Gothic (Gothic Multimedia Project)

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Gothic
Background information
Origin	Genoa, Italy
Genre(s)	Dark Avant-garde
Years active	1989–present
Label(s)	Théâtre de la Mort 08
Website	Official website
Members
James M. Jason David Bosch John Ruin Davy Jones
Former members
Chris Joint Ricky F. Frederick Thomas Andy Under Dr.D Mr.R

Gothic, or more extensively, the Gothic Multimedia Project, is a dark avant-garde multimedia art project from Italy expressing music, poetry and figurative arts (pictures and videos) through modern technology. The Gothic Multimedia Project is an independent and highly experimental dark studio-based ensemble in perpetual motion seeking to express the different faces of the “darkness inside the contemporary human being” by means of different musical genres, vaguely defined as “darkwave-avantgarde heavy music”. Its members are James Maximilian Jason (vocals, keyboards, synthesizers and poetries), David Bosch (artwork), John Ruin (programming) with the additional support by Davy Jones (guitars).

1 Band history
2 Current members
3 Style
4 Discography
- 4.1 Albums
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Band history

Gothic were formed in September 1989 in Genoa, Italy, initially under the name Cryptic Sanctum; nevertheless after two months of activity, Gothic finally assume their definitive title just before their first demo tape is released in December 1989. The resulting release, "Into The Gothic Gloom" (December 1989) is the manifesto of Gothic's naiveté. Drawing influence from extreme and minimalist Bathory-like death metal bands, Gothic express their rage by combining very fast, chaotic riffs with very slow, grim musical interludes, they embrace a genre redefined and re-baptised as "death-gloom metal", performing guitar and drums by keyboards, without bass, which is deemed useless to express their breaking wraith.

Less than a year later, Gothic release their second and most brutal demo to date, "Into The Deep Tartarus" (September 1990), bringing the satanic thread clearly evident in "Into The Gothic Gloom" to a climax through a grinding deathcore.

With the next fiendish demo, "Into The Cave" (June 1991), Gothic bring the so-called "Satan's Trilogy" to a conclusion. "Into The Cave" marks a notable improvement in song writing, with the most well balanced songs based on Mephistophelian lyrics. While this release remains faithful to Gothic's grinding/deathcore/gloom style, the songs are enriched by some epic passages and more articulated sounds.

A year later, Gothic release their fourth and most presentable demo, "Whispers From The Grave" (June 1992), which outlines Gothic's trademark blasphemous references, and also shows notable change of style. Their death metal has become awesomely slow, doomish, better composed and performed, and while the fast songs remain powerful, they are less brutal than they were in the early days. Heavy Metal influences enrich the death metal roots, combined with a more classical metal attitude, and illustrates Gothic's continual search for a more mature sound.

The bizarreness that ruled the previous Gothic release, only hinted at so far, finally begins to overwhelm on the fifth mini demo, "...And From Hell Came The Revenge" (February 1993). The band, led by a more and more eclectic James Jason, attempts to mix a primitive punk-death metal with more cold-art/dark-epic sounds by the use of synthesizer. The result is a strange demo representing the final chapter of Gothic's first incarnation, and, despite of the demo title, the occultist references are reduced to a sheer sparkle.

Late 1993 saw the release of "The Pestilence... Post Contagium" (December 1993), which marks an important turning point in the history of Gothic. The songs are extremely slow, oppressive and heavy, combining claustrophobic doom metal originality, with synthesizers and keyboards often in place of electric guitars. A more cured sound finally boosts the more skilled, complex and long arrangements, which are ruled by a tragic sense of doom.

From 1994 to 1997, a thick black curtain falls down on Gothic's underground theatre. This deliberate isolation is due to James Jason's desire to seek out new unexplored fields in the land of experimentalism, without any compromise with the underground music market. The uncompleted fruit of this research is "Dreaming The Apocalypse" (November 1994), an eclectic composition of different styles, ruled over by a more and more recognisable sour doom-gothic-metal mark, with some rough speed-punk metal as a reminder of Gothic's early work. The result is a searched odd disharmony not only among the songs but also among the parts of the songs themselves.

The endeavour of recomposing this schizophrenic theatre was carried out by "Dark Dimension" (September 1995), Gothic's eighth release, whose proceedings began as a raid in the mainstream power-speed metal genre, but finally turned out to be harsh and powerful gothic metal, ruled more by the guitar-keyboard sound than by the string-keyboards or synthesizers.

