The dead ride so fast. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
if that isn't just one of the most evocative
gothic titles you've ever heard, I really don't
know what is. It immediately sets the scene.
Right. I'm picturing, you know, mist and galloping
horses, maybe some kind of carriage careening
through a dark forest at midnight. It just feels
incredibly high stakes right out of the gate.
It certainly does, yeah. It's traumatic, it's
urgent, and it's completely steeped in that heavy
19th century romanticism. And strictly speaking,
it's actually a line from the famous ballad Lenore
by Gottfried August Berger. Oh, interesting.
But for our purposes today, as we dive into these
sources, it is the English translation of the
title of the album we're looking at. An album
that is, well, it's a lot of things. It's a ghost
story, it's a chamber orchestra masterpiece,
and honestly, it's kind of a masterclass in artistic
obsession. Obsession is definitely the right
word for this one, because today, listener, we
are going deep into the 2003 album by the legendary
dark wave act, Sopor Eternus, and the Ensemble
of Shadows. That's right. And I have to say,
just looking at the source material, this isn't
your standard, you know, band releases and album
kind of story. This is something else entirely.
No, not at all. This is a story about legacy,
it's about perfectionism, and really about the
physical artifact of music itself. Yeah. It shows
just how far an artist is willing to go to get
something exactly right. And we should probably
mention the subtitle right off the bat. Oh, absolutely.
Because it really sets the tone for the absolute
weirdness we're about to wade into. Yeah. So
the album is called Es reiten die Toten so schnell.
But the subtitle on the cover is The vampire
sucking at his own vein. Which is an image that
honestly tells you everything you need to know
about the introspection and the darkness going
on here. It's a bit visceral. I mean, sucking
at his own vein. It sounds painful, but also
I don't know, sustaining. Exactly. It's autophagic.
It's the whole idea of feeding on yourself to
survive. And as we unpack this album, you'll
see that's quite literally what the artist, Anna
Varney Cantadella, is doing here. She is cannibalizing
her own past work, revisiting it, and consuming
it to create something massive and completely
new. So our mission today for this deep dive
is to really unpack how this specific album represents
a totally unique moment of artistic return. We're
going to look at how she revisited old work to
transform it. And listener, you are definitely
going to want to stick around for the end of
this one, because we have to talk about the physical
release of this album. Oh, yes. The physical
release is incredible. The details of the box
set are, well, I've seen some crazy limited editions
in my time, but I have never seen one that includes
what this one includes. It really is a fascinating
case study in immersive art. But before we get
to the actual box set, we have to understand
the music itself. Right. Because usually the
trajectory of a band is pretty linear, right?
You release a demo tape, then maybe you get signed.
to debut album and you move forward. Yeah, you
evolve. You don't generally look back. Right.
You might play the old hits live or something,
but you don't usually go back and re -record
the demo tape a decade later. No, that feels,
I mean, that feels risky. Like, usually fans
hate that. They do. They love the gritty, terrible
sound of the original demo because it feels authentic
to them. Precisely. There's a huge nostalgia
for that lo -fi origin sound. But that is the
core concept of this 2003 release. Yeah. To understand
Es Raiden Di Toten So Schnell, the album, you
have to understand that there was a demo tape
with the exact same name released way back in
the very beginning of the project. OK, let's
unpack this a bit. So our sources mentioned that
Anna Varney went back to this original demo tape
and she didn't just remaster it, which is what
most bands do to squeeze a little more money
out of the back catalog. She didn't just clean
up the hiss. She re -recorded the song. Completely
re -recorded them from the ground up. And she
respected the original vision deeply. The first
seven tracks of this 2003 album follow the exact
sequence of that original demo tape. Really?
Yes. It's a deliberate recreation of that initial
journey. It's kind of like rewriting your very
first novel word for word, but using the vocabulary
you have 10 years later. That's a great analogy.
Or imagine a painter who sketched something on
a napkin 10 years ago and now decides to paint
that exact same scene on a massive canvas with
expensive oil paints. Right. The composition
is identical, but the execution is light years
apart. But the album isn't just the demo, right?
It's longer than that. Right, it expands the
scope significantly. The rest of the album features
re -recordings of bonus tracks that were originally
included on the very first Sopor Aeternus album,
Ich Töte Misch, plus a handful of completely
new songs. OK. So it's basically a collection
of the early years, but reimagined through a
much more mature lens. And speaking of reimagining
things, there's one detail on the track list
that really jumped out at me from the sources.
