Afterwards, Vargo and Midnight Syndicate chose to work separately of one another on future projects. The heavy metal band King Diamond also featured tracks from Born of the Night as opening music for their 2000 US tour. Both albums were featured as official soundtracks for Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights, and used in several other major theme parks during Halloween, such as Busch Gardens, Cedar Point, Kennywood Park, and Thorpe Park's Fright Nights event. Again, the songs were titled after Vargo's artworks. Douglas and Goszka wrote all of the music for this album while Vargo wrote and performed the opening narration and theme story. In March 2000, Realm of Shadows followed suit with the same flavor of dark instrumental music and another gothic setting. It was Midnight Syndicate's first critically acclaimed gothic-horror soundtrack and proved to be an instant success, establishing Midnight Syndicate's trademark sound. Born of the Night was independently released in September 1998 through Vargo's Monolith Graphics and Douglas' Entity Productions, hitting the horror market just in time for the Halloween season. The album and songs were also titled after several of Vargo's most popular paintings. Douglas and Goszka wrote and performed the music on the album while Vargo served as executive producer and creative director of the project, as well as writing and performing the vocals and narrations, and designing the cover art and packaging. Together, they created Born of the Night, a groundbreaking album that appealed to fans of gothic music, the horror genre, and haunted attractions. In 1998, Douglas teamed up with gothic fantasy artist Joseph Vargo, and the two decided to create an exclusively dark-themed instrumental Midnight Syndicate album, "the result of Joseph Vargo's desire to produce an album that people could play in the background of their Halloween parties." Vargo developed the storyline and concept of a musical journey through a haunted castle, with the music reflecting his gothic artwork, "in addition to being integral to many of the creative decisions on the album." Composer Gavin Goszka, formerly a solo artist in a project called Lore, also joined Douglas and Vargo in the new Midnight Syndicate line-up. The show included a blending of original short films, live music, animation, and stage performers. In March 1998, a multimedia show was produced by Douglas and his company, Entity Productions, to support the album. Movie-style sound effects were employed in some tracks. Musically, the album contained an eclectic blend of styles including everything from dark instrumental music (of which three tracks appeared on future releases), rock, rock-a-billy, techno, rap, new-age, humor-pop, jazz, and space. The goal of the music is to stimulate the imaginations of listeners so that they are able to transport themselves to worlds or movies of their own creation." a compilation of soundtracks to movies that do not exist. "a blending of movie soundtrack music and pop music . Cine-fusion is described in the album's liner notes as Douglas coined the term cine-fusion to describe the album. Contributors included Scott Angus, Mark Rakocy, Dennis Carleton, Jamie Barbour, Ray Portler, the rap act Dark Side, and Christopher Robichaud. A majority of music on the album was written, arranged, and performed by Edward Douglas. Midnight Syndicate's self-titled debut album was released the following year. History Formation and early years (1996–1998) Ĭomposer/ filmmaker Edward Douglas formed Midnight Syndicate in 1996 shortly after releasing a micro-budget, direct-to-video horror film called The Dead Matter (1996) which he directed and scored and would later remake. Their songs are characterized by a blend of instrumental music and sound effects and are commonly used to provide atmosphere during the Halloween season, in haunted attractions, theme parks, and in the role-playing game industry. The band refers to their CDs as "soundtracks for the imagination" or "soundtracks to imaginary films". Midnight Syndicate is an American musical duo that has been working primarily in the genre of neoclassical dark ambient music since 1997 and is based in Chardon, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.
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