All the vocals for The New Albion Guide To Analogue Consciousness, An Atompunk Opera have been completed. I shall be heading to Heathrow in a few hours where i shall try to sleep for a few hours on a comfy chair, or barring that, a moderately untorturous chair, or barring that, the floor until 5 AM. I shall board a flight and a whole bunch of dumb steps later be back home (around dinner) and commence mixing.
While i do have another work commitment to honor which will take a couple of days, because of the episodic release of the opera, one act a week for four weeks, i don’t ACTually have to mix the entire thing before i release the 1st Act. I just have to mix… the 1st Act. I’ve done a lot of preliminary work here in between the sessions, so i doubt mixing the entire opera would take longer than 10 days in any case. But the first act alone will be pretty simple, most of it is already premixed.
So i think i could release the 1st Act beginning on Tuesday, July 8th is this too soon? Are you all on vacation? Lord knows, i need to pay the poor singers so i need y’all to be around to buy the dam thing.
So, to recap: Atompunk recorded. Maybe Act 1 out July 8th. Badda bing, badda…
It’s an into what a GOT show would been like had it come out in the 1980s (hint, cheesy as F****). It’s utterly narly.
The video was cut and put together by Hunter L Sanders and the music was made by Steve Duzz. Mikolaj Birek put the two together much like an 80s reeses peanut butter commercial, and viola, hilariousness ensues.
Long before the Gallagher brothers penned their hit 90s songs, back in the heady, groovy days of 1968, when hippyness and psychedelia was swingin’, baby, a movie was made by Joe Massot featuring George Harrison’s very first soundtrack, and art direction by the psychedelic collective known as The FooL. It was Wonderwall, a very, very strange film that appeared at sundance, got some acclaim, but because a distribution deal was never worked out, only played at a few midnight art houses and practically disappeared into obscurity.
The director also filmed the Zeppelin concert film Song Remain The Same, but was removed from it during editing when it was taking way too long. It’s quite possible the director could flake out a bit, and with Wonderwall being his first full length film, was unable to negotiate in the manner necessary to ensure his film went from Cannes notable to distributed counter culture movie.
At first glance the story seems a bit… inane. An eccentric English professor finds a peehole in his apartment that lets him spy on his new, young, 60s groovaliscious neighbors, a couple. The girl, named blatantly enough Penny Lane, utterly fascinates him. The couple has all kinds of hngouts and parties and be ins and Penny Lane seems to be perpetually posing for 60s softcore porn mags, cigarette commercials, and stewardess ads, alone and/or with equally underdressed ladyfriends.
The professor drills more and more peepholes in his walls and the more peepholes, the more psychedelic it all gets.Dionysian party jams, the old Prof battling a teenage Superman with “weapons” like giant cigarettes and lipstick tubes, an effeminate cowboy riding a plastic rocking horse and talking on the phone, a hippie mermaid chick floating on a sea of polyester fabric while brushing her hair…. The Prof starts dressing in a New Year’s party hat, or a funky outsized tuxedo, and decorating his apartment, especially the “wonderwall” itself, with streamers and party favors.
Eventually the professor crosses over to her world, but when he does , the hippie girl’s psychedelic-flavored life isn’t idyllic as it seemed. She is unmarried and has just discovered she’s pregnant, and her hippie boyfriend is being a big hippie dick about it. She swallows some pills and tries to off herself, but the professor saves her by getting her an ambulance.
The film is obviously a giant metaphor for the times. The professor is one of the normal squares, going about their unexamined life as the masses do. The psychedlic movement comes around, expanding minds and life and the professor is fascinated by what this new world is like outside his black and white existence and becomes increasingly drawn to it. He starts to turn his back on his drab, square world and embrace the new age. However, and i respect this nod to honesty, the great new hippy age is not all peaches and sunsets, and even psychedelic queens can get heartbroken and dicked over, and Mr. Sqaure can actually save her literally, as she has saved him figuratively.
Wow, man.
It’s a fun remnant of an era when young film makers were trying hard to capture not only the 60s scene, but the LSD experience. I mean come on, what cutting edge late 60s film didn’t try to portray the LSD trip? Wonderwall definitely goes all in.
