This is something pretty different that I recorded for my mum. It's a full band cover of "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie but more specifically the Bauhaus version. I tried to sing it like the original but I may have just made it sound really silly haha. I added in a couple of extra guitar bits too cause why not. 

All the instruments were hand recorded except from the drums which I manually programmed in a sequencer. One of these days I'm actually gonna have to record the drum track for a song too.

Ziggy Stardust Cover

Unfortunately the lyrics are pretty dumb and heavy handed for this one since I was just improvising as I was recording. I'd like to do a song about climate change that actually has something interesting to say at some point, this one is all super obvious and tedious. 

I was quite happy with the guitar and drums so I thought I'd put this up anyway. This started out as a recording test for my new guitar (modern Telecaster) but I added enough stuff that it started to sound like a real song.

Cast Away

I'm not super happy with the recording / mastering but I wanted to just get this out finally. I think this is easily my favorite thing I've written. It feels like the first significant step towards the kind of music I want to eventually make. Not necessarily the genre but the feeling / ideas / atmosphere behind it. It's one of the few things I've done that doesn't immediately make me think, "I've heard this exact song a million times before", which I think is an improvement.

Also this is the first original composition metal track I've uploaded here so that's cool!

Lyrics:

A man stands in the light of the moon,
gazing at stars, knowing he's perched upon his tomb,
He never left this home,
But his heart was always left to roam.

He searches for a way to justify this lost existence, 
And the conclusion that he longs for,
Starts making sense.

We are eternal,
We live in shifting forms,
Constituents in the ocean of understanding,
Casting out waves for our turn.

Walls start to crumble round his eyes,
He couldn't believe the lies,
That had fed to him so long.
That we're defined by what we are,
In isolation of the stars,
That guide us on our journey.

(Distant Voice) 
But a man is what he makes,
He shouldn't own the worlds mistakes.

It's in our nature to believe that we individual,
But these distinctions that we draw are not unbridgeable.

We are eternal,
We live in shifting forms,
Constituents in the ocean of understanding,
Casting out waves for our turn.

If we could just,
Set aside the greed that consumes,
Fetter the lust,
Feeding catastrophes fumes.

Life doesn't have to end this way,
Infinity is in our grasp.

There will come a time,
when no more of us remain,
When the last heartbeat fades,
and its heat begins to wane,
We live on,
Through the mechanical life that we've spawned,

And even when all the joints become rust,
And all civilization fades into dust,
When entropy claims the last meaning from these ages,
We're immortalized in the pages of time.

Bound to perceive in forward motion,
True nature is not constrained by what we can conceive,
Grasping at infinity is a foreign notion,
But it shouldn't kill the hope that we can't see.

We are eternal,
We live in shifting forms,
Constituents in the ocean of understanding,
Casting out waves for our turn.

(Carl Sagan) 
The cosmos is also within us, we're made of stars. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Eternal

This is the first new thing I've written since I finally tied up last years songs all at once around Christmas time. It's probably one of the most uplifting and positive ones I've done in quite a while (and unfortunately(?) quite cheesy) so that's cool.

Lyrics:
We look outside and share an endless sky,
with a countless number of other eyes.
Scattered light diffuses through the clouds, 
ignites the fuses in our minds.
They explode into an empire of lights,
an infatuation.

Electricity runs,
over my skin and my bones,
is this what they mean when they say, "I feel so alive"?
The rush to dive,
straight into a life,
the chance to thrive. 
I'll reach out and take it,
on the off chance I make it.

My dreams are calling me and,
honestly I have to admit,
that I long to,
throw myself to the endless sky,
loose myself to ambitions of

Putting the pen upon the page that lies,
permanent and immortalised,
ink imbues the paper with,
sweeping lines that join to formalise,
a sentiment that forever will define,
what it means to feel

Electricity runs,
over my skin and my bones,
is this what they mean when they say, "I feel so alive"?
The rush to dive,
straight into a life,
the chance to thrive. 
I'll reach out and take it,
on the off chance I make it.

My dreams are calling me and,
honestly I have to admit,
that I long to,
Let it all go journey forth to the north,
stand with my feet at the edge of the earth and,

throw myself to the endless sky,
oh, endless sky

Sail off to the sea, never look behind me again,
Hold it close to my chest, this feeling I arrest.

I hold it in my hands

My feet touch the shore,
The new land stretched before,
My eyes, they're open now

To the
-great unknown-
It's a foolish mans endeavour but I'll never give it up,

-The great unknown-
Want the ceiling to loose meaning, wanna write my own luck,

-The great unknown-
The great unknown
The great unknown

The Great Unknown

Mixed and Mastered by Niklas Maier-Lohmann (niklasmaierlohmann@gmail.com)

Made for composition challenge 10.

Lyrics:
Star gazing, I'm racing, for the moon,
Star gazing, I'm racing, for the moon,
Wake me up when I arrive,
I'm longing to forget what lies behind me,

let the constellations,
guide me now
and wherever they may take me is for the best

A sense of exploration wraps itself around me,
*as I feel*,
my acceleration through the galaxy.
Wonder swells among the worlds, 
I'm journeying impossible distance

As the sparkle starts to smear,
I realise that all my fear,
melts into periphery,
I dive into the mysteries of...

Universal dissolution,
And now I truly know what it feels like to be completely alone

I disconnect my,
mind from the world,
but a voice somehow finds me,
And it beckons me home

Pulls me back into 
a loving embrace
I know I don't deserve,
but I will 
take

Disconnection

Hobbyist music maker from Scotland.

Check out my collaborations with other folks in the links below!

Jools Reid

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