Graveyard Mountain Home
Encyclopedia
Graveyard Mountain Home is the third studio album released under the name Chroma Key
Chroma Key
Chroma Key is the name under which ex-Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore records. Although primarily a solo project, several other musicians have recorded as part of Chroma Key such as bassist Joey Vera, drummer Mark Zonder, and guitarist Jason Anderson....

 by American keyboardist Kevin Moore
Kevin Moore
For the blues singer, see Keb' Mo'.Kevin Moore is a keyboardist, vocalist and composer and founder of the Chroma Key music project. He is also a former member of the American progressive metal band Dream Theater, co-founder of the progressive rock supergroup O.S.I. and has composed film soundtracks...

. It was released on November 8, 2004 by InsideOut Music
InsideOut Music
Inside Out Music is a German independent record label based in Kleve, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, and dedicated to the publication of progressive rock, progressive metal and related styles music albums.-History:...

. Moore originally started work on the album in 2003, planning to release a less electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...

-influenced album than previous Chroma Key albums, but put it aside to work on the first OSI
OSI (band)
OSI is an American progressive rock band, originally formed by Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos in 2002. Chroma Key keyboardist and vocalist Kevin Moore is the only other full-time member of the band...

 album. He then moved to Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, where he wrote Ghost Book
Ghost Book
Ghost Book is the soundtrack to Turkish horror movie Okul. Kevin Moore made it while he was living in Istanbul, Turkey.-Track listing:...

, the soundtrack to the film Okul
Okul (film)
Okul is a 2004 Turkish horror-comedy film directed by the Taylan brothers . It is adapted from the novel Hayalet Kitap by Doğu Yücel who also wrote the screenplay. Kevin Moore provided the film's soundtrack....

. Enjoying the experience of writing music to film, Moore scrapped his previous plans for the third Chroma Key album, instead writing an album as an alternate soundtrack to an already-existing film.

Moore found the social guidance film
Social guidance film
Social guidance films constitute a genre of films attempting to guide children and adults to behave in certain ways. Typically shown in school classrooms in the USA from the 1950s through the 1970s, the films covered topics including courtesy, responsibility, sexuality, drug use, and driver...

 Age 13
Age 13
Age 13 is an educational film by Sid Davis released in 1955. It is property of the public domain.The film centers around Andrew, a thirteen-year-old boy stricken with grief over the recent death of his mother. On the day of her passing her radio stops working, and Andrew believes that if he can...

in the Prelinger Archives
Prelinger Archives
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history...

, which served as his main inspiration. He slowed the film down to half its original playback speed to allow a full album to be written around the twenty-five minute film. With complete creative control over the album, Moore was free to experiment, sometimes writing music "not necessarily to always match the images on the screen, but to sometimes play against it." The deluxe edition of the album contains the film in its full length, played at half speed, with the album as a soundtrack in place of the original audio.

Critical reception of Graveyard Mountain Home was generally positive. Critics noted that the album was a departure from Moore's previous works, and that it was best experienced as an alternate soundtrack to Age 13
Age 13
Age 13 is an educational film by Sid Davis released in 1955. It is property of the public domain.The film centers around Andrew, a thirteen-year-old boy stricken with grief over the recent death of his mother. On the day of her passing her radio stops working, and Andrew believes that if he can...

. Moore played songs from Graveyard Mountain Home live for the first time in a small club in Istanbul in 2007, and planned to tour more extensively in the future.

