What inspired the name of the band? What are your influences and are they the same as when you started out?
The Cthulhu Dreamt project is rooted in science fiction and a Cthulhu mythos, so we definitely wanted a name that supported that. The name Cthulhu Dreamt is derived from Lovecraft’s quote, “In His house at R’Lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
Influences include bands like Gojira, Deftones, The Contortionist, Coheed & Cambria, TesseracT, Tool, Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Animals As Leaders, and so many more. Reading sci-fi is also a very big inspiration in the development of the world of Cthulhu Dreamt.
How do you approach songwriting?
As a concept project, I (Reed Reimer) brought a bunch of my friends along with to bring different musical ideas to the table, so generally what happens is either I, or one of my mates will write a riff and send it over to me where I’ll develop that and arrange a song around it with all the elements. Then, when the song is constructed we move to lyrics and vocals.
The entire project is story based and follows an arc from the very beginning of the first album. A lot of the music is emotion-based and circles around feelings of loss, depression, grief, and fear, while also following the story.
Why do you write what you do?
Music is my lifeblood, and I like to write in so many styles and genres because it makes me happy. Also, telling stories through music is the most important part of how I write, and it becomes a much easier task if I’m not limited to any one particular thing.
I come from a media and film music background, and have a traditional music composition education, which allows me to feel comfortable using orchestra as one of my tools, which is pretty awesome (at least to me).
How do you decide what to perform live?
Because Cthulhu Dreamt has so far been a concept project, we haven’t played live, though it’s something we’ve discussed a bit. It’d be a herculean effort to sort out the logistics as we’re spread all over the place, with a few of us based out of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, Jake in Utah, and Chris in the UK. We definitely have enough friends who’d be willing to jump in to play a show, so perhaps in the future. We absolutely have enough material to sort out a decent set list, so now it’s just finishing the band makeup.
What plans do you have for the future?
The first single “TRACE Amounts of Death” from our upcoming EP Precursor is live on August 5th: https://ampl.ink/CDTraceAmounts
The EP will release this fall in the run-up to some huge announcements about the next chapter of the Cthulhu Dreamt project: the TTRPG!!
If that’s something that folks would like to be kept apprised of, join us at https://cthulhudreamt.com and follow us on our socials:
IG – @cthulhu.dreamt
FB – @CthulhuDreamt
Tw – @CthulhuDreamt
Https://cthulhudreamt.bandcamp.com