David Kristian & Ryosuke Aoike — Ghost Stories

Most of western civilisation will never encounter horror or fear in the clichéd horror film surroundings. we rarely going out of our well lit cities and towns into the countryside; and we hardly ever go near creaking houses in the middle of nowhere. So our base and understanding of fear and death is now very urbanized, that’s what excellently David Kristian & Ryosuke Aoike focus on with Ghost Stories, urbane chills and very real scares.

David Kristian is a well respected  electronic sound artist who has been releasing sound art in various forms over the last 18 years. Ryosuke Aoike is a recognised manga artist who’s work has  featured in Catman & Perestroika cartoons- together the pair  fuse visual and sound world in a really gosebump raising whole.

Kristian offers up series of  tracks to ones urbane nightmares & fears in audio form on the first disk. According to the informative liner notes Kristian left mindisc hidden in between wall spaces and odd and dark places- then harvest the strange and creepy sounds for the album, he also converted pictures of ghosts into audio form. This really is fear art of the highest order, where Kristian builds an audio tapestry that is often subbed and slow moving, but never boring  as he keeps you focused complete on the work through out, with audio layers that amount to 30 layered tracks of subtle sound in places. This is grand  fearful cimatices  of the highest form, it’s easy to see why Kristian has been done so many soundtracks and film sound design in the last few years. I think the most impressive thing is the way he has captured growing dread in such a chilling manner, along with jump out of you seat sudden audio splicing. Trust me this will really scary the hell out of you, the way it sudden sneaks up on you and smoothes you with terror or suddenly grabs you by the throat.

The second dvd disk is were Kristian and Aoike work together, five selections are made from the audio album and put with Aoike urbanized and grey animation- to tell five tales of ghostly and odd going on within huge semi-deserted and deserted urbane areas - like  tower block corridors or with-in the dark shadow of city streets.  The tracks are presented in 5.1 surround sound, meaning you truly feel like you are one with the work  & pushing your feel of dread and fear to the limit. Aoike  basic and damn creepy drawngs and anmation really capturing the fear harmonics and clever audio structuring of Kristian sound world.

A fascinating and fearful collaboration that really does instill real dread and horror. It will have you looking over your shoulder, the next time your walking through nightime streets alone or as you become one with towering grey skiescapes, a shiver will slip down your spine.