'I s o l a t i o n'
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“i s o l a t i o n ll ”
(The painting above, “Isolation II”, is used by the very kind permission of its artist, Jean Hyson)
“[Despotism]…it covers society’s surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
(Alexis de Tocqueville, “ Democracy In America”, 1835)Not too long ago, I was driving along the M42 motorway near Birmingham - I lie…I was stationary in traffic on the M42 near Birmingham - when an advertising banner near the side of the motorway came into its own. You must have seen something similar to it either in the same sort of location or on the back of a ‘bus or in the classified sections of your newspaper: “Tired of commuting? Work from home! Ring XXXXXXX” Recognise it?
It set me thinking…is this the way our whole lives are moving through gentle, subliminal suggestions and forces? Thanks to the advances in computing, we’re encouraged to work at home (“forget commuting, spend more time with your family, be kinder to the environment by not using your car!”). We’re able to shop from home for everything from CDs to a bunch of bananas, delivered directly to our doors, paid for with credit cards we can track through on-line banking. We’re able to develop a whole set of friends from all over the world that not only have we never met, but that we’re never likely to meet, either.
If all of this is not enough in the way of persuasion, then what about the world we dare walk in? We’re told that the air is unbreathable; Greenpeace announced several years ago that there is now no such thing as “fresh air” anywhere on the planet. We’re reminded daily of the pollutants in the rain and the damage that a depleted ozone layer is allowing the sun to wreak upon us.
As if that were not enough, our governments now have our “protection” from terrorism high on their agenda. They just want to take care of us, you see. Look out for unattended parcels, nothing sharper than a spoon allowed onto aeroplanes, ID cards to ensure that the swarthy chap next to you on the train isn’t packing an AK47 or has a small thermo-nuclear device inserted in his shoes.
We’re warned about those governments who dictate and subjugate the masses of their countries…hell, they’re not even democratically elected! We should invade their lands, impose our system of democracy upon them and THEN let the fairly elected leaders dictate and subjugate the masses, because the masses will have voted them in to do it.
“Isolation” is set in the near future, when a government not unlike our own, led by someone not unlike our current heads of state, announces that they’ll do away with the daily sturm und drang of daily life, that we’ll be spared the ignominy of actually having to travel to work and cosseted from the dangers of walking the streets. All they want in return is to lock us into our own homes and to leave the rest to them. The “truth” (which our recent administrations have shown to be a very flexible and pliable word/concept) would still be available to us through our home computers, our windows on the world.
Imagine the offer was made tomorrow…would YOU agree to it? What about next year? What if a convenient “dirty” bomb was detonated in your city? Would that convince you? How much persuasion by example would it take?
While you’re thinking about that, consider this: how free do you think you are right now? How free do you think you’ll be in a year’s time? What about in five years’ time, when we have compulsory, bio-metric ID cards, more CCTV cameras in our towns and cities, when your usage of the internet is monitored by those who represent the moral and/or religious majority? How private do you think your life is when organisations such as your local supermarket, thanks to loyalty cards, know when, where and what you shop for? Who has access, right now, to that information...and for what purpose?
How much liberty and privacy do you have when a US governmental agency freely admits that they can trace the owner of a mobile telephone by tracing that ‘phone…even when it’s switched off? Are we to believe that our plucky British lads in MI5, MI6 and a few other MIs we’ve never heard of would never, have never and will never use the same technology because it’s “just not cricket”?
Which country’s population now has more CCTV coverage of its citizens, even more than North Korea ? No? Any guesses? It’s Great Britain , the country that now also has an official, governmental policy (with a monetary incentive) by which anyone may anonymously tip off the police about any wrongdoings they think their neighbour may be indulging in.How free are you feeling now?
Ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters summed the whole dilemma up perfectly when he asked “how humane humanity is prepared to be in the future”. I don’t know…how humane has humanity been up until now? What proof do we have that humanity will be any more humane in the future than it has been thus far?
