Artist description Oozing out of Toronto like blood from a fatal head wound. CRIMESCENE is a creepy new dark-ambient electronica syndicate from the city David Cronenberg calls home. Those who are bold and strong of stomach may find themselves dancing to the textured beats and eerie melodies that eminate from CRIMESCENE's debut CD "Rapture". Others may prefer simply to sit in a dimly-lit room and listen to the ten macabre tracks while imagining themselves within a spine-tingling thriller or a phantasmagoric science-fiction landscape.

Music Style Dark ambient horror electronic

Musical Influences Brian Eno, Coil, Scorn, Photek, The Beach Boys

Similar Artists we don't sound like many others.

Artist History The chief perpetrator of CRIMESCENE is Toronto writer/composer Richard Feren, who established Haemorrhage Music Products in 1987 as a source for weird independent music, up until now produced on cassettes. Mr. Feren is a classically-trained violinist, former college radio DJ, author of three produced plays, and an award-winning theatre composer who has crafted soundscapes for acclaimed theatre personalities Daniel MacIvor, Sky Gilbert, Michael Hollingsworth, Daniel Brooks, and many others.  He is also contributing his talent for textural melodies to various independent films.  CRIMESCENE is the corpse-riddled intersection of Mr. Feren's life-long interest in horror films, science-fiction, emotionally suggestive music and dark humour. We at Haemorrhage Music Products hope that it will infect you in the most scintillating manner.

Instruments The bones of the damned

Albums Rapture, Fearosphere EP

Press Reviews Crimescene - Rapture (Haemorrhage Music) Inspired by Richard Feren's (aka Crimescene) interest in the horror and sci-fi realms, Rapture is an aural collage of dark, largely electronic-based tunes running the gamut of the genre from ambient to industrial and electronica. Featuring snippets of everything from Alfred Hitchcock in the cleverly done "Master Of Suspense" and voices from Vertigo in "Find The Key", as well as an excellent reinterpretation of the title music from the film The Night Walker, Rapture is the perfect soundtrack to the horror movie in your mind. (Haemorrhage Music, 69 Westmoreland Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6H 2Z8) -Geoff Melton from Ear Candy Masters of suspense Fearsome sounds by Crimescene and Walls of Jericho BY ERIN HAWKINS Have you ever had the urge to run up to that permanently happy subway busker who only plays "Wild World" and bludgeon him to death with his own guitar? Ever fantasize about Celine Dion walking out at the Oscars with her Valentino gown dripping pig's blood, or Rita MacNeil tripping on a cord and crushing Ashley MacIsaac like a piece of tenderized veal? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you're an antisocial sicko fed up with pukey Canadians. It also means you'd get off on the humor and horror of two Toronto-based musical projects you'll never find sucking up to the CBC: Crimescene and Walls of Jericho. "I've always liked tasteless humor," says Crimescene's puppetmaster Richard Feren, whose macabre Rapture is out on his Haemorrhage imprint via Plan Eleven Distribution (plan11@interlog. com). "The old Haemorrhage logo was this guy in pain and the top of his skull was open with a geyser of blood coming out in this friendly cartoon kind of way." In the six years he's been involved in theatre, Feren has developed a reputation as one of the city's coolest sound designers, having worked extensively with Buddies in Bad Times, Platform 9 and Da Da Kamera, whom he's currently working with on a new production, Monster. But it's his deep-rooted love of sci-fi and horror that provided the impetus for Crimescene. Feren, a classically trained violinist, first became involved in music as a pre-teen in Guelph, when he weaselled his way into the college radio station and began making tapes. "When I was 13 I discovered the Residents," he says. "Ralph Records was a big inspiration for me." Using a Fostex four-track recorder, Feren began churning out Haemorrhage cassettes in 1987 -- he's since created some 35 tapes which range from jangly guitar-rock parodies to spacy surrealist pastiche (under the name A Very Persistent Dwarf). Crimescene, which started around three years ago, is the latest installment. "Some of the songs are like soundtracks for the movies in my head and some of them are connected to actual movies," Feren says of the songs on Rapture. "The bass and piano lines on 'The Night Walker' were lifted directly from the film by William Castle, who made these wonderful low-budget black-and-white thrillers in the mid-'60s. They were B-movies, but they were quality films. There's a sense of real joy that he's invited you along for this scary ride. It's that joy of being creeped out I'm trying to express with Crimescene." Though he samples the voice of Alfred Hitchcock on "Master of Suspense" and steals a few words from Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, Feren says he's equally into films by bottom-feeders like John Waters and Herschell Gordon Lewis. However, he does have a few favorites by the chubby director whose mantra was "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible." "I found The Birds really fascinating," he says, "because there is no music and yet Hitchcock still managed to create suspense. I don't know how many other directors can do that. I liked Spellbound, which is about these psychiatrists who spout theories that are quite laughable now. It has to do with dreams and memory and borders on the paranormal. I also enjoyed Frenzy, which a lot of people didn't like because they thought it was uncharacteristically violent and sleazy. I liked it for that very reason."

Location Toronto, Ontario - Canada

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