Original Music #5 - Night, Sleep, Death, and the Stars.

This music suite explores the themes of life and death linked by dreams of what may lie beyond the boundaries of our knowledge.

I have always wanted to make an album of stream of consciousness in musical form. This is almost that.

I had a lot of ideas in my studio computer that were crying out from their well-labelled folders for attention. Indeed, the nomenclature of those folders included the key of the musical idea, and sometimes the tempo in BPM, so I would like to report that it was a simple process of ending the development and recording of an idea, and then searching for the next idea in the corresponding key. However, I would be lying if I said it was simple. Some ideas were just thrown out, some were bent and twisted way beyond their earlier assumed course, others seemed to slot in perfectly.

The first 3 minutes of Track 1, Night started out relatively recently, on my wife’s piano at her parent’s house. When we first moved to Japan, my days were filled with trying to fill my days with meaningful activities (learning Japanese, researching job opportunities, and doodling on that piano), and with the purchase of my first iPhone, I had a small recording studio in my pocket. The chord progression (not an even 2 or 4-bar phrase, but 6!) was one of the first things I recorded with the Voice Memo recorder.
At the 3-minute mark appears a very old idea that was originally explored on my Yamaha MT1X back in the late 1980s. It spent all of its life as a half-time, atmospheric, directionless wanderer (including rehearsing with a band in the mid 2010s in Osaka) until the sessions for this album saw me at a crossroads: throw it out or change it completely. I was struck several years ago by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s effortless ability to deftly play fast-paced songs (Hot Water for example) with psychedelic prog leanings, and decided to keep the tempo the same, but double my playing. Some fiddling with the arrangement resulted in the bass introduction (in the key of E major) and thus, slotting into the end of the first section nicely.
At the 6:15 point in this first track comes an actual song. Now, this one has been around in vague idea form for longer than the previous section. It was originally composed on the piano of a family friend in Wagga around 1984, before I had any recording device, so it existed as penciled notes on yellowing coffee-stained manuscript for decades before I tried recording it in my first LO-FI DIY studio in Osaka. At that time, I was teaching business English in a small town called Shimamoto near the Kyoto border, and the walk from the station to the Suntory Research and Development plant included passing through a tunnel that sang from the clicking of my shoes. Without any thought of why, I recorded the echoing reverberating walk on the iPhone, and later tried laying into some ideas in the studio. The tempo of my walking suited this idea (for it was not yet a song), and so it remained a piece about walking until these sessions.

It was at this point the idea of calling this project Night, Sleep, Death and the Stars came about.

The ‘stone temple pilot’ reference has nothing to do with the band of the same name, but the carved lid of the sarcophagus of Kʼinich Janaab Pakal I in the ruins of Palenque, southern Mexico.

From the 15-minute mark we find an instrumental piece with some deceptive timing. With languid synth lines and no real rhythmic motif in place, it seems like a relaxed count of 4, however at 16:45 we discover that it is actually in 7/8.

Track 2, Sleep, begins with a tip of the hat to mid ‘70s King Crimson, followed by a newly-learned finger picking style!! I had just been trying to get my head around Travis picking. I managed to not make a mess of the piece I had written for this part. We then return to the King Crimson-ish piece but with a more Pink Floyd flavour. This blatant

Around the 5-minute mark is a dark synth atmosphere that evolves into double-time drums. This was originally called Asakusa Photographica, from a little video I made of some old buskers at Asakusa in Tokyo. This abruptly seques into my daughter’s toy piano at 7:28. It features four sounds: piano, bells, trumpet and human voice (do, re, mi, etc). The little melody I accidentally played was irresistible: “ミ-ド-レ-ファ-ミ-ド-レ-ファ…

At the 8:26 point, there is a piece that I ‘lifted’ from an old Chinese opera. I think! I don’t know the name, but I have changed it significantly in order not to attract the attention of The Music Copyright Society of China. I had been toying with this for around 20 years. This segues nicely into a return to the original theme explored at the beginning.

Track 3, Death, contains a number of half-finished ideas that, without a great deal of shaping, found a way of fitting into each other much like a jigsaw puzzle. At 7:45 there is a ‘song’ that I wrote the early stages of in 1989 on my Yamaha-MT1X. The lyrics here and in the following choral ‘movement’ are really concerned with life, rather than death. At 11:05 the acoustic guitar introduces a musical theme I have explored in a couple of other tracks, namely Life on Titan, from DIY and Life on Titan 2, from Fresh Out of Fucks.

Track 4, And the Stars, completes the exploration of the above-mentioned themes. Rather than a collection of ideas stitched together, this follows more of a conventional ‘song’ form. It explores collectively all of the themes explored individually in the previous tracks, including the infinite wonders of the heavens at night.

Here are all the lyrics that appear in this suite:

I'm walking through the night, talking on my feet.
A billion points of light, countless fathoms deep.
I wonder who I am, and how I'm gonna sleep.

A friendly face greets me, I don't know who it is.
Confused me completely, but now I know it's his.
A stone temple pilot, lying in silence.

Look at the sky! There's a billion points of light.
Looks very high! Wonder what makes them so bright.
I wish I could fly! Then I'd leave the world behind me.

Look at the sky! There's a billion points of light.
Seems very high! Wonder what makes it so bright.
Wish I could fly! Then I'd leave the world behind me, so guide me.

The stars come out at night.
The stars look very bright.
The stars seem very high.
Wish I could fly to the stars.

The stone temple pilot,
In darkness and quiet, all alone
Never got to stretch his wings and fly into the sky
And it looks like he'll remain an earthbound soul in his hole.

Reach for the sky, the sky is so high.
And the stars are so near, here.
Here on the ground, the world is so round,
And the sky is so high.

I reach for the sky, the sky is so high.
(Night, sleep, death and the stars take your breath away)
And the stars are so near, here.
(But the stars seem small, but they're nearer and nearer and nearer)
Here on the ground, the world is so round,
(Night, sleep, death and the stars take your breath away)
And the sky is so high.
(But the stars seem small, but they're nearer and nearer and nearer)

I reach for the sky, from the ground, the sky is so high, world is so round.
(Night, sleep, death and the stars take your breath away)
And the stars seem small, are so near.
(But the stars seem small, but they're nearer and nearer and nearer)
Here on the ground.

Looking close, you will see
Seeing what's in front of me.
Water drops anywhere,
What a chance to see me there.

See through electric eye, how they multiply.
Looking close, you will see
Seeing what's ahead of me: the fire grows.
In the water drops anywhere,
What a chance to see me there: the river flows.

Everybody look at the sky tonight, come on and join the light.
Everybody look at the sky tonight, come on and join the light.
Everybody look at the sky tonight, come on and join the light.
There's a full moon, and new tunes.

Everybody hold your partner tight, come on, you know it's right.
Everybody hold your partner tight, come on, you know it's right.
Everybody hold your partner tight, come on, you know it's right.
It's a full moon, and new tunes.

Strange how, in the moonlight,
I'm awake now, and tuned right.
That explains how, in the festooned night,
There's tailor made marmalade.

Everybody everywhere join the light, come on, you know it's right.
Everybody everywhere join the light, come on, you know it's right.
Everybody everywhere join the light, come on, you know it's right.
It's a full moon, and new tunes.

Everything everywhere is alright, look at the sky tonight.
Everything everywhere is alright, look at the sky tonight.
Everything everywhere is alright, look at the sky tonight.
But whatever you do, don't point at the moon.

Strange how, in the moonlight,
I'm awake now, and tuned right.
That explains how, in the festooned night,
There's tailor made marmalade.