The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost LP

"The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost materialized from the blood, woodsmoke and buzzsaw guitars at the epicentre of the Second Wave of Black Metal in Norway during the early 1990s, with Mortiis beginning his career playing bass and writing lyrics in Emperor. While Mortiis would famously cease to be a member of the band in 1992, and it was with a synthesizer that the name of Mortiis would ultimately be made, the links to Emperor and the scene in this tale are seldom far away...

Written and recorded approximately between May and June 1993, The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost was the culmination of an especially fertile year for Mortiis, spent exploring a wide range of early dark ambient music and its related styles... Despite his modest equipment, Mortiis’ vision was not lacking in ambition, emboldened by the noblest of aspirations: “My idea back then […] was to go to a Transylvanian castle and record the demo there.” While such an auspicious event did not come to pass – as he explains: “you have to remember that I was straight out of a whole extreme metal scene, with all the craziness that was going on, and that I was not realistic by any stretch” – a more mundane but no less influential venue for recording presented itself...

Generally regarded as one long track, the piece was actually recorded as several separate sections and then stitched together afterwards. Mortiis played his parts while none other than Ihsahn himself operated the controls to the 4-track tape recorder, whilst “reading Conan magazines”. To add even further weight to this legend, the 4-track in question was very possibly the device on which Emperor’s legendary demo album Wrath of the Tyrant was being recorded around this time. Both 'Wrath' and 'Song' were self-released (in 1992 and 1993, respectively) helping to forge two careers which, while very different and separate, are bound by common artistic themes and atmospheres.