Bean Sidhe x Oramunde Commentary

Oramunde is a film rendition of the theme from the opera Pelleas et Melisande by Maurice Maeterlinck about a forbidden love between the two title characters. Oramunde was filmed in 1933 and I was captivated the first time I saw it just months ago. The flowing white veil hints at innocence but is a somewhat macabre covering of the entire face and body, suggesting something more complicated; perhaps dangerous. As she dances through forest and seashore the veil becomes soiled and torn. Her expressions seem to dim until the final scene when she boards a small boat oared by a figure in an equally macabre black veil/robe. In this final scene as it floats away we are shown a parallel to the mystery and beauty in Arnold Bocklin's infamous painting, Isle of the Dead.

I titled this Bean Sidhe, Irish for banshee, not because that was the writer or director's intent but rather because the theme seemed to be emerging as I tailored the song to it. The figure's neutered notions of yelling/shrieking suggest an intent I imagine to be a foretelling of death. But only the sea listens as the waves become increasingly violent; perhaps beckoning.

I had recorded heavily delayed/distorted bass guitar for this before Stygian Bough left for their European tour with Wolves in the Throne Room and Incantation. My plan was to work synthesizer lines into them and flesh the song out accordingly. But as I tinkered with the synthesizer the bass lines became less important, almost a hindrance. The harsh distortion and delayed rhythm didn't seem to match the flowing veil or crashing waves against rock. I realized this needed something that flowed in the same spirit of those elements and I think the long, drawn out synthesizer melody better captured the melancholy of the character. The feedback of the bass still creeps in to add menace and paired well with the scenes where the veiled figure shrieks into the void.

As the song blossomed I began to see her as a sort of a bean sidhe that had no one left to call out to in their own death; coming to terms with her own death. It is a heartbreaking story to consider the grief and passing of the ghost whose only purpose left is to announce our own death to us.

Or perhaps this is a happy story?