Geore Harrison, when approached to do the soundtrack expressed uncomfortability, saying he didn’t think he knew how to make a soundtrack. the director assured him not to worry, he would use whatever George came up with, so Harrison made a soundtrack heavy on the indian raga influence he was famous for at the time, a sort of western introduction to indian music. It’s pretty damn good, with some Beatlesy grooves also thrown in.
Well kids, i’m off on a plane tomorrow to London to record the singers for The New Albion Guide To Analogue Consciousness, An Atompunk Opera, the final in the New Albion trilogy.
One of the hardest parts of this opera was figuring out what to fit in and what to leave out so that the thing doesn’t become overly long. As such i’ll tell you now, there may be a few questions you have at the end. I believe just about everything you need to know is in there (as usual i will provide lyrics) or easy enough to extrapolate, (and there’s no surreal 4th wall breaking this time) but i’m always happy to answer any questions since a couple points do require a hair of extrapolation. (There is a hidden plot point, but a crafty listener will catch where it is and figure out how to unlock it) I want to make clear, there is nothing in there that’s “up to you” in the sense that i don’t have an answer. I have answers to everything. If you ever want to know, just ask. (although obviously not until all 4 acts are released)
Let’s then take a post to show you the incredible space age architecture of John Lautner.
John Lautner (1911-1994) is a giant in architecture, and created numerous famous houses in southern California.
He was born in Michigan and at age 22 joined a Frank Lloyd Wright apprenticeship program. “I soon realized that i had little interest in formal drafting and avoided the Taliesin drafting room, preferring daily duties of “carpenter, plumber, farmer, cook and dishwasher, that is an apprentice, which I still believe is the real way to learn”
The Atompunk era is fascinatingly paralleled across much of the planet. As in the west, the soviet block went through a similar arc. The 1950s were prosperous and held the promise of a future without limits. This led into an optimistic 1960s in which dreams of space were becoming real.. And of course, just like the in the west, over the course of the 1970s it crashed. There are different circumstances and reasons, but i still find an amazing assortment of parallels up until the 80s, and for me the 80s is the atompunk cut off.
I highly recommend the book Red Plenty by Francis Spufford. The book is historical fiction, the specific little stories are made up, but all the details are absolutely real and carefully presented. The book deals with the Soviet optimism of the 50s into the 60s and the details of how and why the dream of the planned economy rose, crested and crashed.
“20th-century magic called ‘the planned economy’, which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche and sputniks would lead the way to the stars. And it’s about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true”
But that’s not why we’re here today. While we’re on the topic, let’s check out the soviet space art of Nikolai Kolchitsky.
In the 1950s and 60s Soviet artist Nikolai Kolchitsky was in his prolific heyday, creating visions of outer space for various magazines, “Technique – Youth”, “Spark”, “Young technician”, as well as a wealth of illustrated books, short stories, essays. While American pulp mags like Amazing stories featured art that created a sci fi vision for the mind of american youth, Nikolai Kolchitsky was one of the most important pop culture artists doing the same for Russian children dreaming of a future in space where worlds waited to be explored and mankind’s future lead.
Nikolai Kolchitsky died in 1980. Here are his atompunk visions:
I SO dig this band. Their albums are all stories, INCREDIBLY AWESOME STORIES, told to you with songs in between the narrative.
I’m going to play you an example of one of those stories. I’m gonna skip the songs for the purpose of this experiment but go get the album and get the entire experience. The thing is, i’m a storyteller. Coming up with cool stories is a central part to what i do and I AM JAW DROPPINGLY AMAZED at the shit they come up with. WHO writes these things? Because they are AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEsome. They take myththology and riff the SHIT out of it.
I am buying my ticket for London. I am heading there on Monday, will be there for a week (don’t need a week but the flights are only on MonWedFri, and i NEED WedFri, so frackin’ Mon to Mon it is) then it’s back home and mix the goodies for alllll you sweet little cherubs.
As i’ve said upteen times, mid July the 1st Act will come out. All 4 Acts will be released one week apart for 4 weeks (and they’ll be like $2.50). I HIGHLY recommend listening to it episodically. Once all 4 Acts have been released then the full album will be released. The 4 seperate acts will feature cover art by Sarah DeBuck and the full album proper will feature cover art by the great Stefan Paris.
The first of the four Act covers by Sarah De Buck.
