This album is a sonic representation of the story of a composer and musician who has lost all interest in his art and he no longer indulges himself in it. The story is about his rediscovery of his passion. One day he finds himself being unwillingly transported into a different universe. He travels through the space-time continuum in his dreams to various eras of human civilization and experiences their lives and their music. In doing so, he realizes that existence is just a façade to the true reality of the universe, and the only thing about his being, that is valid, is his consciousness, which takes the form of the spirit of music. 

1 – PHANTASMAGORIA (Dream sequence) 

-Fata Morgana (00:00 – 02:10) 

-Ignus Fatuus (02:11 – 04:01) 

Suddenly, one night, our unlikely hero slips into the deeper layers of his dreams and finds he is falling through the rabbit hole. His consciousness slipping through the cracks of space-time, he finds himself warped into a different land, a different time. 

2 – HANGOVER IN DAMASCUS (On the Pilgrim Trail of the Eastern Empire)  

Waking up within the physical inhabitation of a dead pharaoh’s body who is about to be mummified, he escapes the burial chamber using the east qanat. The populace outside continue the pharaoh’s jig to mark his passing, unbeknownst to the disappearance of the body. Thus begins our journey of the Arabian nights across the sandy empire, trailing the long held pilgrim trails across the eastern empire. He struggles and fights off various provocateurs and magi who try and trap him all the while hiding the identity of the physical body he is habituating in. 

Eventually, he reaches the well of souls that is the amenti, the burning pits of duat. There he is confronted by the dream spirit of the pharaoh Amenhotep, who grants him abilities of technique for withholding the musical spirit, techniques which make the sarcophagi resonate with sympathetic resonance for eons. 

3 – FROST PRAYER (Battle for the Highlands) 

-Celtic Cue (00:00 – 03:13) 

-Water Damage (03:14 – 09:45) 

Surrounded by thick pearly fog, and crimson blood stained glass, our hero wakes up in the body of a wounded soldier in the aftermath of a bloody war in the Celtic highlands. He witnesses the serenity of the mountainous landscape slashed with the demonic barbarianism of the Middle Ages. 

Thus begins his long journey across the grassy plains, among the folk countryside and through the villages. He travels north, through the forests of the folk settlings, landing him onto Nordic ports where he joins crew with a Viking ship. Plundering and partying are the orders of the day. He sails the massive seas with his gruffly crew mates, making port at the stone walled castles along the shoreline to have another merry pub night. It is at this point that he realizes that the barbarity and intensity of the experiences of this age is what forms the musical spirit. And along with technique he acquired from his last trip, he now has the passion to apply it. 

Realizing this, he escapes on the next landing to trudge his way across the land on foot, so he can find a transcendental plane on top of a solitary mountain where he can continue his journey. 

4 – ASTEROID RUN (The Astral Chase) 

The final leg of his journey of self-discovery starts off in the distant future where the space race is common place. He transfigures as one of the crew men of a massive interstellar frigate that is run by a band of merry space pirates that live for the thrill of the moment. 

They pass their time using black holes to pass through the cracks of the space-time fabric and plunder cargo ships. And in between their light speed adventures of avoiding galactic enforcers in asteroid belts, the relativity of the success of their quantum adventures surmounts. 

During these nebular travels, the composer collides with the bright dwarf of the final piece of the musical puzzle. He realizes that the performer who plays with technique and passion is the one that flies in the skies, but the one that traverses the astral plane, is the one who is humble and grounded. That person, is the pulsar that emits the strongest radiation, the center of all wisdom. 

5 – OPUS (For Self Actualization) 

After his many nocturnal, anachronous adventures, he spends much time absorbing and processing all that he has learnt so far. Eventually, it dawns on him that everything we see around us, everything that is within the physical world, is relative, materialistic and solipsistic. It is a mere reflection of our surroundings by our senses and their limited ability to grasp and make sense of what we are born into. 

It merely exists for a finite amount of space within its time and has no eternal, absolute and immortal value or consequence. Thus he deduces that that only thing that must be truly real and immortally existent and immutable, must be the spirit of the music. And this spirit is progressive, all-encompassing and evolving. 

The arrangement of specific pitched timbers within a tightly regulated myriad of meters has given rise to something so eternal that it spans the entire length of the human civilization. And this he fears, with the approach to the musical spirit in his time, will die out. The mediocrity, the over processing, the run of the mill feel, the general under appreciation, all this he fears will be the death of the musical spirit unless there is a revolution. 

6 – EXULANSIS (For Keyboard Trio) 

Definition: “the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it”. 

To save the dying spirit of modern music, our hero takes on the task of composing a piece so timeless that it will forever keep the soul of rhythm and time alive. But alas, he is treated a like a crazy, a leper, a pariah. 

He is shunned aside, and no one takes him seriously and the more he tries to explain his concept of trying to save the music, the more he is ridiculed and is unable to illuminate the closed intellect of the masses, who continue to feed on the fodder provided. His deepest fear is the downfall of the human intellect as a result of this. 

7 – SPACE CONCIERTO (For Keyboard Trio and Orchestra) -Movement 1 (00:00 – 02:07) – Escape Velocity 

-Intermezzo (02:08 – 03:17) – Dark Matter / Desolate Spheres 

-Movement 2 (03:18 – 07:53) – Solar Clockwork 

In a last ditch effort to save the music, the thread linking all of humanity across time, he decides to compose a keyboard concerto that would represent a trip into the outer reaches of space. A galactic odyssey that would represent the trill of the space chase he experienced in his dreams, like a space opera. 

 He spends many nights on end, from the point of waking up to the point of face numbing, teeth grinding exhaustion, to come up with a timeless symphony. He decides that his concerto will not only pay homage to the classic piano, but to its modern electronic counter part, the synthesizer. The concerto is an audiological representation of his struggle and toil to expound his ideas. It represents not only his interpretation of the ideas, but of the celestial voyage that the listener is intended to embark upon. 

8 – WINTER’S THEME (Space Concierto Movement 3) 

Having communicated his ideas as best as he could, he felt satisfied that he has done all, that he could. But ultimately, it left him with a feeling of yearning and hoping for a better time, making him into a romantic. He became increasingly self-absorbed and cut off from everyone around him as his heart ached more and more for the kind of world he envisioned in his dreams. Chasing a hopeless future, he was equally hopeless about the generation of his time and distanced himself from society, preferring a solitary existence in his head space (although that doesn’t apply to you since you’re listening to this album!) 

9 – SCHIZOID DUCKS (Reprise) – Non Compos Mentis 

His cut-off from society and his endless creative endeavors eventually take a toll on his health and wellbeing. He starts experiencing neurological symptoms and slowly becomes delusional while losing his grip on sanity and reality. He is frequented by hallucinations of his inner most fears and the symphonies he once loved. 

All this drives him to the point of breaking down. The same generation that he tried so hard to save, ended up involuntarily committing and forcing him to be institutionalized where he spent the remainder of his days listening to the music inside his head. 

---A Very special thanks to my family and friends for their constant support and encouragement---