released April 26, 2020

* Album cover art © Terry Whidborne
* A separate hand drawn illustration appears as you click on each of the 12 tracks © Terry Whidborne


Produced during the time of the new plague by the spectre collector - using slightly rewritten nursery rhymes in the Public Domain (except 'Some Monsters' - written by the spectre collector)
Mother Spectre's Cursery Rhymes ©

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The Spectre Collector has created an unnerving and upsetting piece of work. It is alarming that such a mind exists in this world. Pour into a jar some Grimm’s fairy-tales, add a splash of Lovecraft and a whole lot of Spectre Collector and you end up with an alarming album that unsettles the nerves and leaves the listener in a state of fright. From the onset a musical landscape is set in motion. The Spectre has embedded all the tracks with the sound of a scratched wax record playing endlessly in the background. It has the potential of unsettling the listener, as it did with this one. The listener is immediately taken into a particular space and time; the past.

This audiophile has had the opportunity on several occasions to listen to the album during the witching hours. As he strolled down the street at 1 am in the morning, he had his headphones on and the Cursery Rhymes playing on his smartphone. The walk that he had taken hundreds of times before morphed into a stranger land which enveloped him and increased his awareness. The trees that he had seen countless times previously were now inhabited by ghostly creatures leaning over branches and staring directly at him.

Goblins seemed to appear out of drain holes. And at every zebra crossing, malignant skeletal figures sauntered along the crossing with ghastly expressions on their skull and fire in their vacant eyes, as they stared directly toward him. With ever step he took he felt a shiver of nerves emanating from his neck and moving to his shoulders, when occasionally he would turn…. as he felt something wicked, walking behind him.

I won’t speak directly to all the tracks, as my editor has only given me 700 odd words in this publication, but I will speak of a few.

Jack and Jill turns the old Grimm fairy tale on its back. Quite the experience to hear that Jack and Jill appear to their mother as ghosts or zombies. It made me jump a little and feel anxious. In particular, it was the musical landscape, the strings (matched with the narrative) that left me on the point of panic.

An Old Woman is an outstanding track. Is it the creepy piano playing endlessly or the ghostly voices emanating, not from hell but from purgatory? No, it is more than that. It is the narrative. Listen to this story again and again and you will see what I mean. Reader, after listening to this, I would never leave my children in childcare, for you never know what might occur.

Some Monsters is a freaky track. There is an intensity in the music panorama that made this listener feel uncomfortable and long for the ending, which is the bit to wait for… when you realise…. that the monster could be the person looking at you in the mirror.

Rock-a-by-baby (for those with children please do not listen to this track. It is the one track you should avoid.) The innocence of the child in this track is destroyed by a devilish narrative that appears to make the claim that this child may perish – quickly and badly. Implied in this track is a mother who will descend into madness and never recover as her child departs and she – will fall, continually - into a pit of sadness.

When you hear Peter Peeper, Chimney Sweeper, you might get an understanding of (in a pre-DNA collecting world), how a man’s wife may have been reported missing, never to be found. I am not sure if this narrative reflects, in fact, what might have occurred but, after listening to this recording I believe it; that he killed her and his other wife and perhaps other ones after that.

As a music critic, I would like to state that I have been a fan of The Spectre Collector for a number of years. Having said that, I also make the claim that this is the best work that I have heard thus far. A tall claim yes! But a true one at the same time.

Count Ante Bakusic,
Pandoras Box