The Hiperad Series is here!
I had prepped Hiperad for release on Bandcamp in May (and other services June). So as I came to set up the release here to be a bit earlier I noticed the message had gone out on Bandcamp to followers - but the album wouldn't be there for them.
I've no idea how I got that wrong, but I'm sorry folks.
So it only seems fair to apologise and make it available on Bandcamp, which means I need to get it sorted on here too - don't want my official site to be behind!
Post-rock; post-ambient ; post-office. The 50s romantic pop re-imagined as a global hyper colour fever dream through improvised textural guitar. The atomic age and retrofuturism on deteriorated film helping you to relax and chill out to the post-apocalyptic sound of long dead imaginations.
Hiperad came from an idea to take old songs as the prompts for improvisation. About half of season 3 of the podcast was influenced by this approach where I took the music (mainly chords) from the first number 1 records of the charts. The vibe I was going for was a post-apocalyptic community finding these and trying to remake them with whatever they had available, incorporating whatever style they thought because they wouldn't know what it actually sounded like. From this distance how would you know what was 50s or 80s or just an indeterminate “now”?
As promised, there is a single “highlights” album called Hiperad because I fully expect people to not want to buy 3 albums. On the other hand, the full series is the real, complete piece and I've put the individual thirds on the site for any completists out there. I like the highlights, but the full piece is a deliberate journey (and trippy to go through the whole thing)…
Monocle Rose
No one remembered her original name, possibly including her. But she always wore a monocle with a rose tinted lens so the nick name “Monocle Rose” stuck. There was a vague understanding that Rose had first appeared in the 50s, but no one sure which 50s that might be. It could be the 1950s; although if it was, it probably wasn’t this universe’s 1950s.
Mind you, we had gone through many calendar changes and patches of forgotten history so perhaps this was just the latest iteration of the memory of a 1950s that had or hadn’t actually existed. After the event there were a lot of romantic notions about the past including a belief that neon signage existed throughout the whole of human history. From this distance, maybe neon and Art Nouveau coexisted the way people used to think humans and dinosaurs interacted.
As time travellers we know how accurate that is, but still, sometimes you just have to be where you are in whatever reality happens to be like at the moment. Rose was certainly eclectic but also fitting in, knowing another reality will be along in a moment…
The Colour Well
Like the Cherry Book, the Colour Well was one of those artifacts that could be immensely useful or get you into immense amounts of trouble. The idea of slicing the fabric of reality into sections, colour-coding them, and then using intent to power the recombination of them through a device itself only half-crafted through the same process sounds dangerous to begin with. Add to that no security or safety protocols about who can interface with the thing, including their capability or stability and you have a really interesting recipe for both wonder and disaster.
So buckle up, buttercup. Prepare yourself, close your eyes, attain a level of stillness you’ve hardly touched before and visualise where your intent is going to. Picture it clearly at a subatomic level and don the temple harness before creating the code blueprint for that intent. Hold it all within your minds and their eyes. Do you have it all? Can you also reach out to the Well and feel the slices, understand the colours, the depths, the consequences? Then hit the trigger and go. Make this reality different, spin your spells, weave your magic. Carefully.
Silverfall
At the end, once all the gambles have been taken. After the interventions have played out, the choices made, the lives lived. Then, when the final embers of consciousness give up their flame into a final understanding that arrives at last and far, far too late. That’s when the flow starts, standing in front of you preventing your entry but beckoning you on.
The whole of your existences merged together and moving, shouting, screaming in your ear whilst also whispering quietly to your body. A bombardment of everything you have been, could be, might yet be, compressed into an undulating mirror showing you everything all at once. This presence might feel bad to you in this moment, but it is beyond good and evil. They are eternal but only here for the moment, this other, this you, this strange embodiment that exists over and under the fake you.
They are Silverfall. Pain and joy, horror and delight, now and never. The beginning and end, alpha and omega. The dark approaching finality of your essence. The chipotle fajita wrap of your soul. The cascading, echoing absence of your presence. You/Not you.