Beyond the scope of the naked eye lies a hidden world...a fantastic world of microscopic wonders that test the limits of one's imagination. Within a drop of pond water the size of a pin head are organisms that are both magnificent and bizarre...grotesque, yet elegant. These creatures are actors on a microscope's stage, without moral conscience, free will, or concern for human kind. They thrive in a deterministic world dictated by the vicious rules of survival and automatic response. Yet now they dance to the music of the avant-garde!.

Krispen Hartung - Music, video production, and microscopy

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Fremmed Sinn

This song title is roughly translated as "Alien Mind" in Norwegian. Based on discussions with my co-workers from Norway, "Fremmed" can mean alien, foreign, or stranger, and "Sinn" can also be translated as "sense" as in mind sense versus the brain. "Fremmed Sinn" is not a perfect translation for the Alien Mind I am alluding to in the song, but with the appropriate context setting, it seems fitting. It may seem silly to go through all this trouble to formulate a title that most English speakers can't translate, but my main point in doing so was to stir curiosity and lead the listener to these supplementary notes, in order to illustrate the full meaning of the song. The title is just an instrument to draw attention to the Scandinavian imagery that I hoped to associate with the composition.

Moreover, the song is meant to conjures up imagery of a deep, dark, and cold Scandinavian sea...lying at its most abysmal depths, miles below, is an alien life form, awaking from a billion years of dormancy. This menacing, polymorphous entity crawls up the ocean slope to slither upon the icy rocks and carry out its predetermined destiny...to telepathically undermine human kind.

In this song, I tap into many of the typically unused sounds of the acoustic guitar. For instance, I was dragging my finger nails along the tightly wound stings between the guitar tuners and the end of the neck to produce that miniature harp-like sound (which many guitar players, including myself, learned from Randy Rhodes in the 80s from the beginning of Ozzy Osbourn's Crazy Train). Or I'm gently scraping my finger from one end of a string to the other to get that ascending scratch sound with echo.

The relationship to H.P. Lovecraft here is only incidental, in that this story exhibits similarities with the Cthulhu Mythos. For example, Cthulhu lies dormant at the bottom of the sea (the Pacific Ocean), but in his tomb in the sunken city, R'lyeh. As in the case of the polymorphous monster in "Fremmed Sinn", Cthulhu also rise from the depths of the sea to telepathically influence human beings, but he does so in his slumber, in his and his victim's dreams. In "Fremmed Sinn", the monster crawls to the surface; in the Cthulhu Mythos, R'lyeh rises to the surface of the ocean with Cthulhu in is tomb....and so on.

Lovecraft Resurrected

Originally titled Lovecraft in Ozarks, this composition spawned within me a vision of H.P. Lovecraft crawling up through ancient, vermin invested soil, emerging into the dark and humid night...his twisted majesty surveys his surroundings and conjures his spirits for a reunion...they confide and conspire, the bells of Cthulhu jingle as if a calling....Lovecraft makes his descent into an Ozark village...the horrific nightmare takes life again. This is my favorite song of the CD. The place that it takes me emotionally and intellectually goes above and beyond my admiration of the science fiction/horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. This song transports me to a sort of netherworld, to a place of childhood wonder and fascination, through visions of archetype fears and bizarre, twisted oddities of life. Honestly, I don't even remember recording this song. It was probably one of those late nights when I picked up my guitar in the dark, with only my computer screen and electronic gadget LEDs lighting my basement studio, pressed record, and played the inevitable.

The Rise of Cthulhu (Music) / Gene Flow (Video)

The music in this video is from the song "The Rise of Cthulhu," which I recorded before the production of the video. The song is my musical depiction of Cthylhu in his tomb in the city of R'lyeh, rising from the depths of the ocean....what you see in the video is spermatozoa swimming upstream in moving seminal fluid (400X Magnification). I'd like to invite viewers of the video to use their imagination and create their own intepretation of the connection between the music and imagery.

A Most Peculiar Worm & the Rotifer, Scorpio, and the Probe

These videos are sample of a music video DVD "Microscopic Horrors." Click here for more information.

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Horror Magazine (Italy)

English Translation

The music of the Great Ancients

Online are the music and video productions created by Krispen Hartung and based on the imagination of the Master of Providence.

A Vorticella or a Lovecraft creature? Krispen Hartung is a U.S. musician from Boise, Idaho, who has produced diverse music projects for many years.

At first listen, the acoustic guitar style of Hartung can be erroneously classified in the vast New Age sea, but if you pay more attention to his compositions you’ll notice something extraneous and somewhat disturbing, both in his technique (some passages could remember Randy Rhodes) and in his themes.

Just regarding these, some of his new productions, all easily downloadable from his own site and highly influenced by Lovecraft themes, are really intriguing.

Fremmen Sinn means "alien mind" in Norwegian and tells the story of a monster that crawls from the sea to dominate human minds with its telepathic powers.

Lovecraft Resurrected, as it is easy to understand from the title, talks about the return of the Providence writer from his death to guide a horde of spirits and rule a city.

The Rise of Cthulhu is a hallucinated musical trip that tries to describe the rise of the R’lyeh city from the ocean depths to the surface. In this case the musical piece is accompanied by a really experimental video that tries to associate to the musical notes the image of a... We won’t tell you anything else, inviting you to visit his site.

La musica dei Grandi Antichi

Online le produzioni sonore create da Krispen Hartung e basate sull'immaginario del Maestro di Providence.

Una Vorticella o una creatura lovecraftiana Krispen Hartung è un musicista statunitense che dalla sua base di Boise, Idaho lancia da anni anomali progetti sonori.
Lo stile di chitarra acustica adottato da Hartung può al primo ascolto venire erroneamente classificato nel vasto mare della New Age ma se si presta maggiore attenzione alle sue composizioni si noteranno elementi estranei e perturbanti, sia per quanto concerne la tecnica (alcune cose possono ricordare Randy Rhodes) che per quel che riguarda le tematiche.
Proprio a questo riguardo risulatano assai intriganti alcune sue nuove produzioni, tutte facilmente scaricabili dal sito personale e fortemente influenzate da tematiche lovecraftiane.

Fremmed Sinn significa mente aliena in norvegese e narra di un mostruoso essere che emerge dal mare per dominare telepaticamente le menti umane.

Lovecraft Resurrected, come è facile immaginare dal titolo, prevede il ritorno dello scrittore di Providence dall'oltretomba per guidare una schiera di spiriti e soggiogare una città.

The Rise of Cthulhu è un allucinato viaggio musicale che tenta di descrivere la risalita della città di R'lyeh dal limo del fondo oceanico fino alla superficie. In questo caso il brano è accompagnato anche da un video assai sperimentale che tenta di associare alle note la figura di un... Non vi riveliamo altro, invitandovi a visitare il sito.