Background

In an interview published in December 2003, Kevin Moore
Kevin Moore
For the blues singer, see Keb' Mo'.Kevin Moore is a keyboardist, vocalist and composer and founder of the Chroma Key music project. He is also a former member of the American progressive metal band Dream Theater, co-founder of the progressive rock supergroup O.S.I. and has composed film soundtracks...

 revealed that he had started work on a third Chroma Key
Chroma Key
Chroma Key is the name under which ex-Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore records. Although primarily a solo project, several other musicians have recorded as part of Chroma Key such as bassist Joey Vera, drummer Mark Zonder, and guitarist Jason Anderson....

 album, but had put it aside to work on the first OSI
OSI (band)
OSI is an American progressive rock band, originally formed by Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos in 2002. Chroma Key keyboardist and vocalist Kevin Moore is the only other full-time member of the band...

 album, Office of Strategic Influence
Office of Strategic Influence (album)
Office of Strategic Influence is the first album by American progressive rock band OSI, released by InsideOut Music on February 18, 2003. The album was recorded in June 2002 and mixed in August 2002 at the Carriage House Studios in Stamford, Connecticut....

. When Moore stopped working on Chroma Key material, he had already recorded two songs. "The big difference with the new [Chroma Key album] is that there are more real instruments," Moore said. "I've hooked up with a bunch of friends that made hand drum
Hand drum
A hand drum is any type of drum that is typically played with the bare hand rather than a stick, mallet, hammer, or other type of beater. The simplest type of hand drum is the frame drum, which consists of a shallow, cylindrical shell with a drumhead attached to one of the open ends.-Types:The...

s and didgeridoo
Didgeridoo
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...

s. And I did a lot of recording with that. This new Chroma Key is going to be more organic, and less digital."

Theron Patterson, a friend of Moore's and former classmate at California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...

, was working in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 and invited Moore to visit. Moore, who had been living in Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

, stayed with him for two weeks, then decided to settle in Istanbul and record the third Chroma Key album there. Moore signed to InsideOut Records. "They've been really great supporting this; they sent me out to Turkey when I told them I wanted to record out there, basically supporting the whole process," he said. The first project Moore worked on after he moved to Istanbul was Ghost Book
Ghost Book
Ghost Book is the soundtrack to Turkish horror movie Okul. Kevin Moore made it while he was living in Istanbul, Turkey.-Track listing:...

, the soundtrack to the Turkish film Okul
Okul (film)
Okul is a 2004 Turkish horror-comedy film directed by the Taylan brothers . It is adapted from the novel Hayalet Kitap by Doğu Yücel who also wrote the screenplay. Kevin Moore provided the film's soundtrack....

. Moore enjoyed the experience and decided to write the third Chroma Key album as an alternate soundtrack to an already-existing film.

Moore decided to use a film in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 to avoid any rights issues. He looked through the Prelinger Archives
Prelinger Archives
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history...

 to find a film which matched the mood he wanted for the Chroma Key album. One of the first films he found was the social guidance film
Social guidance film
Social guidance films constitute a genre of films attempting to guide children and adults to behave in certain ways. Typically shown in school classrooms in the USA from the 1950s through the 1970s, the films covered topics including courtesy, responsibility, sexuality, drug use, and driver...

 Age 13
Age 13
Age 13 is an educational film by Sid Davis released in 1955. It is property of the public domain.The film centers around Andrew, a thirteen-year-old boy stricken with grief over the recent death of his mother. On the day of her passing her radio stops working, and Andrew believes that if he can...

. "It was kind of rich for musical accompaniment and the cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...

 and everything is really beautiful, kind of surreal," Moore said. The film served as Moore's main inspiration and source of audio samples.

When deciding on musicians to perform on the album, Moore said that he "picked people who were around". His girlfriend, Bige Akdeniz, performed vocals, Theron Patterson did programming
Programming (music)
Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices, often sequencers or computer programs, to generate music. Programming is used in nearly all forms of electronic music and in most hip hop music since the 1990s. It is also frequently used in modern pop and rock...

 and Patterson's drum teacher, Utku Ünal, performed the drums. The only musician Moore actively sought out was guitarist Erdem Helvacıoğlu
Erdem Helvacioglu
Erdem Helvacioglu is an electronic musician from Turkey. He has collaborated with artists Mick Karn, Kevin Moore, John Wilson, Kazuya Ishigami, and Saadet Turkoz. In addition to his work as an electronic musician, Erdem also composes music for theatre, film and multimedia productions, and produces...

