Kang and Kodos - Deus Ex Machina - 17 - Fascism

At 13, I went to live with my father and step mother on Church Street. It was a trying experience for me. My exit from my mother and step-father's home was traumatic, exiled because of an embarrassing episode of shop-lifting. Rejection is a tough thing to deal with, especially as a kid by their parents. And, as much as I hated much of the time spent in this new home it was an extremely important time of my life creatively. I was introduced to those who would provoke my interest in the Arts and Entertainment. My cousin (Brian) had awakened me to the genre of New Age music and I can't thank him enough for that. However, my earliest exposure was technically in the second grade because I was given a cassette tape of Chariots of Fire (Vangelis) that i played into the ground. It was in this house that I first fell in love with Jan Hammer, Ray Lynch, John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Enya, Mike Oldfield, Mannheim Steamroller, Enigma, Osamu Kitajima, Shadowfax, The Art of Noise, Yanni, Shiho, and Kitaro. Their sounds transformed the world around me in a more palatable place to exist. These musicians would be the greatest influence on me in just about every way regarding my life in general. 

Of course it wasn't all bad. I fell in love for the first time while living here. I got my first car while living here. I met most of my life-long friends while living here (and lost some along the way too). Like every place that I've ended up, I made a lot of mistakes. I know I broke a heart or two, including my own from time to time. I hand-picked various hills that I would repeatedly die upon for random reasons long forgotten so I am hugely thankful for the power of resurrection. I wish I could go back and change a few things...and by that I mean by hurting less people I valued. Maybe in the next life, I suppose.

Escapism was the name of the game on Church Street. The majority of my evenings were invested in reading comic books, drawing heroes and villains, watching John Carpenter films, pondering the wonders of the universe, staring at lava lamps endlessly, dreaming of portals to other places, and romanticizing reality all while avoiding responsibilities like homework, chores, and familial obligations.

Church St. (Part I)

flipped this sample, couldnt resist dropping a freestyle on it

Onslo Jones - I Can See The Sun Freestyle

Onslo Jones - I Can See The Sun Freestyle (instrumental)

This song was written with a great vision in my mind.

I thank god that I grew up in a different time than today. Seriously, the 80's provided the best escape rooms in the form of arcades. I remember my first time walking into Electronic Playground (which was miles away from our house on Twin Bridge road) and being overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and even smells of the electronically blinding vector graphics drawn all over the glass faces of cabinets magically adorned with otherworldly artwork. It was definitely my happy place (and, mentally, still is) when I think back about the ambience of the stale cigarette smoke, beer, pizza and burgers filling the air while quarters were lost, one after another, forever gone to feed aliens, wizards, starship pilots, abstract configurations which represented a force of good manipulated by your very hands. But, to get there, it would take a trek across hot, oil paved roads which did nothing but put sharp pebbles in your shoes, acres worth of mazes of cornfields that you would get lost in, the bypassing neighborhood kids who we found ourselves in rock throwing fights with, navigating through knee-deep waters in creeks, climbing sky-high fences, and then arriving with a whopping three quarters in our pockets only to perish them in about five minutes time because our skill level was...awful. Every visit to this place felt like an epic journey. Every walk back: an exercise in soul-crushing defeat. 

But, I would love to go back and do it all over again.