It's a song called Birth Fiendish Figuration.
Ah, yes, that is a crucial track in there. discography.
The sources call this Sopra Aeternus' signature
song from their first album. But on this 2003
record, this track appears in its fourth incarnation.
Fourth? That is fascinating, isn't it? That is
so many times to record the same song. I mean,
I love Bohemian Rhapsody, but I do not need Queen
to release four different studio versions of
it. Right. What does that say to you, purely
from an analytical standpoint? Why keep going
back to the well like that? Oh, well, if we connect
this back to that subtitle we talked about, the
vampire sucking at his own vein, it suggests
a relentless pursuit of a very specific sonic
ideal. Birth fiendish figuration clearly holds
a central place in the Sopra Eternus mythos.
To record it four times means the previous three
versions, while they were probably beloved by
fans, didn't quite capture the truth of the song
in Anna Varney's mind. Like it just wasn't finished
yet. Exactly. It suggests that for her, the song
isn't just a static recording frozen in 1994.
It's a living thing. Yeah. It evolves with the
artist. It's about getting it right, matching
the sound in the real world to the sound she
hears in her head. It's almost like the song
itself is growing up of her. It's not just, hey,
here's the hit single. It's more like, here's
the current state of my soul. Yes. And to achieve
that, current state, to finally get that sound
exactly right, you can't just use the same tools
you use for the demo tape. You need an environment
that matches the grandeur of the idea. Which
brings us to the actual production of the album.
Yes. This is where things get really interesting
for the audiophiles out there listening. Because
the difference between a demo tape and this album
isn't just a matter of practice. it's personnel.
Absolutely. The production on this album is a
major step up and that's largely due to one specific
name, John A. Rivers. A legendary name in this
specific corner of the music world. The notes
lift his credentials and they are heavy hitters.
We're talking about the guy who produced for
Swell Maps, Love and Rockets, but the big one
for me and I think for the overall vibe of this
album is Dead Can Dance. Dead Can Dance is definitely
the key comparison here. Absolutely. For listeners
who might not be deep into the dark wave or ethereal
wave genres, can you explain what that Dead Can
Dance sound actually is? Like, why does that
name matter so much here? Sure. So Dead Can Dance
is famous for a sound that is vast, timeless,
and incredibly spacious. Yeah. When you listen
to their records, it doesn't sound like a band
in a recording studio. It sounds like you are
standing in a massive cathedral or an ancient
cistern or a foggy moor somewhere. It's pristine,
but it's incredibly haunting. So it's big. It's
cinematic. Exactly. So when Anna Varney brings
in a producer like John A. Rivers, she isn't
just looking for someone to hit the record button.
He is looking for that atmosphere. She wants
that high fidelity ghost story sound. It really
signals a shift, doesn't it? It moves the project
away from lo -fi goth or bedroom dark wave into
something much more, I guess, respectable or
at least much more sonically ambitious. Ambitious
is the perfect word. And that ambition is actually
reflected in the geography of the recording as
well. Right. The sources note that previous works
were recorded in the artist's home country of
Germany. But for us right in Detoden, so schnell,
the recording process actually moved to England.
To Rivers Studio, presumably. Correct. And this
geographical shift really matters. It shows a
willingness to step completely out of the comfort
zone, out of the home environment, to chase a
specific sound. Yeah. Darkwave and classical
are the genre tags attached to this album in
the sources. And to get that blend of electronic
darkness and orchestral grandeur, you really
need a producer who understands how to balance
those specific elements. Right, because you have
acoustic and electronic trying to mesh. Exactly.
Rivers was the perfect choice to bridge the gap
between the synthesizer and the symphony. And
that balance is crucial because looking at the
personnel list and the sources, this is not just
a synthesizer and a drum machine anymore. This
is a massive production. It is a true ensemble.
Let's look at the Ensemble of Shadows here. Usually
that name Ensemble of Shadows feels like a metaphor,
like, oh, the ghosts are my bandmates. But on
this album, the ensemble is made up of very real
people. It's essentially a full chamber orchestra.
I was reading down the credits list in the source
material and I just kept scrolling. It's huge.
It is. We've got Chris Wilson on violin, Elizabeth
Tollington on cello, Marcus Cornell on double
bass. That is a very solid string section. The
foundation of any... good classical melancholia.
But then it just keeps going into the woodwinds
and brass. You have Tonya Price on clarinet,
Eugene de la Fontaine on oboe. And don't forget
the cor anglais and bassoon. Eric Santilla on
cor anglais, yes. And Darina Gore on bassoon.
