Available on all digital platforms, Dark Hymnal is a series of electronic meditations derived from Little’s opera film Black Lodge. Including samples from the opera’s original soundtrack, performed by Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet and featuring text by librettist Anne Waldman, Dark Hymnal is layed without pause, the 15 sections leading the listener on a mysterious journey; a kind of spiritual maze that circles back on itself, toward something unknown.
“As you listen, your ears might deceive you, at times making you think you hear things that aren’t actually there,” Little explains. “It might at other times feel as if the music-and the audio-is attempting to crack out of the frames which contain it: sounds throb and push against speaker cones; chords melt, or vanish after merely a hint, their harmonies showing one path, then pivoting toward another, more dangerous, more enticing. Dark Hymnal may feel simultaneously lulling and disconcerting, comforting and perplexing, and even at times, frightening; a work with its spiritual roots in the world of Black Lodge.”
Originally created as the score for Sandra Powers’ immersive theater performance BARDO-itself a pre-show event for the West Coast premiere of Black Lodge-Dark Hymnal had its world premiere on October 19, 2024 at the United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles, co-presented by CAP UCLA and Beth Morrison Projects.
Black Lodge, Little’s metal-infused opera film that inspired Dark Hymnal, draws on the complex mythologies of David Lynch, William S. Burroughs, and Antonin Artaud. Featuring a libretto by celebrated poet Anne Waldman and performances by Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet, Black Lodge was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its premiere at Opera Philadelphia as a hybrid production by Beth Morrison Projects, and its subsequent soundtrack release on Cantaloupe Music, drew critical acclaim, called “a revelatory marvel” (LA Times), as well as garnering a nomination for Best Opera Recording at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards in 2024. Listen to Black Lodge.
Lasting 90 minutes, Little says that, “Dark Hymnal is best experienced in full, possibly in the dark, and with a sense of openness to where it might take you. As in Black Lodge, this will lead to an experience that will be different for everyone. I encourage you to embrace that sense of the unknown, and go with it where it leads.”
TRACKLIST
1. introit [04:40]
2. the voice inside your head [05:33]
3. scorpions from the sky (after sonja krefting) [03:15]
4. your face, a mask, stares back at you (for anna coleman ladd) [07:35]
5. purgatorio [03:41]
6. spells from artaud [05:49]
7. penitentiary [07:00]
8. the knives of angels [05:23]
9. dark hymnal [06:46]
10. the black rider [06:12]
11. so that these fiends could live off him [08:21]
12. frayed wires of a mechanical hound [07:52]
13. heavy judger of men (a mask, your face, stares back at you) [05:23]
14. harmonium [03:45]
15. until the darkness takes us [09:14]
Composed and mixed by David T. Little
Mastered by Andrew McKenna Lee, Still Sound Music
Featuring text by Anne Waldman
Includes samples from the Black Lodge original soundtrack, performed by Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet
Cover design by Sandra Powers, from the original Black Lodge album art by DM Stith