Riatsu – The story behind ’25 Cromwell Street’

Artwork by Mihir Ashok for '25, Cromwell Street'
Artwork by Mihir Ashok for ’25, Cromwell Street’

I wanted to write a dark track. A disturbing one. A track that makes people uncomfortable when they hear it. Especially when they read the story. It’s just something I felt like doing. I don’t really have any fascination towards serial killers but their stories interest me because it shows you the dark side of humans. May be these guys aren’t human but whatever they are, they define the word ‘evil’.

I was sitting in my office room at blueFROG bored one day when the idea came to my head. At this moment the album was not planned. In fact, I was making this for the new ‘Pangea‘ album. I started my research on google looking for a story that could grab my attention. I went through a lot of them. Ted Bundy, Peter Sutcliffe, Richard Ramirez, Jeffrey Dahmer were some of the people I read about but none of these got my attention more than Fred and Rose West who murdered around 11 to 12 women in their Gloucester home.

Between 1967 and 1987, West – alone and later with his second wife, serial killer Rosemary West – tortured and raped numerous young women and girls, murdering at least 12, including their own family members. Fred killed at least two people before collaborating with Rose, while Rose murdered Fred’s stepdaughter (his first wife’s biological daughter) when he was in prison for theft. The majority of the murders occurred between May 1973 and August 1979, in their homes at 25 Midland Road and later 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, with many bodies buried at or near these homes.
The pair were apprehended and charged in 1994. Fred West killed himself before going to trial, while Rose West was imprisoned for life, in November 1995, after having been found guilty on 10 counts of murder. Their house at Cromwell Street was demolished in 1996 and the space converted into a landscaped footpath, connecting Cromwell Street to St. Michael’s Square. (Wikipedia)


After seeing every possible documentary and movie on these two characters, I started creating a piece late one night. Its weird how the music just flows out of you when you’ve spent enough time getting in the right vibe. It took me only a few hours to create this track. The voice samples are from Fred West’s interrogation which I found on Youtube.

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