So here we are. After the final night in NightBox Studio, Aleister’s Amazing Bookcase is finished and with it the whole album. The track met all the criteria mentioned in the previous post - it clocks in at over ten minutes, starts out with some heartbeat matched EMS Synthi sounds and ample helpings of haunting echoes. The EMS was a little too glitchy which resulted in me having to edit the volume for the whole track to reduce the noise! It was really heavy on the Mac’s processor too and meant I had to lock every track as I produced them. Towards the end it started to pick up speed and so I sat down and added some drumming. On top of that came a blistering, trippy guitar solo. That needed a little editing to give some space and then it was time for the final audio atmospheres. I’ve had the SqueakyDoor and Paper samples waiting a while for this track. To finish them I added some backwards, pitch-adjusted, time-slowed vocals. They add an eerie quality. As for what is said, I’ll leave that as a mystery and let your own ears decide. The outtro ended up being severly cut back. I was tempted to cut it even further, and if I do create any remixes probably will.

The files are uploading for Amduscias Records right now, I’ll let you know once I have the release date.

Time to open a few bottles of bubbly - I’m going to be taking some downtime by the beach in Cuba so may be gone a while

“Invoke me under the stars!” Liber Legis 1 :57

Just the one track left to record now, Aleister’s Amazing Bookcase. The booklet has been finished - sneak preview of the cover above and includes wallpapers, avatars, banner-ads, iPhone wallpapers, lyrics,full credits (for all the sounds taken from freesound.org) and maybe even an Invokation Cubeecraft paper toy !

I’m determined that this track stays a long instrumental piece so a little explanation of its title will be given here. This whole album is riddled with references to Aleister Crowley - from his Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwass, to Babalon and the Egyptian gods that surface in Liber Legis, his seminal work (or Aiwass’ rather!).

Nuit, the goddess of infinite space is the speaker in the first chapter of Liber Legis and so the subject of the first invocation [which leaves the way open for the follow-up albums INVOKATION OF HADIT and INVOKATION OF RA-HOOR-KHUIT! Maybe they'll get done and we'll have the LIBER LEGIS Boxset ! maybe... that's after the special limited art edition, the ION remixes edition and the ultra-special, multi-tracks included collector's edition!]

Modern devotees are probably as much hardened bibliophiles as they are magickians. Crowley himself took his books everywhere with him, from the Himalayas to Mexico. They must have been a formiddable sight. I’m reminded of the Pink Floyd line in One Of My Turns, Are these all your guitars ?

I’m also determined that all the little nuances I had planned for other tracks which either didn’t fit them or didn’t materialise at all will be included here. So the EMS Synthi will finally get some playtime as will the ReBirth snippets and some of the soundscapes generated by Forester. The trick will be to weave them together with enough dark ambience and yet some kind of satisfying form.

I’m continually amazed at how the muse descends on the recording sessions and something usable is instantly produced. So far Bardo Becoming Reality , Made in Darkness and Templar Road seem to have manifested this - the first instantly transformed with the vocal refrain of the title. It’s hard to describe what makes a track work (for my ears) but its something to do with the timing and that magical “hook”. The large amount of lyric writing prior to the recording sessions, that went into this album has also helped with the structure. Again the lyrics have all been subtly changed during the recording to intregrate with the music and this is most apparent in Made in Darkness where certain lines becoming many-repeated refrains. That’s quite appopriate in a way as this album deals with invocation and it’s often by repeated chanting oif a diety’s name that invocation occurs.

Anubis feeds me ankhs as I float
pours silver feathers down my throat

I’m getting richer every day
I’m emptying the pitcher of decay

I walk round and round templar road
I walk round the stations of the ritual toad

in this supernatural life spirits brush my skin
veil so thin I begin to touch my soul’s twin

Thoth carries my name under the dark roof
writing my new life in sparkling cartouche

I walk round and round the templar road
widdershins till all is hallowed

Nuit covers me in stars as I float
Arches above my flickering ghost

I walk round and round templar road
marking time till another body is borrowed

It’s amazing how you can toil for days on a track like Alchemikal Heirlooms ov Aiwass and then this one, Templar Road, is finished in one sitting! I started with an infections drum track. To remove some of the repetition I manually added highlights on a second drum track. With Garageband once you’ve used one of the Apple loops, I found that copying the track that its in then gave me the drum instrument mapped across the keyboard. Pulling out my favourite Danelectro and dialling up a nice tone with Guitar Rig I added a scratchy, syncopated ryhthm track. To finish it I added some chords with the Modern Prophecy instrument. All that remained was to add the vocals. I already had the lyrics (above). As usual these did mutate slightly from the originals during recording.

This track instantly felt finished. At a little over 9 minutes it met my demand for a couple of longer tracks for the album. I’m getting together a few images for a booklet for the album. Tom at Amduscias Records sent me the catalogue number for the album [AMR142] so the release is getting closer by the day!

