Sunday, June 14, 2009

Welcome to the Nightmare Sound Laboratory

I'd like to begin with a brief introduction and a story to help you make sense of the many oddities you will doubtless encounter herein. My name is T. Reed and I am a Composer, Music Producer and Artist. This affliction possessed me as a small child infatuated with horror movies, and obsessed with comics, monsters and robots (Oh how little has changed;). I believe I can pinpoint the exact moment in time when my course and purpose was set and permanently engraved upon my soul much like the Curse of the Werewolf that was placed upon Lawrence Talbot in the old Saturday Night creep shows.
At age two, I drew pictures of Batman and declared that I would be an Artist when I grew up, but it was
Kindergarten, the ultimate horror story for some, destroyer of youth and innocence, that pushed me into what I am today. In my first encounter with the agencies of conformity and assimilation, I remember nothing of note upon that day until, much to my surprise and wonder, the teacher announced that we were all going to take a trip to the laboratory. As we walked in an orderly fashion down the halls, I envisioned a room with scales, skulls and bones, vials of glowing substances, and beakers of preserved specimens and creatures of unknown origin. I could see a mad scientist suspiciously similar to Boris Karloff in appearance, teaching Mad Science 101 in the Science Lab in my minds eye. On that first day of school, I was launched into society, into the Belly of the Beast, and for one brief shining moment I had hope for a life of excitement and joy. So this was School, eh? AWESOME! This momentary ecstasy was of course merely the product of my imaginings and shattered into pieces on the cold tile floor of the hallway that we seemed to have stopped in inexplicably.
As I waited patiently, I noticed that little by little, the teacher was allowing students to use the bathrooms. "Ah, I see, I told myself, a pit stop on the way to the 'real' laboratory" but even then, a sinking feeling had begun to build in the pit of my stomach that I just couldn't shake. It was confirmed when we turned around and walked back the way we'd come. Who came up with the word 'Lavatory' anyway, and when were we, (as 5 year olds), supposed to have assimilated that word? All I know is that those 8 letters spelled my first great disillusionment. Welcome to the 'real world': disappointment, misunderstanding, boredom, and waiting in line to crap out numbers and yesterdays food products....It was then, that somewhere deep inside, I cracked and made a solemn unspoken oath to fulfill the imaginary world of Laboratories and Mad Scientists I had envisioned waiting in that hallway. That hallway that crushed my childhood and my dreams in one fell swoop, also swung wide the doorway to my imagination.
I now open that door to you.
Never again will you have to face the annoying disappointment of utilitarian blandness! Here at the Nightmare Sound Laboratory there is a monster in every room and a robot doorman to guide the way. Mad science is the only science studied here, and outlandish sonic experiments are the rule and not the exception.
Welcome to my World.

T. Reed - Composer, Music Producer, Artist
King Komodo/Cryotanks Image by Todd Tennant used with permission

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Welcome to Nightmare Sound Lab!
If you can be cool,relevant,respectful and say something interesting, I'd love to hear from ya.
Happy Nightmares