Once THAT is done we move on to the box set. Naturally this won’t concern most of you as many will already own the 3 albums. But for those who have only bought 1 and are considering the next 2 or those who want to be completists, here’s what i’m thinking for the box set:
Obviously it’ll have the complete trilogy.
It will have in either epub or mobi format a book of New Albion stories, all the short stories in the New Albion universe like The Death of Simon The Albetross and all the others.
it’ll be bundled with New Albion 7 (which is missing from the operas proper). Maybe something else artwise.
But i MAY, i’m really, really considering doing one more song cycle. Basically an Act length extra. See, in the Atompunk Opera, there’s a character who is named but doesn’t actually have a part. (There was NO WAY. Do you how hard it was to keep this thing in the 100 minute zone? I WANTED 90 minutes, but there was NO WAY.) This character is only mentioned a couple times (Amber) but when you get thinking about it, is quite important and VERY interesting. I could do a song cycle featuring her at a different point in time than when the opera takes place. One last dance with New Albion. And i would include it for the box set only.
I would also print some actual, real CDs. Maybe for the box set? Like, if the “box set” was actually a physical package. Does anybody care? If i made them would you buy them? Or would i be wasting my time?
Is there anything else you’d like to see included?
So we’re about a month away (less) from atompunk blast off time. Come with me one last time to a land of dead things and broken love stories. I will make it worth your while.
But have i told you of the weird and crazy perks donations can get you? For instance, i will personally video myself playing you the song of your choice for on of the donation bars. Yes, i have done it before and will do it again:
You can also receive copies of songs written for the operas but never used. Huh?
But hell, those aren’t even close to my favorites. Check THIS shit out: You can request any two character from the opera to go on an awkward date together and a A VIDEO OF THAT AWKWARD DATE WILL BE EMAILED TO YOU.
Now holy shit, THAT is awesome. It’s…that’s just… come on, that’s just bloody batshit crazy right there. I would pay money to see that alone.
You want a copy of the Steampunk Opera piano sheet music songbook? That’s been in the works for awhile now. Get a copy LOOOOONG before it comes out for reals.
Here’s a list of the very strange and rather interesting perks (it’s starts to get really interesting the higher it gets, obviously):
Ah hell, if you give £500 or more, this sin’t on the Kickstarter site, but i’ll name a character in an upcoming album after you. Give this one a good perk.
I’d like to see these guys make it to Ediburgh. I mean, they’re performing my show for heaven’s sakes and apparently no one’s holding any of their loved one hostage tog et them to do it (my usual method). Plus, i’d like to go to Ediburgh. This would give me an excuse to do so.
So consider giving these folks a chancebut MOSTLY…. WHO could pass up an awkward date video? Dude, i LOOOOVE the awkward date video. I have GOT to see this. ( i wonder if they’ll let me see them even if i can’t afford the donation bar?)
I urge you to consider a donation. I would love to one day see Dolls Of New Albion at a major theater, full balls to the wall production, music blowing your hair back like wind, singers making you say “Holy (vulgarity of your choice)!”, sets that put you in another world, costumes, lighting, an incredible, immersive experience that will blow your ass away which i swear i can sometimes envision and i know some of you can too.
This scenario does not happen because one day you bump into a billionaire on the street, maybe save their dog from a screeeching car about to kill them and when they ask how they can ever repay you just give you bazillions to take your show to every great theater in every great city. No, this scenario happens because a show claws its way up from nothing and gradually more and more people notice it and get interested in it.
Having a show in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is a great chance to help this happen. It gets it out there. The more it’s out there the more people it attracts and one day it attracts people who can help it in ways that change the whole game.
I am not personally involved in the performance, i cannot tell you much about it. I have met some of the people involved and i love them and i love their interests and motivations and how they walk their walk. I cannot speak to the performance, i will not know until i see it, but i can speak towards them. They’re worth the chance.
If you feel the show is worth the chance please consider donating to the Kickstarter fund. It’s no guarantee of anything, but the more times the show is put up in front of more and more people, the more it stands a chance of one day, ONE DAY, getting to that wonderful, mystical city of Game Changer and one day come to a theater near you in full regalia with the intensity of Heisenberg meth.
A Steampunk Opera (The Dolls Of New Albion) 