The Owl in Daylight (2004)

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.

Track Listing

1. I Am In This World From Another That Has Been Burned (5.79MB, 4:13) - [Download]
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 (6.94MB, 5:03) - [Download]
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 The title comes from a dream I had several years ago about seeing unpublished PKD novels in a bookstore: the track title is the name of one of the non-existent books.

3. Gogol's Umbrella (3.34MB, 2:26) - [Download]
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.

4. Gouge Away (9.05MB, 6:35) - [Download]
Dark ambient, originally produced for a Doom total conversion project.

5. Millions for Nonsense (4.32MB, 3:08) - [Download]
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.

6. Lonely City (5.98MB, 5:13) - [Download]
Piano-based ambient track.

7. Steel Halo (3.18MB, 2:19) - [Download]
Ultra-distorted industrial with a twist. Done in a single cathartic hour out of anger.

8. The Owl in Daylight (6.92MB, 5:02) - [Download]
Industrial-influenced electronic, with some voice samples from the anime Haibane Renmei.

9. Tsumitsuki (5.15MB, 3:45) - [Download]
Drum & bass track featuring a saxophone (currently synthesized, but will be performed live at some point in the future).

10. The Five and a Half Minute Hallway (3.90MB, 2:50) - [Download]
Dark, tense ambient inspired by the novel House of Leaves.

11. Last Forgotten Thing (5.67MB, 4:07) - [Download]
A chillout track centered around a piano sample from the Brian Eno/Harold Budd track "Not Yet Remembered."

The album "The Owl in Daylight" and all songs and materials contained within are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License by Brian Davis/Ubik.