This album was written for Auld Lang Sine, a contest I started and administrated in late 2004 to see who could finish an album by the new year. This album is primarily inspired by the final series of interviews with science fiction author Philip K. Dick, which detailed the outlines for what was to be his next novel, The Owl in Daylight. He died before he could finish it, but his concepts of the perception of divinity and the limitations of our senses inspired me to create this album.
1. I Am In This World From Another That Has Been Burned
An ambient track based upon a monologue from issue 42 of the comic book Transmetropolitan, narrated by my friend Josette. The transcript can be read here.
2. The Third Childhood of Anthony Conchshell
Hard, dense elctronic music. The title comes from a dream I had several years ago about seeing unpublished PKD novels in a bookstore: the track title is the name of one of the non-existent books.
Quirky electronic track, inspired by a biographical excerpt of Nikolai Gogol from the introduction of the novel Dead Souls: talking over his latest work with one of his friends, he was so overjoyed at the process and fruits of his writing that he lost his umbrella to the wind.
Dark ambient, originally produced for a Doom total conversion project.
A bit of an experiment for me: this track was cobbled together entirely from samples of other songs and audio snippets. Over 20 songs were commandeered to put this Frankenstein's monster together. The full list of samples can be found here.
Piano-based ambient track.
Ultra-distorted industrial with a twist. Done in a single cathartic hour out of anger.
Industrial-influenced electronic, with some voice samples from the anime Haibane Renmei.
Drum & bass track featuring a saxophone. For now the saxophone part is synthesized and tracked, as my actual tenor sax is stuck down in Indiana; however, the live part will be recorded in the near-future.
10. The Five and a Half Minute Hallway
Dark, tense ambient inspired by the novel House of Leaves.
A chillout track centered around
a piano sample from the Brian Eno/Harold Budd track "Not Yet
Remembered."