Not to be confused with the Sopor Aeternus demo tape, Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

Es reiten die Toten so schnell... is the first demo tape by darkwave band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows'. Es reiten... was issued in a hand-numbered limited edition of 50 copies in 1989. A further two demo tapes, Rufus and Till Time and Times Are Done, have not yet been released in any...

"Es reiten die Toten so schnell" (or: the Vampyre sucking at his own Vein) (German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

: "The Dead ride so fast"; usually referred to as "Es reiten die Toten so schnell") is the seventh album by darkwave

Darkwave

Dark Wave or darkwave is a music genre that began in the late 1970s, coinciding with the popularity of New Wave and post-punk. Building on those basic principles, dark wave added dark, introspective lyrics and an undertone of sorrow for some bands...

 act Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows

Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows

Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows is a darkwave musical project based in Frankfurt, founded in 1989 by Anna-Varney Cantodea...

, and was released in 2003. A double vinyl edition and an A5-sized

ISO 216

ISO 216 specifies international standard paper sizes used in most countries in the world today. It defines the "A" and "B" series of paper sizes, including A4, the most commonly available size...

 boxed set edition was released, in limited quantities of 666 and 1,999 copies, respectively. The double vinyl edition came with a poster, t-shirt, postcards, communion wafers

Eucharist

The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...

 and "authenticated" graveyard

Graveyard

A graveyard is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones...

 soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

.

Overview

For "Es reiten die Toten so schnell", Anna-Varney Cantodea went back to her demo tape of the same name

Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

Es reiten die Toten so schnell... is the first demo tape by darkwave band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows'. Es reiten... was issued in a hand-numbered limited edition of 50 copies in 1989. A further two demo tapes, Rufus and Till Time and Times Are Done, have not yet been released in any...

 and re-recorded all of its songs; the first seven tracks of this album consist of the demo tape in its original sequence. The rest of the album features re-recordings of the bonus tracks that were included on the first Sopor Aeternus album, "...Ich töte mich jedesmal aufs Neue, doch ich bin unsterblich, und ich erstehe wieder auf; in einer Vision des Untergangs...", along with a handful of new songs. "Birth - Fiendish Figuration", Sopor Aeternus' signature song from their first album, appears again in its fourth incarnation on a record. The original version of "Reprise" was a spoken word piece featuring a line from the bridge of "Dead Souls".

John A. Rivers, producer for Swell Maps

Swell Maps

Swell Maps were an experimental English rock group of the 1970s from Birmingham that foreshadowed the birth of post-punk.Influenced by the disparate likes of T.Rex and the German progressive outfit, Can, they created a new soundscape that would be heavily mined by others in the post-punk era...

, Dead Can Dance

Dead Can Dance

Dead Can Dance are an ethereal neoclassical duo formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981, by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. The band relocated to London in May 1982 and disbanded in 1998. Their 1996 album Spiritchaser reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums Chart...

 and Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets (band)

Love and Rockets were an English alternative rock band formed in 1985 by former Bauhaus members Daniel Ash , David J , and Kevin Haskins . Former Bauhaus vocalist Peter Murphy had embarked on a solo career after Bauhaus split in 1983...

, was brought in to oversee production on "Es reiten...". The album was recorded in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, as opposed to Sopor Aeternus' home country of Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Track listing

All songs written, composed and arranged by Anna-Varney Cantodea.

1. "Omen Sinistrum" – 2:46
2. "Dead Souls" – 7:04
3. "Stake of my Soul" – 3:01
4. "Beautiful Thorn" – 5:14
5. "Baptisma" – 6:37
6. "The Feast of Blood" – 3:35
7. "Sopor Fratrem Mortis Est" – 5:33
8. "The Dreadful Mirror" – 5:53
9. "Reprise" – 3:41
10. "Birth - Fiendish Figuration" – 2:52
11. "Penance & Pain" – 4:26
12. "Holy Water Moonlight" – 5:11
13. "Infant" – 0:51
14. "Über den Fluss" – 2:04
15. "Dark Delight" – 6:43

Personnel

• Chris Wilson: Violin
  Violin
  The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
  
  
• Elizabeth Tollington: Cello
  Cello
  The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
  
  
• Marcus Cornall: Double bass
  Double bass
  The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
  
  , electric bass
  Electric Bass
  Electric bass can mean:*Electric upright bass, the electric version of a double bass*Electric bass guitar*Bass synthesizer*Big Mouth Billy Bass, a battery-powered singing fish...
  
  
• Tonia Price: Clarinet
  Clarinet
  The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
  
  
• Eugene de la Fontaine: Oboe
  Oboe
  The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
  
  
• Eric Santie-Laa: Cor anglais
  Cor anglais
  The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
  
  
• Doreena Gor: Bassoon
  Bassoon
  The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
  
  
• James Cunningham: Trumpet
  Trumpet
  The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
  
  
• Julian Turner: Trombone
  Trombone
  The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
  
  
• Joan Sweet: Tuba
  Tuba
  The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
  
  
• Paul Brook: Drums
• Anna-Varney Cantodea: Vocals, all other instruments and programming