Eerie Von/Mike Morance

Uneasy Listening (Caroline)
by Angela Dauthi

What is it with Danzig and his cohorts? First he puts out a faux-orchestra “epic,” Black Aria, and now former bassist Eerie Von teams up with Mike Morance to put out Uneasy Listening, a funhouse-gone-bad, B-movie horror soundtrack. I’m trying to figure out whether they’re serious or not. The songs are all minor, mostly with a piano or harpsichord line that repeats endlessly (a must for cheesy splatter flix) with the addition of a sax or a scream in the background. The tempos are primarily set at a stalking pace, not plodding, but the sort of tiptoes, dark cloak, and shiny silver (of course silver) knife glinting in the light of the waxing moon. It’s entirely obvious that the sounds are almost all generated from a sequencer, which once again adds to the subtle humor of Uneasy Listening. It sounds so… artificial at times. Not that that’s a bad thing – it adds to the creepiness, because it’s so borderline cliché. If you really try, you can slip into the mindset of these eight songs, and feel yourself in that schlock horror movie, the fog rolling in off the moors, the howl of wolves in the distance, shadows trying their best to look like shadows and not evil beasts that want to rip your throat out. But then you catch yourself, and laugh.