Plus trumpet, trombone, tuba. I mean, this is
a serious lineup of musicians. It really is.
And it's important to note the distinction here.
Annavarni Cantadea is credited with vocals, all
other instruments, and programming. She is the
composer and the architect of the whole thing.
Yeah. But these specific musicians, Wilson, Tollington,
and the rest, they're the ones breathing actual
life into the score. It really separates Soap
Ria Ternes from a lot of other goth or dark wave
acts of the early 2000s. I feel like in that
era, it would have been very easy to just do
all this on a keyboard. Oh, absolutely. Synthesizers
were getting really good by 2003. You could fake
a cello if you wanted to, but she actively chose
to hire a tuba player. And an oboe player. Think
about the sound of an oboe. It has such a distinct,
mournful, reedy sound. It sounds almost like
a human crying. It does. You can't perfectly
replicate the breath of a real oboe player with
a keyboard patch. By using real instruments,
what we call acoustic instrumentation, you add
a layer of organic texture that you just can't
fake. It adds texture, but I think it also changes
the whole vibe. Synths can feel cold, plastic.
maybe futuristic, but a bassoon. A cello. Those
feel old. They feel like wood and gut and breath.
Exactly. It grounds the spookiness in reality.
It makes the dead in the title feel paradoxically
more alive. It's tactile. You can practically
hear the resin on the bow. That's a great point.
It creates a physical presence in the room with
you. And speaking of grounding things, or perhaps
ungrounding them, we should talk about how these
instruments were used to transform specific tracks
from the demo. Yes. We mentioned birth earlier,
but there's another track the sources highlight.
And that's Reprise. This is a great example of
that transformation process, that filling in
the sketch idea we talked about earlier. So in
its original version on the demo tape, Reprise
was just a spoken word piece. It referenced a
line from the bridge of another song called Dead
Souls, just a spoken outro, basically. Kind of
a here's some spooky thoughts to end the tape
vibe. Pretty standard fare for a concept album
or a demo, just a placeholder for an emotion.
But on this 2003 release. It has been transformed
into a full song. It's no longer just someone
talking over background. It's a complete musical
composition. Which really reinforces the idea
that S. Wright and D. Toten so schnell is a realization
of the demo's true potential. Yeah. A spoken
word track might be a placeholder simply because
the artist couldn't quite express that feeling
musically at the time. She didn't have the orchestra.
She didn't have John A. Rivers. Right. She was
limited by the resources. Exactly. Years later,
with the full ensemble, including cellos and
bassoons at her disposal, she could finally turn
that spoken sentiment into a fully realized melody.
It's like she finally had the vocabulary to finish
the sentence she started 10 years ago. Precisely.
She filled in a sketch with oil paints. I really
love that image. But speaking of tangible things,
of oil paints and canvases, we absolutely have
to talk about the physical object itself. I had
a feeling we were heading here the release formats.
I mean, we cover a lot of deep dives and we see
some pretty cool marketing gimmicks. But this
one, this takes the cake for being the most committed
to the bit. It is certainly committed, but Sopraturnus
is known for treating the physical format as
part of the art itself, not just a container
for it. Right. So the album comes out in 2003,
and it's not just a standard CD in a jewel case.
There were two specific limited editions mentioned
in the source material. First, there's a box
set, an A5 sized box. Limited to 1 ,999 copies.
A very nice specific number. Not 2 ,000, exactly
1 ,999. It feels very curated. But then... There's
the double vinyl edition. Limited to let me guess.
You know exactly where this is going. 666. It's
classic theatricality. It's camp, but it's a
very serious, dedicated camp. But what's inside
the vinyl edition is what really matters. Okay,
listener, you really have to picture this. You
order the vinyl, you get the record, you get
a poster, standard stuff, get a t -shirt. Very
cool. You get postcards. Nice. That's a pretty
deluxe bundle. But then you find... communion
wafers symbolic certainly playing heavily with
religious iconography the body of christ and
authenticated graveyard soil yes this is where
it gets really interesting i have so many questions
about this authenticated graveyard soil what
does that even mean how do you authenticate dirt
is there a certificate like yes this dirk is
definitely from a place with dead bodies signed
the groundskeeper the source material is delightfully
vague on the how of it all It simply states that
it came with authenticated graveyard soil. It
doesn't cite a lab report or a coroner's signature
or anything. It's just dirt in your record sleeve.