Twin Bridge

In 1995, I lived on Florian Drive. It was a basement unit in an apartment complex and I found this to be a very creative time in my life. Also, it was the dawn of the internet (consumer-side, that is) and I remember the first time I connected our PC to a phone cable, logging on to America Online for the very first time. It was also the means to access bulletin boards, mIRC, and engage the world in a connective fashion that had never been conceived except in movies and on television. I was excited. It was the "DIGITAL AGE." It was new! It was a milestone in human accomplishment that would forever change my world. I was marveling at the opportunity to dial in and talk people across the globe, to search new information, to explore spaces that were only dreamt about and even build something within this new frontier. Gaming was also a staple in my life at the time as I grew to love the Windows PC more than my Sony Play Station or Super Nintendo. It had the games, the graphics, the sounds that the consoles (at that time) were sorely lacking. Television suddenly became nothing more than background noise. I was drawn in and adopted into the newfound family of "The Information Super Highway." 
I was all in. 
I was so all in.
The interesting thing about Florian drive is that it was the one place where I actually lived twice. I moved away over several years span and then, two residences later, I moved back in - same building, same unit even. Of course, it's a complicated story but it was a strange arrangement that I still remember vividly because of how it just seemed to play out...as if by some odd, malformed and abstract model of destiny in motion that was guiding me to a life-changing event. 
It is difficult to make out the forest from the trees, to extrapolate the bigger picture from the current chaos - nothing short of a very tumultuous chapter that I remember with some regrets and nostalgic sense of gratefulness to friends past and present.

This was also a period where I found myself under the spell that "Anything can happen. You have your whole life ahead of you. You decide your future."

That illusion was shattered quickly thereafter.

Florian

John trains Hannah in science, mathematics, reading, writing, cartography, engineering, and survival to help her on her eventual pursuit (unbeknownst to her) of saving her world.

Educating Hannah - Deluxe Version

Marco Lane was a turning point in my life. For the first time, I was one my own – living free of any other inhabitants under one roof. I was completely alone. But, it was a very good time and important to learning about life, in particular when it came to putting things together. Between aspects of assembling relationships and a direction I wanted to head towards, things became clearer but also chaotic. I felt lost for time as balancing obligations and desires was a constant struggle. Being unemployed (careerwise, that is) was instrumental in helping me find myself and I'm glad I went through it and wouldn’t give it up for the world. Unfortunately, it was during this freeze-frame in reality that I lost a dear, dear friend…a Korg N364 Sequencer/Workstation. I used that machine to put together my earliest musical work and thus I have a special place in my heart for it even though my ears feel quite differently about the whole event now. I had purchased it years earlier and used it, daily, to hammer out some melodies, harmonies, and some really bad percussion segments. But, it was all I had and we worked well together. The N364 was beautiful for it’s oh-so-obvious 80’s/90’s synth charm (cool sweeping pads, really sweet bells/chimes, super-fake sounding wood-winds/brass, and passable strings – after you layered the hell out of everything). And, it was with this keyboard that I actually played every single note of every single track I laid down. After she was gone, things would change. I would discover MIDI on her successor, the Roland EM-55, and crafting music would never be the same again. 

I think this time was also a moment where, technologically and  musically, the creative process really shifted for me as well. I had composed three different albums. With each new album, transitions were made in my approach to music making. KDK 2 was a lesson in construction and layout. It has an interesting sound but there's no concrete ideas behind anything musically. It doesn't flow and it comes across (to me at least) like sonically it's the equivalent of throwing anything and everything at the wall and just seeing what sticks. But, KDK III would change all that and was a redemption of sorts. Every song I had done before this time was merely “just a song,” with very little thought or purpose other than merely combining notes, sounds, hits, etc. It was here that “the best thing I’ve ever created” would be produced (even to this day). KDK III was a World War II theme/concept album that required a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of thought/consideration while producing it. I had never been that involved in making something like it before and it was definitely a journey. My focus was razor sharp. I was not distracted nor detoured. I was also depressed and angry through much of it because of all the research I had done on the Holocaust, the human suffering, etc. But, that depression acted as a guard rail which kept me on point. KDK 4 was more a project of dispassion than passion and served another purpose altogether. Failed relations fueled that beast and an unleashed beast it was. I think my ire towards others was harnessed in a way that would push me to lash out on the keyboard rather than in open conflict which was definitely for the best as I look back. 

Nostalgia may be the driving force behind my romanticism of these projects but, for me, it’s simply how I remember them. They were my passion projects for the time and it’s one of the few stages in life I wish I could relive - if for no other reason than to bring back what I now know to the creative process.

Marco Lane

The world unraveled in 2001...all of it (from July to September)