I came across Leafcutter John’s Forester software a little while ago. It plays back samples in a wandering, haphazard way which seemed ideal for the opening of this track. Alchemical Heirlooms Ov Aiwass is now in its third incarnation. After some more ambient attempts I finally put a bassline in to give it some structure along with some Japanese wind instruments.

I spent a day trying to tidy the vocal track for this. Big lesson to self is make sure the Audio Kontrol inputs are set right when recording vocals! It took some re-arranging of the stereo field in Audacity just to get the balance right. The amount of distortion to raise the volume has also intriduced too much noise into the mix. Severe clipping with the Gate has helped a little, but the longer I spend trying to fix it, the longer I’m tempted to start version 4 of the song!

I don’t really want to have to re-create the vocals but its looking more and more like I’ll have to. The more I listen to the mixdown of the track the stronger this feeling gets. There isn’t really a hook anywhere in it yet and the bassline doesn’t really develop into anything.

So its looking more like version 3 will be a click-track for the next take! This track is proving the most problematic at the moment so I’ll be concentrating on the remaining ones for a while. Templar Road already has the lyrics written and Aleister’s Amazing Bookcase is currently destined to be an extended (7 minute+) dark ambient instrumental track. I need to get at least one in here somewhere!

Here are the lyrics:

A star and a snake and a sword
wrapped in a Sumerian dawn
in a pyramid of light
born that we might

hear the words of a savage king

Son of the queen of infinite space
crowned and conquering child
inhabiting the moments between.

screaming that we might

hear the dream-words of a secret chief

I invoke thee in silence
in the quite of the pages turning
I invoke thee in dust
bring unto us your learning

noon in a corner house drawing room
a star and a snake and a sword
the alchemical hierlooms ov aiwass
chatter like talking boards

at last I invoke thee in Cairo’s howling noon
at last I invoke thee, come into this room

Aiwass I invoke thee
Come into this room!

OK, we knew the 6am starts weren’t a good idea, didn’t we ? Back in the NightBox Studio at midnight and I manage to get the final track finished in almost one sitting! Originally called Bardos of Becoming, it’s name has been changed following the vocal track to Bardo Becoming Reality. This often happens when I already have some lyrics/titles for songs and the vocal delivery prompts something different.

For example, these are the original lyrics with alterations shown in <brackets> :

sidereal sounding blasphemies
alphabet of desire / cartouches of desire
belief shifting / drifting between hyperventilated dreams
bound no longer / stronger in not-being

bardo becoming reality
scrying glitches ov thee future

i walk past thee death’s head Inquistor
reciting his list of my live’s deeds

<i walk past the flame-headed balancer
A book of my deeds in his hand>

incarnating incantations ov delight
skin silk wet soft joining

The image at the top is a graphical map of a song. Its an attempt to add more structure to tracks by analysing music in this way (this is for Coil’s Careful What You Wish For) and then thinking of how my own are structured. With this collection being more ambient its more loose, but its a useful tool to get me thinking.

The track itself developed using A Gamelan and low droning instruments. It started to capture a dark mood that immediately made it a candidate for this track. To finish off the other-wordly/eastern jungle feeling I added a rain sample from the Freesound Project. Its a great resource to quickly find material and RHumphries’ Rain 04 was just what I was looking for. Underneath it is my own hastily recorded sample of the shower running. Ideally I prefer to only use my own material for samples, but for speed Freesound does the job perfectly.

After mixing the final track down it became obvious that the verse above needed revising. In order to correct this I’m going to be using the new Multitake mode to re-record the vocal track and select the best parts.

On a final note its good to see Trent Reznor sharing video material with us. Watching the Echoplex rehersal its easy to get jealous - not content with all that shiny gear he has a cavernous, moody place to practice in!

Well the 6 am starts aren’t great but at least I’m getting some time to record! One of the versions of track two, provisionally called Aiwass Actual has developed into a more symphonic, strings and piano piece which isn’t really in keeping with the general feel for this album. As such it may be that it gets transformed into Samuel Warner’s Time Machine, a track for the other 2008 pending album, Thee Machine Ov Illumination. I’m still researching some of the historical information for that track so that will have to wait for the album’s release.

Logic suddenly seems a lot more accessible. I’m not sure if it’s using the bigger monitor or the wealth of instruments in the library, but it seems more straightforward. The ability to edit midi notes once recorded makes corrections easy and the sound quality is very good.

Studio downtime is spent flicking through copies of Computer Music, looking for those odd couple of pages that spark something.

After a fairly fruitless evening session during which I screamed at Garageband a thousand times for not recognising the World Music Jam Pack I decided to adopt a new approach. Rising at 6 am, I ground some coffee beans and installed Logic Studio. Its been sitting pristine in its box since it first came out and now the 19″ TFT is much better suited to using it. Once installed it miraculously saw the Jam Pack instruments! Now all those Tibetan bowls, Indian sitars and Alegerian drums are lurking in the background ready to be used!

