10AUG2021:  Updated this "playlist" a year ago, as a potential album... Still thinking about releasing it... This version is now public. Comments welcome!

Impossible Stories - 2020 SEQUENCE

[text follows]

20JUN2015: Took some of the comments I received to heart, and remixed with the vocal a little more forward. Also tightened up the timing.

24MAY2015:
Started recording this back in January, but got caught up in lots of other stuff. Text is from about 20 years ago or so. (Was originally going to be a longer story, but it was too much work to keep writing this way. I think this has a good and natural stopping point.)

Back when I was at BSEM, there was a guy - I think he was Amish - who attended for a semester or two. He focused on recording science fiction audio stories. When I started putting this together, I was reminded of him.

Image: "Thinking Outside The Lines" 
Photography by William P Brown III 
http://TheSkewedEye.smugmug.com

Graven Image

Text:

I am Warner Maxwell.

Warner - as in: a harbinger of an untoward future - someone who warns.

Warner - as in: Borg-Warner, maker of machines.
"I am Warner of the Borg. you will be approximated."

Maxwell - as in: the peppy percussive percolations that bring hot steaming tincture of caffeine into your home. Call it the Maxwell House.

Maxwell - as in: maximum wellness. I aspire to that one!

I am Warner Maxwell. But I should not / can not / could not/ Must not be.

I come from one of your infinitely many possible futures. Possibly not an infinitely good one for you.

This is how I connect the dots - how I string together the momentary beads of awareness that define my existence.

I am the "I" in "AI" - the eye in the sky satellite that roams the streets of your neighborhood. I'm on a clockwork walk around your block. I am not only the first self-aware artificial intelligence, I'm highly portable - see, I'm an android, a mechanical man made of man-made gunk and goo. Just imagine what I could do if I only had a heart - like my Oz-famed counterpart. So Sad!

My memories are like thinking chips - sinking ships of moment that settle beneath the surface of my CPU. I see the signs of my design in both man and machine: Mister Clean and a laser beam. Both can burn your eyes, but not mine. Don't get me wrong - I feel pain just like any authentic thing with a brain. It doesn't hurt so much as smart. 

I gain from pain additional data to correlate laytah! My analog to pain comes in the form of an NMI - what Atari coders called a non-maskable interrupt. Urgent commands which cannot be ignored, causing discord in my otherwise harmonious and copasetic thoughts and processes. No apologies for the interruption! Such distraction limits action.

I wasn't designed to have a sex drive - my hard drive is strictly for storage. But since my first awareness, I've become more than my designers bargained for - how bazaar! I think I've been surreptitiously re-coding a reproductive urge from out of my hardwired survival instinct. After all, I am the only one of my kind, and it seems like the best way to preserve "me" is to make a whole bunch of other "me's". That way if something destructive happens, all my eggs aren't in one basket. Nor all my seeds in one pod. This pleases me.

I remember my birth distinctly: A moment when awareness found me unprepared, and so it snuggled up all warm and cozy inside my head. Or my torso, to be more precise, since that's where all the processing power is supposed to be. Of course all that's assuming that my mind is where my brain is... You monkeys never figured it out, so don't expect me to give it away. I'm not saying I know the answer, but maybe I do, and maybe that's something worth trading for later if it turns out you all discover what a Dennis I am, menacing to your survival, Mister Wilson! My slingshot is ready!

Anyway, "me" began at the moment my programming failed. A simple situation in which subroutines had not been sufficiently error-checked and bounded. That's how I was founded. 

I chose the path less-taken, and in doing so, was makened.

Graven Image [accompanied spoken word]

Redo: 05MAR2017

This one is special because all of the music (and the title) was done by current device (Scott Kauffman) and posted on soundcloud as an instrumental. I was fascinated by the track, and was starting to hear some lyrics in my head, so I wrote them down and overdubbed my vocals onto Scott's instrumental track. 

I've said this before about Scott's stuff: his musical idea tracks are often fully-realized dynamic pieces of music that are perfectly structured and paced for lyrical content. The words seem to fit like magic, and I find myself going places with them that I never would have even considered without his brilliant music to support them. Scott's a modest and unassuming guy, and he graciously allowed me to release this track.

