Those Who Walk Away – Afterlife Requiem

Those Who Walk Away – Afterlife Requiem

From Ambientblog by PvC - Ambientblog.net

April 5, 2026

About this episode

This episode discusses Andrew Patton's composition 'Afterlife Requiem', a dark elegy for his late friend Jóhann Jóhannsson, incorporating abandoned recordings and original works.

THOSE WHO WALK AWAY - AFTERLIFE REQUIEM In 2017 - so almost ten years ago (!) - I wrote about The Infected Mass , the debut album of Those Who Walk Away (Andrew Patton) . An impressive album that I still heartily recommend - but not without warning: it is a dark and haunting album, especially because of the use of authentic black box recordings from aeroplanes that were about to crash. The music on Afterlife Requiem is not exactly light-hearted either: “Everything I have ever written is a Requiem. Everything an ending. Death is smeared all over this music. My work is about disappearance—of the present, the past, of everything" . Afterlife Requiem it is a requiem in the true sense of the word: it's an elegy to Patton's close friend and collaborator Jóhann Jóhannsson. After his death, Patton had been given hard drives from Jóhannsson's Berlin studio. "This music was abandoned, in various states of formation and dissolution: an index of decayed and dead memories" . Parts of these recordings - or 'disembodied audio ghosts' as Patton calls them - are used in this 45-minute composition. They can be heard in the Memorial Environments sections, which are combined with the Degraded Hymns…

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Host: PvC

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Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Possible Orchestra, Ghost Orchestra

Books & works: The Infected Mass, Afterlife Requiem

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