Perhaps best known for the NPR series From The Top, musician Christopher O’Riley is far more in-tune with music than most of the world. Not only does he host and mentor young musicians, O’Riley also transcribes and arranges songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire and more for the piano and, more recently, the cello. O’Riley has just released a new album with cellist Matt Haimovitz, Shuffle.Play.Listen. (Oxingale), a tribute to contemporary composers and some of the most modern musicians. Owing to his virtuosic abilities and interesting outlook, we invited O’Riley to guest edit magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
O’Riley: The horror-king mantle worn for the past century by Howard Philips Lovecraft has found its most worthy successor in Thomas Ligotti, a writer wholly consumed by the unseen, thankfully mostly undiscerned, reality behind the scrim of all our lives, a writer of philosophical depth as well as darkness, the Jean-Paul Sartre of 21st-century existential hell horror. Most recently read Songs Of A Dead Dreamer, which I consider the greatest short-story collection in the genre and includes as lead story “The Frolic,” on which a subsequent film has recently become available. I’ve devoured all his extant, printed works, including Noctuary, The Nightmare Factory, Grimscribe: His Life And Works and my first foray into Ligotti’s work, his own twisted version of The Organization Man: My Work Is Not Yet Done.
Video after the jump.
One reply on “From The Desk Of Christopher O’Riley: Thomas Ligotti’s “The Frolic””
I’ve recently discovered Ligotti and have been immersed in the unsettling world of his stories for the past few months. He is definitely this century’s answer to Poe and Lovecraft. His stuff can really go to work on you.