The quotation at the top of this page I found about three months into this project. Aside from the synchronicity it held with the songs Brian and I were putting together, I was more than slightly surprised that the cynicism of our governments’ motives were viewed in much the same way 170 years ago.
“Isolation” explores the scenario of a bloodless, consensual, mass internment by a future, global, governmental co-operative and what our reaction as a race would be. I hope our denouement on the album is close to what would actually transpire.
Watch this space…whilst you’re still able to.
Phil
TRACKLISTING
“Seize The Day”...is the opener to the album. Earnest national leaders appear on TV and huge outdoor screens, trying (and succeeding) convince us that being locked away indoors is the way to personal and environmental salvation. Would we go for it if it were presented in a worldwide, philanthropic fashion? I don’t know – a life of leisure forever in exchange for almost every form of personal freedom might sway a large chunk of the population, but I used a fairly generous slice of poetic licence in assuming that there would be a resounding “yes”.
I had originally intended the opening keyboard sequence to this song to be the start of a musical suite about the life-cycle of a tree (it occurred to me as an accompaniment to an autumn leaf floating gently to the ground) - this intro was recorded halfway through the “Swept Away” sessions and stored for future use. By the time we came back to it, the seeds of the “Isolation” concept had planted (no pun intended) itself firmly in our heads, so I lifted my own idea and used it for this song.
“Keys Turn, Deadbolts Fall”...gives even me the creeps. Someone summed it up perfectly when they first heard it: ‘It’s a malignant shepherd securing his sheep’.Exactly.
“Lockdown (Now Our Time Has Come)”– Christ, did this take a long time to record. It actually started out as a completely different song (albeit with the same title) with a radically different vibe, lyrics, mood…the whole kit and caboodle. We ploughed through it and into it for about a month until Brian made the off-hand remark that it sounded like “Going For The One” by Yes. He was right, it did….it really did, so we binned it. I’m glad we followed our instinct – this version of the vision of a global internment and the smug, incredulous reaction of those responsible is one of the best things we’ve done thus far. To say we were meticulous, picky and exacting with this song is something of an understatement.
Brian’s contrasting guitar parts on this song are masterful; no matter what shape a track takes, he always manages to weld some really stirring hooks into it and this track is a perfect example. Just listen to the way his first solo at the end shadows the melody of the chorus vocal with a sinister undertone.
“That’s What You Say”...was my attempt to portray the remorse felt by Joe Average once he starts to realise the exact nature and gravity of what he and his fellow voters have allowed to happen. Being sealed away from reality and cushioned from the purported evils of the world could only have a limited span of novelty – what happens if and when we change our minds? Even the platitudes fed to us (“We’ll be best served if we stay”) would sound like a hollow mockery after a while.
Brian’s acoustic solo on this song eclipses anything I’ve ever heard him play – it’s the most bitter-sweet, melancholy, winter sunset of a solo, followed by a golden, halcyon-days-remembered electric piece (over a chord sequence written by Brian) before delivering both the listener and the prisoner back to the bleak present (I find I do 'bleak' quite well). Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t have four pairs of hands…I played three or four different fretless bass parts separately, which is the technique used by such geniuses as the late, great Jaco Pastorius.
Someone asked me who the “you” in the title and lyric is – the truth is, I don’t know. Is it some governmental soothsayer? The bang-the-drum-for-the-cause partner of the song’s central character? His own reflection in a mirror? Beats me - I’ll let you decide.
“Music Of The HAARP”- There is, apparently, a very real installation near Gakona , Alaska , owned by the US government, that has the operational name HAARP (“High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program”). The website for the installation (www.haarp.alaska.edu) states that it is used for ionospheric research. The site shows quite a large array of antennae in the wilds. One of the conspiracy-type websites I happened across when researching the background to the HAARP championed the theory that it could be (and, some argued, already was) used for such wide-ranging purposes as weather control and (more importantly for the theme of the album) mass mind-control. Hark...is that the first cuckoo of spring I hear?
