Lord and Slave

Lord And Slave is about taking risks, failing and achieving. It's an experiment that went much too far, creating an atmosphere that conveys no message. It is indulgent and chiefly exists only to please itself. But perhaps the universe only exists because it can, and therefore it must. Musicians are the universes way of admiring itself, like scientists of the riff. Being careful with my carelessness, I created something that felt so utterly wrong it makes me want to vomit. Yet because it is a part of what I have become and am becoming, I continue to listen to it. It is the dark, nihilistic part of my brain that doesn't care whether it is liked. It was written as noise and is delivered as such. At the time, there was nothing that could be said over the riffs which seemed to eat themselves and fight for control. So there are no lyrics. The guitars interact painfully and pseudo-deliberately as looped and jarringly programmed drums blur in and out of picture. Feedback from tones produced by reverberations between man, instrument and computer results as digital and analog are married in primal and futuristic ecstasy.

Drawing from multiple subgenres of metal, Lord and Slave makes a distorted web tapestry that smothers the listener in a burdensome mask of ego and admonition. For fucks sake the longer I'm alive the more I think this music should be published, but the more unsure I am of my purpose in creating it. I created my own tunings for guitar on The Black and The Grey and they carry over into this album. Lord and Slave would have been The White if I hadn't been so ashamed of it at the time. “I can do much better than this,” I thought. “Other people have done better than this, so what's the point?” Agonizing over the minuscule  In fact I did do better with the song “Doppelganger,” which is 19 minutes long, although it is slightly shorter than the two tracks on Lord and Slave with “Lord Driver” and “Slave Engine” clocking in at over 20 minutes a piece. “Doppelganger” is a tighter and much more deftly composed song, but it's not as eclectic and carefree in its execution. My over-thinking can be heard in “Doppelganger” in ways it can't on Lord and Slave. With Lord and Slave I'd begun to embrace the drum machine as a medium in itself rather than as a tool to imitate live drums. Loops, samples and programmed “riffs” can never truly capture the subtlety and feel of a human being, but they can provide dynamic emphasis, dramatic pause and deliver basic groove. This is one thing that Burzum, Godflesh and N.I.N got right early on, but never pursued to the extent that Hip-Hop artists did. Recently, Death Grips and Odd Future have created some very interesting broken drum machine sounds, but their emphasis on the beat as a dominant element rather than as an atmospheric one in their music has kept the instrument from its potential: independence from the instrument it was designed to replicate.

Like all my recent music, this album tries to convey a message that I don't totally comprehend. This message may originate outside my body, linking me to a greater, celestial force, and although I ma an atheist, if I were to have any spirituality it would be in music. I get the notion that this message I am unable to understand is so vital to the survival of our race that if I don't convey it I will die. There is a point in the future, however, whence my music will reach a Zenith and I will become the Transcendent Man I have tried to describe in my earlier writings. At this point I will have knowledge of the Self and the collective unconscious. Perhaps total recall of generational memories will help me to effectively understand and communicate my ideas better. Already producer and consumer, I am self sufficient musically and somewhat satisfied, but my inability to reach as wide an audience as possible keeps me from feeling full satisfaction in my work.

The concept of man becoming machine that appears so often in my lyrics is drawn from a fascination with the marriage between two seemingly opposite forces, in this case digital and analog. I use digital amplification, digital drums and effects processing, but my input sources are always analog; guitar, bass, vocals, and keyboard and mouse that initiate signal input for drum programming. My music appears to be analog on the surface, but beneath there is a vast lattice work of computer generated tones that enhance my music making ability. The size and quality of my output is entirely creditable to the ease with which I am able to create music using a computer system. Moreover, I am able to consume more music this way than I could otherwise. I discover lesser known bands through the interconnecting of minds that is the internet. Many of these bands are as good as if not better than the mainstream bands I was introduced to as a child by physical retailers like FYE and Target. Much of their music is cheap, if not free, which lets me listen to a wide range of artists without having to re-listen to a single album to get my fix. This has the unwanted side-effect of devaluing the music and the listening experience, but having been born into a mostly analog world where music was not so ubiquitous, I do often choose to buy music that matters to me and re-listen to certain albums that challenge my intellect. Above all else, my goal is to create an experience that is escapist and yet firmly rooted in reality or convincing in it's illusion of journey. Music is significantly vague enough to merit broad interpretation, yet intriguingly familiar so as to draw the listener in and make them yearn for further understanding. In this way I can encourage people to become active listeners and by virtue, active thinkers. This is the way to elevate music back to a place of respect in society where it can be profitable and consistently innovative rather than oppressed by the regressive listening habits of consumers who don't fully understand the consequences of their actions.

Lord & Slave tracklist:

1. Lord Driver (30:10)
2. Slave Engine (21:59)

The album is available as a free Bandcamp exclusive

Download it HERE

Falsity of Purpose as a Concept

Our hopeless need and search for purpose in life is what keeps us from Transcendence. The belief that purpose can be found in religion or science is false. Purpose can only be found in the self. Religion is mans attempt at creating purpose from nothing, science is mans attempt to create purpose from observation and understanding. But both are flawed due to the limitations of human intellect and physical capacity for work. That some need a reason to be alive is a testament to their own inability to truly appreciate the experience of living on a very basic, experiential level. Yet, to say that to "experience" life is the purpose of life is also false, the most natural state of being is in blissful unconsciousness.

Prose: Foam (At Anterior Mouth)

Anger, desolation, hate, depravity, longing for the unachievable, enemizing the outside world, place the ego upon a pedestal, worship ecstasy, see only the now, live moment by moment, embrace nothingness.

Chew, swallow, regurgitate, repeat, jaded, afraid to believe anything, relying on own observations, questioning those observations, unable to interpret, no test, no evidence, only the gut reaction.

Childish wonder snuffed out by bleak reality. Unknowable. The education system failed to provide me with the necessary tools to understand the world as it really is. As the scientific consensus says it is. I'm reduced to a husk begging for what it can never have. The time of learning has ended. The time of doing has begun.

I have the critical mind, but it is unable to settle. No answers to be found. I was given the keys to a machine that won't start. It's a gift that does me no good. Opportunities wasted, I dug my own grave. I pay now for the misguided decisions of my youth. I developed the wrong skills. I live a lie. I live the wrong life. No way out in sight. Future is bleak. Perhaps like Dick says, it's all just an illusion.