, who performed on one track. Moore noted that none of the music was technically demanding, "it's just more of a feel that we’re going for so it was just a matter of getting comfortable and getting in the mood and playing stuff together."

Moore ranked Graveyard Mountain Home as the most enjoyable project he had worked on up to that point. "I never felt like 'Oh fuck I have to finish this record, I have to do one more song, I have to do something to this song to make it better,'" Moore said. He described the process of making the album as feeling "more like I was playing with this film and I was playing against it so it felt easy somehow".

Composition

Moore wrote music to Age 13 slowed down to half its original playback speed. This allowed him to write an album's worth of music around the twenty-five minute film and "made [the film] flow better". Moore primarily worked alone in his home studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...

, recording short song ideas. "I would place [the ideas] inside a theme in the film, just sort of audition things that might work, and something would click and I would develop the idea," Moore said. In contrast to Moore's original plan to record an "organic, and less digital" album, all of the sounds on Graveyard Mountain Home are digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...

.

Unlike in a traditional film soundtrack, Moore often wrote music "not necessarily to always match the images on the screen, but to sometimes play against it." Moore explained that a traditional soundtrack needs to convey the mood of the scene and advance the film's storyline, but that he did not have to do that with Graveyard Mountain Home "because the director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

's not around". "I thought, well what would it be like if I did a totally different kind of mood than this scene is trying to convey? When you put that music with that scene what happens there? Sometimes it's kind of interesting what happens," Moore explained.

Release and promotion

Graveyard Mountain Home was released on November 8, 2004 by InsideOut Music
InsideOut Music
Inside Out Music is a German independent record label based in Kleve, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, and dedicated to the publication of progressive rock, progressive metal and related styles music albums.-History:...

. A special edition of the album, including a DVD with the film Age 13 on it, was also released. Moore originally planned to tour in support of Graveyard Mountain Home, but nothing materialized. In a 2005 interview, Moore said he was still trying to organize a tour. He was optimistic that he would play "at least a couple shows", but noted that getting the funding to tour made the process "a constant battle".

Moore performed his first solo show at a small club in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

 on March 23, 2007. The hour-long show consisted primarily of material from Graveyard Mountain Home, which was accompanied by projections of the corresponding scenes from Age 13. "I thought that it would be good for the first show to be sort of small and comfortable... so I thought we [could] just have a hundred people," Moore said. "Everybody can see, everybody can be comfortable and sort of enjoy themselves. And if something goes horribly wrong, it only happens in front of a hundred people." Moore hoped the show would form the basis of more elaborate, longer shows. He planned on playing more shows in Turkey, before touring Europe and the rest of the world.

Reception

Graveyard Mountain Home was generally well-received. Rick Anderson of Allmusic regarded the album as "a surprisingly affecting and powerful work." Writing for Sea of Tranquility, Michael Popke noted that "If you listen to Graveyard Mountain Home as a stand-alone piece of music... you probably won't be overly impressed. If, however, you hear this sophisticated mix of dark, ambient post-rock
Post-rock
Post-rock is a subgenre of rock music characterized by the influence and use of instruments commonly associated with rock, but using rhythms and "guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures" not traditionally found in rock...

 and psychedelic sounds while viewing the 1955 public-domain film Age 13, you may consider multi-instrumentalist Kevin Moore a small-time genius." Popke speculated that if Moore created more albums based on obscure films, "he might just alter the face of the genre." Martien Koolen of DPRP described Graveyard Mountain Home as "a typical album for dark, wintry afternoons," although conceded that "it is not [his] cup of tea."

Koolen described the music as having "absolutely no connection or Dream Theater
Dream Theater
Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to further concentrate on the band that would...

 influences whatsoever... Kevin Moore mixes dark ambient, post-rock and psychedelic music to create Chroma Key’s music." He compared the album's sound to that of Tortoise
Tortoise (band)
Tortoise is an American post-rock band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1990.-Music:Tortoise's almost entirely instrumental music defies easy categorization, and the group gained significant attention from their early career. The members have roots in Chicago's fertile music scene, playing in...

