Like a Corpse standing in Desperation

Like a Corpse standing in Desperation is the title of a career-spanning rarities box set 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...

band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows that was released in 2005. The recordings span fifteen years of "original demos, rarities & documented failures." Re-issued for the first time are the out-of-print EP

Extended play

An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh

Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh is the first EP by Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows, and was released in 1995 as a companion to the album "Todeswunsch - Sous le soleil de Saturne". Only 3,000 copies were pressed...

and remix album

Remix album

A remix album is an album consisting mostly of remixes or re-recorded versions of a music artists' earlier released material.One of the earliest remix albums was 1971's Aerial Pandemonium Ballet by Harry Nilsson, which was released by Nilsson after the successes of Everybody's Talkin and The Point!...

"Voyager - The Jugglers of Jusa

Voyager - The Jugglers of Jusa

Voyager: The Jugglers of Jusa is the first remix album by darkwave band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows, and was released in 1997. It was released as a companion to The inexperienced Spiral Traveller , also released that year, and primarily features alternate versions of songs from that...

", along with the never before heard 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...

and the extensively bootlegged "Flowers in Formaldehyde

Flowers in Formaldehyde

"Flowers in Formaldehyde" is the second EP by darkwave band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows, and was released in 2004 as a companion to the album "La Chambre D'Echo" - Where the dead Birds sing...

Overview

Like a Corpse... was created in response to the high prices fans would have to pay on eBay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

for bootleged

Bootleg recording

A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...

copies of out of print EPs

Extended play

and albums. John A. Rivers, who personally oversaw the remastering of the first six Sopor Aeternus albums, as well as the two to follow (2003's "Es reiten die Toten so schnell" (or: the Vampyre sucking at his own Vein)

Es reiten die Toten so schnell

"Es reiten die Toten so schnell" is the seventh album by darkwave act Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows, and was released in 2003...

and 2004's "La Chambre D'Echo" - Where the dead Birds sing) supervised and remastered the contents of this box set. The set also included the concurrently released single, "The Goat" / "The Bells have stopped ringing"

The Goat / The Bells Have Stopped Ringing

"The Goat" / "The Bells have stopped ringing" is the first single by the darkwave band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows. The two songs are outtakes from 2000, during the sessions for "Songs from the inverted Womb"...

.

Barring the aforementioned single and demo tape, four previously unreleased songs were included: "White Body", "Watch your Step", "As Fire kissed the Echo Twins" and "The Widow's Dream"; the last of which is based on the Rozz Williams

Rozz Williams

Rozz Williams was an American vocalist and musician of several varieties, most famous for fronting the band Christian Death, then later Shadow Project with musician Eva O, though his main project throughout his career was the industrial, Premature Ejaculation...

song "A Widow's Dream". "White Body" is sourced from one of the two still-unreleased demo tapes by Sopor Aeternus.

The box set contains three CDs, packaged in their own hardcover booklet; the book also includes liner notes by Anna-Varney Cantodea herself, as well as "the only interview/publication that I have kept over the years." Also included is a working facsimile of the original cassette tape for Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

, complete with both original and re-packaged artwork (on both sides); two DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s (one in NTSC

NTSC

NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...

format, the other in PAL

PAL

PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...

) containing five Sopor videos; a T-shirt, a poster, a sticker, patches, buttons, a decorative attachment for a funeral wreath and a signed and numbered certificate of authenticity.

Of interest to some listeners are the two different mixes of the demo tape material. The original demo appears on the first disc of the collection in a remastered format, removing tape hiss and improving dynamics; the cassette included in the set contains the songs as originally mixed. The songs from Jekura - Deep the Eternal Forest and Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh were also remastered in a similar fashion. Also of note are the two versions of the video for "Deep the eternal Forest"; one, with Anna-Varney Cantodea in black robes, is found on the NTSC DVD; while the other, with Cantodea in white robes, is found on the PAL DVD. The menus of each disc are different as well.

Disc 1: Original DEMO Recordings

Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

"Omen Sinistrum (original demo)" – 2:15
"Dead Souls (original demo)" – 6:41
"Stake of my Soul (original demo)" – 1:14
"Beautiful Thorn (original demo)" – 5:09
"Baptisma (original demo)" – 5:01
"The Feast of Blood (original demo)" – 4:07
"Sopor Fratrem Mortis Est (original demo)" – 4:55
"Reprise (original demo)" – 0:16

"White Body (previously unreleased demo, 1992)" – 3:13

Jekura - Deep the Eternal Forest

"Diô N'arâp
Paranoid (song)
"Paranoid" is a song by the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, featured on their second album Paranoid . It is the first single from the album, while the B-side is the song "The Wizard". It reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and number 61 on the Billboard Hot 100...

(The unability within Time)" (Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne
John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne is an English vocalist, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, whose radically different, intentionally dark, harder sound helped spawn the heavy metal...

, Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi
Anthony Frank "Tony" Iommi is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as the founding member of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and its sole continual member through multiple personnel changes.Iommi is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential guitarists in...

, Geezer Butler
Geezer Butler
Geezer Butler is an English musician and songwriter. Butler is best known as the bassist and lyricist of heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He was also involved in Heaven & Hell from 2006 to 2010.-Career:Butler formed his first band, Rare Breed, with old friend John "Ozzy" Osbourne in the autumn of...

, Bill Ward) – 3:10
"Tabor C'âlan O'itanâ
A National Acrobat
"A National Acrobat" is the second song from Black Sabbath's fifth album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. It features a distinctive mid-tempo harmonized opening riff, a psychedelic breakdown riff, and a classic Tony Iommi guitar solo...