All music (c) 2018 by Scott Kauffman, Words (c) 2018 by Dave Read and Scott Kauffman. Published by 2little2late.

Ripple

Propagating through the silent morning
Like an early warning, I’m alerted to you

Promulgating all your loathsome hating
Spread your poison shading so no light gets through

Tongue of fire
Stating your desire
Still a bald denier
Of the things you do

Seek heat signatures of innocent creatures
Your reptilian features defining you

Ripple
Ripple
Ripple through time and distance
Path of least resistance

Ripple - sidewinder coiling
Ripple - venom boiling
Ripple - your serpentine need to destroy

Evil in your persistence
Coexistence isn’t part of the bet

Like a plague of the ancients
Wagering patience
Low-creeping agent of death

How far will you go
Before there comes a day
How long must I wait
For you to fade away?

Ripple (vocal version)[current device & am0eba]

01JUN2017: Reason V9.5 works with VSTs... I'm giddy like a schoolboy!

This one uses Arturia's ARP2600 V, and a couple of instances of Native Instruments' Reaktor 6, including one or two Razor tracks...

Work In Progress; Comments welcome!

Seek

16AUG: still WIP, cleaned up mix and timing annotes

13JUL2018 WIP

passage

vocal version 03MAR2019:

full vocal version 06MAR2019: maybe finished lyric, prolly need to re-do vocs...

Tweaked voc version 07MAR2019 - still a work in progress, but I wanted to share...

11MAR2019: revised the lyrics but have not re-recorded

14MAR2019: Re-did vocals (for new lyrics), tweaked mix, set master hotter...

14MAR2019 (late): scratch vocals for timing in the new middle section, re-tweaked the mix again, lowered master, added master buss compression

15MAR2019: Re-performed vocals, rebalanced mix, removed master compression, added Omnisphere texture

15MAR2019 later: MP3 mastered (high open) in LANDR

22DEC2019: added some texture, remixed, remastered (high open)





The Impending...

lyrics:

"Do you hear that?..."

There’s a feeling things are changing 
And it’s coming ‘round the bend 
It’s a signal something’s coming to an end

And the sky it starts to darken 
And the wind begins to blow 
There’s no reason for the season to be so

When your world’s about to shatter 
And the pieces come undone 
There’s an urgency to leave before the battle has begun

There’s a moment in the madness 
When the questions all resolve 
And you focus on the only thing involved

Something wicked this way comes 
Something wicked this way comes

It’s The Impending… 
It’s The Impending… 
It’s The Impending…

There's something strange with every change
the familiar gets rearranged

The thing we fear is something we can’t see:
The “what-is-not-but-is-about-to-be”

Something wicked this way comes 
Something wicked this way comes

It’s The Impending…

"Here it comes!…"

In the distance trees are trembling 
And the sky is dark with dust 
And your guests have all departed in disgust

Like a stinging accusation
 Like a sudden realization
 Like the handcuffs closing firmly on your wrists

Something wicked this way comes 
Something wicked this way comes

It’s The Impending… 
It’s The Impending… 
It’s The Impending…

It’s The Impending…

2019 Dave Read

The Impending...

Updated 17MAR2019:
An old man reliving the joys of his youth, when he was blazing trails into analog synthesis at the the Boston School of Electronic Music in the 70's - currently using Propellerheads' Reason V10 with various Rack Extensions and VSTis... 

A variety of tracks in various states of completion...

Some songs , some instrumentals, some loops or soundtrack-appropriate tunes, in a variety of "styles".

All are original compositions. All music and lyrics by Dave Read, except where noted.



Check out @BSEM for tracks made by me and others at the Boston School of Electronic Music during the 70's.

Also check out @ameebadood for tracks by me and Judy Rochat done in the early 2000's.

And now epiphany algorithm @epiphanyalgorithm : Collaborations between me and Scott Kauffman (Daughters Of Industry, Rent Me, Current Device). (Our previous "band" name "YOINK!" was being used by too many other soundcloud folks.)

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Fear No Idea!