So, seizing the chance, I’ve incorporated this idea into the album – HAARP softens ‘em up before Mk Ultra really gets to work on them…and for an explanation of what MK Ultra is, see the next track.
“Son Of MK Ultra”...is born from a very real “brainwashing” technique called “MK Ultra”. This charmless technique is well documented and several US senate committee investigations into the CIA’s perfection of this Korean interrogation method is available on the internet if you want to look them up.
I’ve borrowed just one facet of MK Ultra for the album here, namely the method of using the victims own, taped voice (culled from days of conversation, sleep deprivation and general unpleasantness) played back over headphones. It’s an endless loop of insults, belittlements and humiliations, all attacking the victim with his/her own voice and words. The song swings from the monotone of the mental assault to the melodic passages of the victim slowly slipping into cowering submission in their voluntary solitary confinement.
The “Voice Of The Hive” is played/spoken here wonderfully by Brittany May, who supplied her parts over the internet without ever hearing what she was being grafted onto. I’d given her a list of things to say and she unquestioningly recorded them for me. Thank you again, Britt.
There’s some lovely, warped guitar work here by Brian and he moves the song along nicely with his jazz/blues chimera of a solo..
“Always Darkest (Before The Dawn)”- Yet another track which eventually sounded exactly as it did in my head. The darkness (mental, spiritual and physical) after we’ve been subjugated, brainwashed and stripped of our self-will. What you hear on this track is my original guide guitar under Brian playing the same thing. We ignored the millisecond overlaps at some points, as it adds to the spaced-out feel. I’ve buggered about with the parentheses on this and a similarly titled track a little later because both deserved the same title, although one plays ‘yin’ the other’s ‘yang’.
I really dig this track for its huge space and black atmosphere.
“Best Laid Plans”...is the breakdown of the system that “they” have put into place to keep the interned population in their waking sleep. How long, in the scheme of the album , they’ve been this way…I don’t know. A year? Two? Three? Ten?
Brittany figures again here as the Voice Of The Hive, the spoken panacea to the masses before the system’s circuits fry. The music is Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio Overture’, incidentally – rather perversely, we sampled it from a CD and added the sound of a scratched record to it to get that old Soviet public-broadcast feel.
“(Always Darkest Before) The Dawn”- The “yin” to the “yang” of “Always Darkest (Before The Dawn)”, this was another of those tracks which panned out exactly against the thing in my mind. I’d had the basic keyboard and drums track recorded for about a year, just waiting for a lull in proceedings to wheel it out. With the addition of fretless bass and Brian’s assured, soulful guitar solo, this does just what it needed to do. The sunrise in the mind, daybreak of realisation that there is a way back from the darkness. I see this as a golden-red winter sunrise – Brian sees it as a summer dawn.
“Chink Of Light”- So I had the stuff for the two “Darkest Before The Dawn” tracks and needed to get something that would be the bridge song, the pivotal piece for when the population slowly realises that there is a choice, that there is a way out. Having been brow-beaten into submission, the light finally hits the back of the eyes and the front of the mind.
Anyway, I hadn’t got it.
At some point during the sessions for “Lockdown”, Brian sat playing about with a couple of chords on his acoustic. When his answer to my question of what he was playing was that he’d just put them together, it immediately seemed perfect – I even had an idea for the lyrics for it (which didn’t ever see the light of day, I must add). The vocal melody and the lyrics you hear here are the second set we did; the first set of lyrics were far too wordy and the melody was all over the place. These words I mostly lifted from the original draught, with a fair old bit shaved off.
This is the first truly co-written song we’ve done thus far and it’s easily one of my favourites.