(My Womb is barren, but I can conceive)" (Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne
John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne is an English vocalist, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, whose radically different, intentionally dark, harder sound helped spawn the heavy metal...

, Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi
Anthony Frank "Tony" Iommi is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as the founding member of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and its sole continual member through multiple personnel changes.Iommi is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential guitarists in...

, Geezer Butler
Geezer Butler
Geezer Butler is an English musician and songwriter. Butler is best known as the bassist and lyricist of heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He was also involved in Heaven & Hell from 2006 to 2010.-Career:Butler formed his first band, Rare Breed, with old friend John "Ozzy" Osbourne in the autumn of...

, Bill Ward) – 7:10
"Deep the eternal Forest" – 1:46
"Watch your Step (previously unreleased demo, 1994)" – 3:37
"Introduction - The Termite People" – 6:45

Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh

"Anima I" – 0:50
"Shadowsphere II" – 2:31
"Saltatio Crudelitatis" – 5:37
"Freitod-Phantasien" – 3:33
"Anima II" – 3:05
"Tanz der Grausamkeit (recorded on the 28th of October 1993)" – 5:27

"As Fire kissed the Echo Twins (previously unreleased demo, 1994)" – 1:49

Disc 2: "Voyager - The Jugglers of Jusa"

"The inexperienced Spiral Traveller *a fragment* II" – 5:07
"Ein freundliches Wort... (...hat meine Seele berührt.) (defined and fragile)" – 5:10
"Memalon II" – 7:25
"The Innocence of Devils: "Alone" (E. A. Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

)" – 6:27
"Modela est
Das Model
"Das Model" is a song recorded by the electro-pop group Kraftwerk in 1978; written by musicians Ralf Hütter and Karl Bartos, with artist Emil Schult collaborating on the lyrics. It is featured on the album, Die Mensch-Maschine; English version title: The Man-Machine...

" (Ralf Hütter
Ralf Hütter
Ralf Hütter is the lead singer, keyboardist, and reportedly leader of the electronic-music band Kraftwerk. Since the departure of Florian Schneider in 2008, he is also the group's sole remaining founding member....

, Karl Bartos
Karl Bartos
Karl Bartos was, between 1975 and 1990, along with Wolfgang Flür, an electronic percussionist in the electronic-music group Kraftwerk. He was originally recruited to play on its US "Autobahn" tour...

, Emil Schult
Emil Schult
Emil Schult is a German painter, poet and musician.He is most famous for his collaborations with the electronic music band Kraftwerk. He has created most of their sleeve designs since 1973...

) – 4:35
"Birth (instr.)" – 2:49
"Feralia Genitalia (Arrival of the Jugglers)" – 6:30
"Menuetto" – 1:26
"Saturn-Impressionen (Jusa, Jusa)" – 2:48
"May I kiss your Wound ? (Saturn:Orion)" – 6:05
"Alone II" – 6:55
"The inexperienced Spiral Traveller *a fragment* II (instr.)" – 5:07

"The Widow's Dream - fragment (previously unreleased demo, 1999)" – 1:48

"The Goat" / "The Bells have stopped ringing"

The Goat / The Bells Have Stopped Ringing

"The Goat (previously unreleased Outtake, 2000)" – 4:11
"The Bells have stopped ringing (previously unreleased, 2000) – 5:05

Disc 3: "Flowers in Formaldehyde"

"In an Hour darkly" – 4:58
"The Conqueror Worm
The Conqueror Worm
"The Conqueror Worm" is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe about human mortality and the inevitability of death. It was first published separately in Graham's Magazine in 1843, but quickly became associated with Poe's short story "Ligeia" after Poe added the poem to a revised publication of the story in 1845...

(by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

)" – 3:28
"Minnesang" – 3:36
"Von der Einfalt" – 1:40
"Hearse-shaped Basins of darkest Matter (instrumental)" – 3:39
"Leeches & Deception (instrumental)" – 6:59
"Extract from: The Voices of the Dead" – 0:58
"Do you know my Name ? / What has happened while we slept ?" – 5:06
""La Chambre D'Echo" album trailer (enhanced track)" – 0:42

Cassette: Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

Both sides contain the same material.

"Omen Sinistum" – 2:15
"Dead Souls" – 6:41
"Stake of my Soul" – 1:14
"Beautiful Thorn" – 5:09
"Baptisma" – 5:01
"The Feast of Blood" – 4:07
"Sopor Fratrem Mortis Est" – 4:55
"Reprise" – 0:16

DVD: SOPOR

"The Goat" – 4:11
"...And Bringer of Sadness" – 6:45
"Deep the eternal Forest" – 1:46
"The Dog Burial" – 1:15
"The Bells have stopped ringing" – 5:05

Personnel

Es reiten die Toten so schnell...

Varney: vocals and instruments
Holger: instruments

Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh, Jekura - Deep the Eternal Forest and all outtakes

Varney: All vocals, instruments and programming

"Voyager - The Jugglers of Jusa"

Una Fallada: 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....
Matthias Eder: 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...
Gerrit Fischer: Guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
Constanze Spengler: Lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
Anna-Varney Cantodea: Vocals, all other instruments and programming

"Flowers in Formaldehyde"

Susannah Simmons: 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...
Miriam Hughes: Flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
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...
Andrew Pettitt: 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...
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...
Tim Barber: Trumpet
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...
Anthony Bartley: 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

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