Akashic record of the past 35 minutes of my life:
“Ellipse”
12:19 Music visualization displays two morphing, purple ellipses, melding in and out of one another.
12:20 Swells and muted tones. The cyclical sequence begins.
12:21 The dominant feeling of the album: We are now moving forward in time. But toward what?
12:22 They’ll probably mock my use of the music visualizer; I have no regrets.
12:23 That twinkling angelic harp sequence above it all. Listening as if reaching up for it. Music flees our grasp.
12:24 Neon staircases upwards. Approaching the godlike attractor at the center of this piece.
12:25 Ellipse: like an orbit.
12:26 Explosion, bits of the golden chariot I was riding swirl as obliterated rainbow dust around the attractor.
12:27 Burst of radiance as the attractor explodes; debris catapulted into the distant reaches of space.
12:28 Is there no escape? Infinite headspace is brutally silent.
12:29 They say that Pluto has a fifth moon, but aren’t they just a network of moons spinning in chaotic orbits around one another?
“11:38”
12:30 Final particles trickle away. I should have timed this entry to coincide with the track’s title.
12:31 Warp speed toward hyperdawn. A physicist made a video of what moving at light speed would look like, but I prefer the sci-fi versions.
12:32 How many rhythmically distinct sequences can you have going at once? The limit must approach infinity, but merges into one.
12:33 Layers upon layers. This makes abundantly clear that you have to focus. You can’t listen to all the parts of a piece of music at once.
12:34 Music visualizer displays orb revolving rapidly and bursting with radiant light. Seems appropriate.
“The Fifth Column”
12:35 Headphones provide the necessary isolation for this record. Space junk of any kind would cause this starship to jackknife.
12:36 And yet, if it weren’t somewhat late, I would turn it up until the bass resonated through my ribcage.
12:37 Music visualizer depicts intensifying tunneling motion as rippling concentric circles. But toward what?
12:38 Contractions/expansions/contractions/expansions/contractions/expansions/…
12:39 Cat jumps into lap, shattering spacetime continuum.
12:40 What is he saying? WHAT IS HE SAYING? What did the entity say?
12:41 Since the beginning of this piece, have I too evolved into a wholly different creature?
12:42 One day I hope to see a flying saucer synthesizer orchestra (as in the band on a cruise ship). Until that day, I will have this record.
“October 27th, 1989 - Bay Village, Ohio”
12:43 It just… keeps… moving… forward…
12:44 Strong sense of the music pulling my attention with it at high speed. My astral body struggling against psycho-physical G-force.
12:45 The visualizer is also called G-force. Synchronicity achieved.
12:46 Why isn’t this considered dance music? Like, as in the music that machine elves dance to on their 72-dimensional dancefloors.
12:47 Who brings a laser pulse rifle to the club? Elven vocoded screams resound through the manifold.
12:48 At some point, everyone dies. Just like that.
“February 8th, 1990 - Ashland, Ohio”
12:49 Someone else’s memories. Someone else’s life. From a hang glider, watching ghosts moving through a bank of fog.
12:50 Memory ghosts insist on lifting the floodgates of empathy.
12:51 Mourning angelic voices give way to the bare counting of time in its passage. But toward what? Toward the future.
12:52 Echoes — it occurs to me that echoes are haunting because I remember what they sounded like before they decayed.
12:53 I really wish this album weren’t so short. I could listen to two or three more hours of it.
12:54 Semitones collapse on themselves and all discomfort resolves. At the root: arrival.