While "Dark Dimension" is considered as the most mainstream and classical Gothic release to date, then the follow up is deemed the most experimental and dark of Gothic's career till then, the utterly grim "Cold Winds Of Suicide" (January 1997). The song writing, more unforeseeable than ever, scatters into many little fragments, representing an eulogy of a funeral madness leading to the final act of the suicide; told in its delirious mental progression through an ensemble of untitled fragments, in order to underline the deliberate anonymous character of the suicide. Like the previous three "ghost demos", "Cold Winds Of Suicide" is totally instrumental except for two songs, one of which is the first James Jason's poetry ever transposed in music. The song writing definitively goes beyond the metal?s boundaries, and it reaches new frontiers of the dark-art music, with only some few hints of gothic metal to remind you of Gothic's musical roots.

In the beginning of 1997, Gothic make an effort to go beyond the boundaries of music and, approach a wider artistic project of multimedia lyrical description of the inner-darkness. The visionary illustrator, David Bosch, begins working together with James Jason on the Gothic project by redesigning the covers to Gothic's previous demos (from "...And From Hell Came The Revenge" to "Cold Winds Of Suicide"). David Bosch also agrees to design and create the artwork and layout of Gothic's future releases.

In line with this hard choice, the approach to the release of the final product becomes, without any comparison, more professional than in past, especially the recent past. Released as a double CD, divided in four acts, "Fleeing The Rainland" (October 2000) is a big step forward, and it shows, more so than in the past, an eclectic way to interpret the concept of gothic music. This release combines together not only gothic-power-speed metal, in homage to the historical Gothic trademark, but also neo-classical, symphonic, dark-punk, doom metal, heavy rock, free jazz metal, hard groove and soundtrack-like music, all of which are described by the band through the simple but challenging denomination of "gothic prog metal".

Unexpectedly, "Fleeing The Rainland" turns out to be the final chapter of Gothic's old identity, and represents a transitional album, the first step to a new professionalism. The big leap to a totally new identity and artistic approach to creating art is by the following album, to be released after good four years of working process. This breakthrough album is titled "Grim" (May 2004), and is the first of a trilogy dedicated to the different faces of dark, avant-garde, heavy and extreme music. This multimedia "border-project" is an attempt to express the darkest and most forefront, experimental "black core" of the gothic art, and involves not only music but also poetry and figurative arts. The genres of darkwave and avant-garde have all passed through Gothic's musical roots, heavy metal.

[edit] Current members

James M. Jason - Vocal Keyboard Synthesizers Poetries
David Bosch - Artwork
John Ruin - Programming
Davy Jones - Guitars (additional member)

[edit] Style

Many peculiarities make "Grim" an utter revolution in Gothic's history.

Firstly, "Grim" is a total art opus comprising not only a double audio CD (featuring 15 songs) but also, for the very first time in Gothic history, one multimedia CD-R featuring altogether 10 poetries, 1 video, 13 pictures, besides a multimedia presentation of the current project.

Secondly, the music style and song writing is stranger to the goth-prog metal style that characterised the second version of Gothic, from 1993 to 2000, and is based on a dark avant-garde pattern peculiar to Gothic's new musical identity, interpreted in an experimental way to feel and to create gothic art. If "Cold Winds Of Suicide" was the first Gothic release where most of the songs transcend beyond the cannons of heavy metal, then "Grim" is actually the first Gothic release that is not a heavy metal album (at least in its traditional sense) but also features elements from electrogoth, acid techno, trip hop, trance, EBM, industrial, apocalyptic ambient, esoteric and IDM, grounded with the trademark Gothic post-metal style.

As for the lyrical content, for the very first time, all vocal songs feature poetry adapted to music and not tales in prose form as with previous releases. The ground lyrical inspiration is really very close to the most extreme concepts of the idealistic dark thought and the poetic style is an echo of different influences: Ermetismo (early 900 Italian school of obscure poetry); the new Anglo-American free association of words; the poetry of the crepuscolari (late 800 Italian school of poetry of pain), combined with Gothic's classical influences coming from the cursed French poets. Also a particularly strong influence is the post-futurist movement, in its different expressions generally forming what is known as the avant-garde literary movements. In homage to the new multimedia concept of the Gothic project, all these lyrical influences are translated in images and moving pictures by means of an artistic way, through Dadaism, cubism, nu-expressionism, nu-surrealism, abstractionism and symbolism, all of which are passed through Gothic's dark idealistic filter.

As a homage to Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990, Polish playwright worshipped particularly by James Jason) in 2005, May 29, James M. Jason, David Bosch and John Ruin founded the “Théâtre de la Mort 08” (“Theatre of Death 08”, [1]), a challenging and ghostly art movement aiming at bringing Kantor’s cultural heritage into the gloomy dimension of contemporary multimedia avant-garde. The Tdm08 is meant to be also the new label of the Gothic project which will produce Gothic’s future albums, from Grim (May 2004) on. The artists currently supporting the "Théâtre de la Mort 08"'s dark avant-garde multimedia art movement are Testing Vault (Italy, [2]), Triplesix (The Netherlands, [3]) and Luke Hatton (England, [4]).