But think about the effect of that. We talked
about the subtitle earlier, the vampire sucking
at his own vein. We talked about the dead ride
so fast. By including soil, specifically soil
associated with death, the artist is literally
breaking the fourth wall. Oh, wow. Yeah. You
aren't just listening to a ghost story anymore.
You are holding a physical piece of the setting
in your own hand. It's immersive marketing taken
to the absolute extreme. It bridges that gap
between the art and the listener completely.
Yeah. You literally own a piece of the grave.
And it creates a relic. A standard CD is just
a mass -produced consumer good, a box containing
soil and wafers, limited to 666 copies. That
is a ritual object. It really is. It changes
the entire way you listen to the music. You approach
it with more reverence or at least a lot more
caution. It definitely adds to the mystique.
I mean, if I bought a record and it came with
dirt, I'd be telling everyone I knew about it.
I'd be like, hey, don't touch that. It's the
grave dirt. It creates an entire story around
the object itself. And notice the specific pairing
there. Communion wafers and grave soil. The sacred
and the profane. Life eternal and physical decay.
It's capturing the entire thematic arc of sopore
eternis and two tiny physical items. That is
wild. It's just total art. The music, the photos,
the packaging. It's all one cohesive, slightly
terrifying world. And it worked. We are sitting
here talking about it 20 years later. So. Looking
back at all this. Let's recap the journey for
a second We have a demo tape from the early days
that was rough around the edges, right? Then
years later the artist decides no, this isn't
finished She hires a world -class producer, moves
the recording to England, hires a massive classical
ensemble, re -records everything to absolute
perfection, and then sells it with literal grave
dirt. It is a massive, massive undertaking. What
does this tell us about So Poor Eternus? What
is the big takeaway here for you? It tells us
that for Anna Varney Cantadea, the past is never
really dead. It's raw material. Most artists
treat their back catalog as a history book. They
say, this is what I did in 1995. But for her,
the back catalog is a living document. It can
be reopened, rewritten, and expanded upon at
any time. The song birth can be born a fourth
time. The spoken word track can finally become
a song. It's almost like she's perfecting her
own mythology. Precisely. She is curating the
legend of Sopor Aeternus in real time. By elevating
the demo tape to this grand orchestral status,
she's essentially saying, my beginnings were
not humble. My beginnings were grand. I just
didn't have the budget to show you yet. That
is a really powerful way to look at it. Retroactively
fixing the budget of your past. Basically saying,
I always sounded like this in my head, now you
can hear it too. And the choice of the Dead Ride
so fast as the title, it feels very relevant
to this whole process. Oh, so? Well, the phrase
implies speed, urgency, something catching up
to you. In the original poem, the dead return
to claim the living. But in this album, I actually
think the dynamic is flipped. The artist is the
one chasing the dead. She's chasing these old
songs, these dead souls of her past repertoire.
She's hunting them down, catching them and giving
them new bodies. She is flat out refusing to
let them rest in peace as mere demos. She's riding
faster than they are. In a way, yes. Or she is
joining their ride so she can steer the carriage
herself. It really is a unique entry in the world
of music. I honestly can't think of many other
acts that have done something quite this specific.
rebuilding a demo into a magnum opus with such
fanatical detail. It's very rare, and it explains
why the fans of this project are just so dedicated.
They aren't just consuming content. They are
witnessing a very personal, very intense artistic
evolution unfold. And they are holding the soil
to prove it. Indeed. They are part of the ritual.
So as we wrap up this deep dive into S. Reitende
Toten so schnell, We're left with this image
of an artist who just refuses to let the past
stay imperfect. She built a massive monument
out of a demo tape. And filled it with oboes,
cellos, and soil. It's gothic. It's ambitious.
And it's undeniably cool. It makes you look at
your own old work and wonder, could I fix that?
Should I fix that? I'd like to leave you, the
listener, with one final thought on that subtitle.
The dead ride so fast. We've talked about the
re -recording process, the fourth version of
birth, the constant refinement of the art. If
the artist is continuously re -recording and
refining the past, are they trying to outrun
the dead? Or are they trying to keep them alive?
Is the perfectionism a way to silence the ghosts,
or is it the only way to ensure they never truly
fade away? That is definitely something to think
about next time you're listening to an old favorite
track. Are you keeping it alive? or is it haunting
you? Thanks for taking this deep dive with us
everyone. A pleasure as always. Keep digging.