion; melodies are played on creaky old instruments and tape-saturated machines that feel plucked from another age.

The textures are often sparse but deliberate. Each element is chosen for its emotional weight. Whether it’s the melancholy sweep of the Amati viola on Daylight Breaks or the vintage Prophet 10 synth arpeggios on Lullaby, the album embraces imperfection, minimalism, and mystery.

Track Highlights

Preternatural

The title track sets the stage for the album’s gothic and mysterious tone. Inspired by a chilling scene in Queen of the Damned, where the vampire Lestat reveals his inhuman nature through increasingly impossible musicianship on the violin. “Preternatural” climbs in tempo from start to finish. Subtly at first, but unmistakable on repeat listens. What begins as a quiet piece gradually accelerates, mirroring the supernatural narrative that inspired it.

At its heart is the beautifully recorded piano, Claire, by Galaxy Instruments, placed front and center. Supporting it is a haunting array of Mellotron textures: a Brahms like Orchestra panned to the left adds a dramatic, almost baroque tension, while half-speed Mellotron strings to the right give a ghostly, time-warped presence that breathes vintage eeriness into the piece.

Beneath it all, a walking acoustic bass provides both grounding and propulsion, while a 70s drum kit adds a loose, human feel. As the tempo increases, the drums and bass lock into a more energetic groove, subtly escalating the tension.

This track is the sound of something ancient awakening. Its elegant, and inhumanly precise. It’s the perfect overture for an album that dances on the edges of the natural and the unknown.

Reverie

Built on the simplest of foundations, “Reverie” is a quiet meditation on memory, nostalgia, and the haunting beauty of things half-remembered. The arrangement is stark: a Novachord panned left, a cello to the right, and a solo viola down the center. Together, they form an intimate chamber ensemble.

This track is a direct descendant of the minimalist spirit found in The Attic Reels. You can feel that lineage in the restraint of the composition. “Reverie” invites the listener to sit with their own thoughts. It’s a musical daydream, fleeting but vivid, as if you've stumbled across a forgotten memory and let it play out uninterrupted.

Twilight’s Dance

A dusk-lit dance begins. “Twilight’s Dance” feels like an old-world folk ritual glimpsed through a dusty reel.

A dry, vintage drum kit keeps a steady, unflashy groove: kick, snare, and hi-hat forming the spine of the piece. Supporting it, a walking upright bass adds bounce to the rhythm.

At the heart of the track is a central solo cello, rich and resonant. It’s flanked on the left by a layered Mellotron section. These tape-soaked strings add a sense of nostalgia.

The piece draws on a gypsy scale, rooted in E♭ and colored with flattened intervals. The result is a dance from a forgotten culture.

Lamp Light

“Lamp Light” is a study in simplicity. It’s a hushed, intimate groove that conjures the image of a quiet room lit only by a single warm lamp. At its core, just two voices: a dusty Wurlitzer electric piano, and a lo-fi kick-and-snare drum groove.

There’s nothing flashy here; just tone, space, and feeling. A moment of warmth and reflection, captured in the quiet hush of night.

Daylight Breaks

For a vampire, sunrise isn’t a beginning. It’s the end. Daylight Breaks captures that fleeting moment before retreat, when the horizon glows and the eternal night gives way to a light that must be avoided at all costs.

A 70s drum kit provides the rhythmic spine, joined by two contrasting basses: a percussive synth bass arpeggio, and a warm, fretless clean DI bass guitar.

Panned subtly to the right, a Mellotron patch adds a haunting texture, layered from half-speed tape strings. At the heart of the track, holding it all together, is the Amati Viola.

There’s a quiet sadness to this track. As the light breaks, the creature of the night goes to ground, forever yearning for a sunrise that it can never face.

Floating Away

As the title suggests, Floating Away drifts high above the world. It conjures the image of something suspended in the stratosphere.

The track opens with a solid groove built from snare, hi-hat, and a simple kick. A ’60s Hofner-style bass guitar adds a warm, fuzzy grit.

Hovering above this low-end anchor is a heavily reverberated Rhodes piano. The Rhodes is the soul of the track. Its floaty presence contrasts beautifully with the crunchy, vintage textures beneath.

Floating Away is the sound of letting go.

Winter’s Tavern

Winter’s Tavern is the oldest composition on Preternatural. Its a track that pre-dates the album itself and helped shape its spirit. It evokes the warmth of a fire-lit inn deep in a snow-covered forest, perhaps somewhere in a scene from The Witcher.

Built on the rustic character of a boutique mallet drum kit, the rhythm section features a blend of kick, snare, hi-hat, cymbals, and toms.

A harp, panned left, brings delicate ornamentation. A cello, panned right, lends its deep, resonant voice. And in the center, a tuba, puffing, earthy presence, adding a touch of levity and grounding.

Winter’s Tavern doesn’t aim for club rhythms or modern beats. It reaches further back, to something more timeless. It’s music you might imagine echoing from the hearth of a medieval gathering, where boots stomp on stone and tankards clink in time with the melody.

Through The Veil

Through the Veil is a haunting drift into the liminal, where the material world blurs and something spectral begins to bleed through.

At its core lies a dusty, wobbling piano.

Hovering to the right are two vintage ethereal string patches.

Supporting the emotional weight is a semi-electric acoustic bass, with a walking groove that anchors the track with subtle grit. A 70s drum kit provides the groove.

This is not a song that says anything directly. It implies, echoes, and haunts. Like watching fog curl around a gravestone, or catching movement from the corner of your eye that’s already gone.

Ghost Dance

Ghost Dance evokes disembodied spirits dancing in a misty clearing, somewhere between this world and the next. Its written in the F♯ Hungarian gypsy scale which gives it its haunting quality.

The rhythm is anchored by a Soca Percussion kit. Underneath it, a fretless vintage bass guitar.

On the left, a VSM IV patch drifts in and out.

On the right, two haunting M-Tron Pro IV patches weave through the mix.

A Bandura adds a lyre-like shimmer.

But at the heart of it all is the central cello: earthy and melodic.

To elevate the track’s ghostly nature some instruments were passed through PSP’s Wobbler, co-designed by Alan Parsons. This plugin injects tape-like modulation, flutter, and ghostly phase wobble into the textures, giving everything an unsettling feeling.

Lullaby

Lullaby closes the album. The track is in B♭ Dorian, lending the lullaby a sense of introspection.

A Prophet 10 patch is the soul of the piece. Arpeggiated chords float and bloom.

Layered delicately against this is the fragile clink of a music box. Like an old toy unearthed in an attic. It plays a simple melodic counterpoint to the Prophet’s drifting harmonies. Its nostalgic and intimate.

The final track feels like a soft goodbye. A fitting end to Preternatural: quiet, mysterious, and gently haunting.

Final Thoughts

Preternatural lingered in the background while The Attic Reels came to life, waiting patiently to unfold. It lies in richer, more cinematic territory, yet still carries the minimalist sensibility.

This is an album about the preternatural and the supernatural; of people, places, and feelings. About dances once danced, lamplight now extinguished, and whispered lullabies. The instruments are aged, the scales exotic, the reverbs dusty and strange. It’s an album that invites the listener to step out of time and peer into the fog between worlds.

More than anything, Preternatural is a love letter to the uncanny. The subtle beauty found in decay, in old pianos and haunted scales, in stories told without words.

I hope you enjoy its atmosphere.