, Millenia Nova, Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós is an Icelandic post-rock band with classicaland minimalist elements. The band is known for its ethereal sound, and frontman Jónsi Birgisson's falsetto vocals and use of bowed guitar. In January 2010, the band announced that they will be on hiatus. Since then, it has since been announced...

 and early Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...

. Anderson said that the album "sounds more like a twisted collaboration between Gábor Csupó
Gábor Csupó
Gábor Csupó is a Hungarian-born animator, writer, film director and music producer. He is co-founder of the animation studio Klasky Csupo, which has produced shows like Rugrats, Duckman, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.-Career:...

 and Muslimgauze
Muslimgauze
Muslimgauze was a music project of Bryn Jones , a prolific British ethnic electronica and experimental musician, influenced by conflicts in the Muslim world with an emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

 than anything else you're likely to hear on the InsideOut label."

Rachel Jablonski of Stream of Consciousness described the overall feel of the album as "somewhat calm and bleak. Yet throughout, a distant brightness prevails whether via musical tone or mental imagery in a very subtle way." Anderson said that the music "at times is funky in a glitchy, herky-jerky sort of way... and at others is dark and meditative". He noted that there were some "traditional" songs on the album, singling out "Sad Sad Movie", which he described as "gorgeous". Koolen considered "Human Love" and "Andrew Was Drowning His Stepfather" to be the "weirdest songs... which can hardly be described as music".

Popke noted that although he saw little connection between the music and the film, Moore "expresses the mood of each scene brilliantly." He found that watching Age 13 with Graveyard Mountain Home as the soundtrack enhanced the film: "Age 13 is not necessarily an enjoyable film to watch... but viewing it with the Chroma Key soundtrack makes an odd experience even odder yet wholly compelling, with a mysterious filmstrip allure that freezes a bygone era." Conversely, Jablonski considered Age 13 as an enhancement to the music. "Listening to the album stand alone for the first time you may not be much impressed," she said. "The music is solemn and somewhat confusing as the tracks run from one to another without much build and in seemingly senseless patterns... Having previously seen or simultaneously watching Age 13 most definitely would help the listener along."

Track listing

Source:

Personnel

Source:
  • Kevin Moore
    Kevin Moore
    For the blues singer, see Keb' Mo'.Kevin Moore is a keyboardist, vocalist and composer and founder of the Chroma Key music project. He is also a former member of the American progressive metal band Dream Theater, co-founder of the progressive rock supergroup O.S.I. and has composed film soundtracks...

     – vocals, guitar
    Guitar
    The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

    s, keyboard
    Keyboard instrument
    A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

    , programming
    Programming (music)
    Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices, often sequencers or computer programs, to generate music. Programming is used in nearly all forms of electronic music and in most hip hop music since the 1990s. It is also frequently used in modern pop and rock...

  • Utku Ünal – drums
  • Theron Patterson – programming on tracks 2, 8, and 14; bass
    Bass guitar
    The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

  • Bige Akdeniz – additional vocals on tracks 9 and 13
  • Bob Nekrasov – monologue on track 8
  • Erdem Helvacıoğlu
    Erdem Helvacioglu
    Erdem Helvacioglu is an electronic musician from Turkey. He has collaborated with artists Mick Karn, Kevin Moore, John Wilson, Kazuya Ishigami, and Saadet Turkoz. In addition to his work as an electronic musician, Erdem also composes music for theatre, film and multimedia productions, and produces...

     – additional guitar on track 3

External links

  • Official Chroma Key website, where the entire album is available for streaming
  • Part one and part two of Age 13
    Age 13
    Age 13 is an educational film by Sid Davis released in 1955. It is property of the public domain.The film centers around Andrew, a thirteen-year-old boy stricken with grief over the recent death of his mother. On the day of her passing her radio stops working, and Andrew believes that if he can...

    at the Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

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