The Revelator Orchestra

Drawing on primal rock ‘n roll, trance, folk, ambient music and film scores, The Revelator Orchestra combines stories, music and performance to produce something more like a 3D graphic novel than a conventional live show or album. Or, as one observer succinctly put it: “Tom Waits meets Twin Peaks.”

The Sounds of John the Revelator is the debut album from The Revelator Orchestra, the spoken word/music ensemble founded by writer Peter Murphy and producer/musician Acko, featuring musical adaptations of readings from Murphy’s acclaimed novel John the Revelator.
The album’s 18 tracks incorporate cameo performances from composer/violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire, guitarist Brian K Adams, and violinist Sheila Sullivan among others. Former We Free Kings leader Joe Kingman provided the ‘Old Crow Theme’, while Steven Augustine and Florian Richter supplied an instrumental mix of their Gainsbourgian pop nugget ‘Always Falling’ for use as infernal elevator music.

“Imagine, if you can, music that sounds like Tom Waits on drums and Lightnin’ Hopkins on a battered hollowbody thumping away down in the cellar while Murphy reads… The Sounds of John the Revelator is a neat piece of work that somehow combines the weirdness of Poe with the coolness of the Beats over a soundtrack that might’ve been created by the Velvet Underground…” – Jambands.com

“The Sounds Of John The Revelator: the end of the world news narrated by the preacher from the black lagoon, scored by Aphex Twin’s evil siblings and directed by Hieronymus Bosch. Listen and be afraid.” – Hot PressThe Brotherhood of the Flood is The Revelator Orchestra’s second album, inspired by frontman Peter Murphy’s novel Shall We Gather at the River (described by punk godfather Richard Hell as “majestic and squalid at the same time”). It is an epic piece of work: fourteen tracks that tell the story of nine people who give themselves to the fictional Rua river in the year 1984.  

“Dramatic, epic and populated by tense atmosphere, The Brotherhood of the Flood is simply stunning to behold in its individuality. – “10/10 – The Last Mixed Tape

“The Brotherhood of the Flood is unique and primal, ugly and beautiful… They sound like a band at the peak of their powers.” – Hot Press