“Messiah (Who Needs One Really?)”Really - who needs one? We've had so many in various shapes and forms, be they religious, quasi-religious, political or ideological and not many have given us a peaceful legacy. I inserted this track (with an echo of "Seize The Day" in the bridge) as a theme for liberation from needing some visionary to tell us how we should be living and how they're going to lead us to a better life. I orginally had a set of lyrics for this, but opted to keep it as an instrumental.
“Unity (Nature At Zero)”
– So after we're released from this fictional and allegorical prison of our own making, what next? The hippy in me likes to think that we'd go back to nature...that stripped of our desire for the technological by the world's biggest session of aversion-therapy, we'd embrace our oneness with the planet and start afresh - nature at zero.
I'd had the melody for this in my head for over a year - it came to me in the early hours and I had to get out of bed to write it down, playing it on the fretless when I had a chance when daylight arrived. This is the second version of the track - the first was lost in a catastrophic hard-drive failure with no back-up copy. Brian more or less recreated the piano solo he'd laid down originally and his guitar solo was far more soulful than the lost effort. Most of the tracks on 'Isolation' are cunningly-disguised jazz, but this one is uncamouflaged and out there. I love how this sounds - well worth the hours I spent orchestrating it.
The avant-garde jazz pianist Esbjorn Svensson, one of my heroes, died a few months after we'd finished "Nature At Zero", hence the dedication of the track to him. If you've an ounce of soul, I urge you to check out the Esbjorn Svensson Trio's output.
So there you have it - we started 'Isolation' strongly, after doing what we thought was a good job with "Swept Away", but it took an awfully long time for us to complete the album for one reason or another. Personal problems of many flavours and varying levels of seriousness all took their toll and I finished recording the last cut (which was "Messiahs"...we'd - luckily, as it turned out - recorded "Nature At Zero" before things became very difficult) on my own, with Brian contributing the guitar solo as his last act for the band.
I hope you enjoy it.
Phil
MUSICIAN CREDITS
"Seize The Day"
Phil – Vocals, bass guitar, keyboards, drum programming
Brian – Electric guitars, keyboards, drum programming
"Keys Turn, Deadbolts Fall"
Phil – Keyboards, sound effects and general weirdness
"Lockdown (Now Our Time Has Come)"
Phil – Vocals, bass guitar, keyboards, drum programming
Brian – Electric, steel strung and classical guitars, keyboards, drum programming
"That’s What You Say"
Phil – Vocals, fretless bass guitar, keyboards, drum programming
Brian – Electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, drum programming
"Music Of The H.A.A.R.P."
Phil - Keyboards
"Son Of MK Ultra"
Phil – Vocals, bass guitar, intro piano, drum programming
Brian – Guitar, piano, keyboards, drum programming
Brittany May – Voice Of The Hive
"Always Darkest Before (The Dawn)"
Phil – Guitar, keyboards
Brian – Guitar, keyboards
"Best Laid Plans"
Phil – Samples, weirdness
Brittany May – Voice Of The Hive
"(Always Darkest Before) The Dawn"
Phil – Fretless bass, keyboards, drum programming
Brian – Electric guitar
"Chink Of Light "
Brian – Guitar, keyboards, drum programming
Phil – Vocals, fretted and fretless basses, keyboards, drum programming
"Messiah (Who Needs One Really?)"Phil - Piano, keyboards, classical guitar, drum programming
Brian - Guitar Solo
"Unity - Nature At Zero"
Phil - Fretless bass, piano, keyboards, drum programming
Brian - Electric guitar, piano solo
All titles composed by Phil Lawton, except "Chink Of Light", which was composed by Brian McCarthy and Phil Lawton.
Produced and engineered by McCarthy, co produced by Lawton, except "Messiahs", which was produced/engineered by Lawton and "Nature At Zero", which was produced by Lawton.
All material copyright © shardsofreasonmusic 2008
TOTALLY FUZZY BLOGSPOT REVIEW APRIL 2011
http://totallyfuzzy.blogspot.com/2011/04/spot-on-shards-of-reason-album-streams.html