In terms of the new album I managed to get some new raw material recorded. Unlike the first track it seems I’ll have to tease the other ones across the void. At least by forcing yourself to create something you have some material to hone later. Its a longer process but does guarantee forward motion of the project.

An example of this is how inspiration will seize you throughout the recording process if you let your mind atune to its frequencies. Already new lyrics are forming for the last track in advance of the music itself. It becomes a synthesis of all recent phenomena that held any captivating interest, filtered through my own experience-field.

In the meantime I’ve been listening to more Coil. The New Backwards has some great material on it and Selvaggina Go Back Into The Woods some interesting, clear live versions of songs. The more I listen to Coil the more it becomes apparent how much rythmic structure is in the songs and subtle background hooks.

I’m also contemplating other ingredients for the album - maybe some marimbas, maybe some shakuhachi. Now that Propellerheads have made the original ReBirth RB-338 a free download, its time to get to grips with its bubbling 303 emulation again!

The track for Day 2 is called Alkhemical Heirlooms Ov Aiwass . Its proving problematic already! Having started out with a bass drone I quickly ended up cutting it into smaller loops to give some sense of structure. This ended up getting overlayed with fuzzy, delayed guitar and finally in a version with some Dimebag style chugging ! Neither really fit the idea of the track, something sonorous and swirling with touches of Cairo to echo the mystery of Aiwass’ dictation of The Book of the Law.

What it really needs is a heavy dosage of the EMS Synthi (pictured above). I first saw this instrument on the video Coil on Hello Culture. Built inside a suitcase and with a pin-matrix and joystick it looked like an ideal esoteric instrument. Unfortunately the original ones are hard and expensive to come by. Fortunately there is a software-based version.

Here are some lyrics for the track. They’ve not been recorded yet so may get changed or destroyed or discarded:

a star and a snake and a sword
wrapped in a Sumerian dawn
in a pyramid of light
born that we might

hear the words of a savage king

Son of the queen of infinite space
crowned and conquering child
inhabiting the moments between.
screaming that we might

hear the dream-words of a secret chief

i invoke thee in silence
in the quiet of the pages turning
i invoke thee in dust
bring unto us your learning

noon in a corner house drawing room
a star and a snake and a sword
the alkhemical hierlooms ov aiwass
chatter like unquiet talking boards

at last i invoke thee in Cairo’s howling noon
at last i invoke thee, come into this room

Other ideas floating around are to add some field-recordings by ripping sounds from some video I shot in Maraakesh some years ago. Of course this will take some time. Tom at Amduscias Records sent an email last night - “take your time”, so some of the pressure’s off !

Tonight I’ll take a stab at salvaging this track - maybe cut out the most promising bits or get the Handycam hooked up for some audio extraction!

The plan is to have the five-track album for Amduscias Records finished by the weekend! In the tradition of Jim Dalrymple at MacWorld I thought I’d keep a journal here of the creative process. I’m always interested myself in the way that writers and musicians approach this task so thought I’d share my experiences.

The first sessions were to create the first track, Made in Darkness. The title refers to the fact that I write best in the middle of the night! Nuit as well as being the Goddess of Infinite space also means “Night” in French, so there’s multiple levels for the title.

The track itself was going to be dark and ambient. Its a genre that doesn’t come naturally - I’m happier creating guitar-orientated pieces, but following my exposure to Coil and producing the track Of Orient Are We for the Darkwinter 2007 compilation, I have been creeping more and more into that territory both in terms of writing material and listening to it.

For Made in Darkness I started with some low drones. For me, getting the right tone for an instrument in the first step. I’ve been using a lot of the Apple Garageband instruments and found that dropping the tuning on some of them produced interesting effects. Trying to get the balance between free-form simplicity and not getting bored is the key here. I hadn’t meant to add vocals to the track but in the end they proved necessary to bind it together and give it direction. For these the external mic was fed through my new Native Instruments Audio Kontrol which gives great clarity. These were done through a new pop-filter and the vocal track was bumped up with some distortion. To complete the vocals the track was duplicated, with one having an ambient filter to swirl it in the stereo fields whilst the other clean track increased in volume during the semi-chorus.

Mixed down to my iPhone I listened to the track a few times later. It always helps to do this - leave a break after recording as you get so used to hearing the same bits again and again when recording. This highlighted a weakness in the opening vocal which was rectified by some adjustment of the volume and fade-ins.

Invokation Ov Nuit is coming soon on the Amduscias Records label. Featuring five tracks of Gothick’s signature dark ambient guitar rock. The track Made in Darkness has just been finished after two evenings spent recording at Gothick’s Banyan Studios. We’ll let you know as soon as the whole album is completed.