Vulcanella Self Destruct

Late. A gloomy evening. Your car breaks down on an unfamiliar perilous back-road. A cold wind picks up, rolling in heavy clouds. You make your way up a leafy driveway to an grim towering mansion. You knock nervously upon the massive door. An answer. Alluring ones soothe and entice you within, arousing with smooth attractiveness. Strange and mysterious. Your mind is filled with sweetness, with the fog of safety. Seduced in the storm. Time becomes lost, yet some vague fear is there… Lightning strikes beyond. Panic can not longer be ignored. Startled, you run outside as the storm builds to climax. You dart aimlessly like a spooked horse, desperate in the dark. Flashes of light so close, daring to pierce the skin. And then, over your shoulder, you notice them. Cloaked almost in complete blackness, ruby red within, their beauty still calls to you. But, upon their faces is bestial rage and hunger. As they charge upon you, horrendously screaming, you see the blood dripping from their mouths. Run! Run for your life! Blood! Lightning! Teeth! Fleeting hope sparks between pounding heartbeats: that these wild ones may expire themselves before they can reach you. Do you dare look back and check? Are they still there? The sky cracks open! Too much tonight…

Vulcanella originally composed by Magic Dirt, with lyrics and vocals by Adalita (2003)
Remixing, additional composition and mastering by Mika Former (2003 and 2024-25)
Artwork by Mika Former, using a still from the film Vampyres (1974)
Guillotine sample by newlocknew: https://freesound.org/s/575795/ — License: Attribution 4.0

With thanks to DarknessRising and RezDragon for mixing/mastering feedback. This one was very difficult to pull together.

In 2003 national radio broadcaster Triple J ran a series online remix competitions. One of the rounds involved a chance to remix ‘Vulcanella’ by beloved aussie rock band Magic Dirt. I had a crack at this and alas: no luck.

The remix was made while I was composing my old album ‘2 Smargaid Maerd’, and while it felt like it belonged in that particular sonic universe, I never released Vulcanella Self Destruct officially. It would have sat as a bridge between the Consciousness and Unconsciousness halves of the album, with the annihilation crescendo drawing heavily from Nine Inch Nails remix albums Further Down The Spiral and Fixed. For over 20 years the project sat on the computer collecting digital dust.

Recently, while going through a lot of personal changes, I started to remember Adalita’s vocal and lyrics. In re-visiting her poetry, I felt I more deeply understood the emotion and message – a storm of destructive dysfunction. I realised that while my old remix had partially conveyed that tempest, here was an opportunity to take it further, to express how I feel now. While there’s no more remix competition to win, I’ve decided to have another crack at it: improving the sound, adding to it, going deeper, sharpening razer teeth, exploring the vampyric self-annihilation, pushing sonic limits, and bloody crossing boundaries until it is too much tonight. Better late than never.

Mika <3