TRACK REVIEW

“EYES” is a bold reimagining of one of Dean R. Chandler’s most powerful tracks, written in 1993 and first appearing on his 2014 double album TiME MACHiNE – Reflecting Shattered Dreams. Here, Chandler breathes new life into the song with a modern AI-assisted production that transforms it into a cinematic modern rock experience.

The track feels heavier, sharper, and more atmospheric than its original incarnation. Guitars grind and surge with a gritty edge, the rhythm section drives like a pulse of paranoia, and the vocal sits front and center, carrying both anger and vulnerability. AI doesn’t dull the emotion—it amplifies it, giving “EYES” an almost theatrical quality, as if scored for a psychological rock opera.

Lyrically, the song remains as potent as ever. Themes of love, betrayal, and obsession cut like the knife mentioned in the pre-chorus, while the haunting refrain “It’s in her eyes and her arms and her heart” echoes like an accusation that can’t be forgotten. Where the 2014 version was raw and reflective, this 2025 version is darker, cinematic, and unapologetically intense.

By revisiting “EYES” through the lens of modern tools, Chandler proves that AI can be more than a gimmick—it can be a collaborator, reshaping memory into something new. This track isn’t just a remix; it’s a reinvention, bridging past and future while reaffirming Chandler’s reputation as an artist unafraid to innovate.

EYES
[Verse 1]
This is my story, my disease
This is an anger, a hunger that feeds
This is a new world that I don't know
This is a secret, a secret that shows

[Pre-Chorus]
I've been in love, I've played the game
I've been up to come crashing down again
I've heard your rumours and I've heard the lies
But my God, I didn't realize

[Chorus]
What are you looking for?
Now you walk out the door
Tell me your reason for leaving
I should have known before
I've heard it all, I'm sure
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart

[Verse 2]
(Yeah) You talk of love and now you talk about pain
You're telling me you've played in every kind of game
You think you've been around and seen it all before
I'm telling you you've seen nothing at all

[Pre-Chorus]
You're all mixed up, watching TV
You're a girl caught in a fantasy
So it's about time that you realize
This game called love cuts like a knife

[Chorus]
What are you looking for?
Now you walk out the door
Tell me your reason for leaving
I should have known before
I've heard it all, I'm sure
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
It's in her eyes, arms, heart
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart

[Guitar Solo]

[Chorus]
What are you looking for?
Now you walk out the door
Tell me your reason for leaving
I should have known before
I've heard it all, I'm sure
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
What are you looking for?
Now you walk out the door
Tell me your reason for leaving
I should have known before, because I know the score
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart
It's in her eyes, arms, heart
It's in her eyes and her arms and her heart

Dean R. Chandler 1993

Eyes

“Cold Jack” began life in 1993–94 when my bandmates Grant Burchill, Gary Wilson, John Fraser and I reimagined a melody from my track Eyes into a dark, cinematic show opener for our band Cold Jack. It was raw, moody, and made to set the stage. Years later, I revived that same intro as the launch piece for my 2014 double album TiME MACHiNE – Reflecting Shattered Dreams, thinking that would be its final outing.

But music has a funny way of refusing to stay buried. In 2025, the track has been reborn with a fresh remix—haunting, powerful, and sharper than ever. What started as a one-off band intro now feels timeless, ready to spin once more into the future.

---------------------

Cold Jack

In the smoke-stained backstreets of the 1930s London, a man called Jack appeared—his name traded in whispers through shadowed jazz halls and under the dripping arches of midnight stations. Cloaked in a long coat, grey hat pulled low, a cigarette ember flickering in the fog, and a battered case at his side, he was never bound to one place… or even one time.

By night, after the bars had closed and the crowd had gone, Jack would sit alone at the piano, coaxing out a fragile, haunting melody. Those who lingered swore the music carried something otherworldly—a sorrow too deep for one lifetime to bear. For Jack was no ordinary musician. He was a wanderer through centuries, cursed—or perhaps chosen—to slip between eras, carrying with him a song that could never die. His music was not invention, but memory: echoes of wars and wonders, heartbreak and fleeting joy, fragments of the human story gathered across ages.

Once, in the 1990s, Jack believed he had finally found what he had been searching for—true love. For a moment, the endless wandering seemed to have purpose. But she left him, and with her went the only warmth he had ever known. Since then, he has been chasing the ghost of that feeling, though deep down he knows it will never return.

And so, Jack remains a lonely figure. He writes of passion, but love continues to evade him. He sings of longing, but it always dissolves into smoke before he can hold it. Forever searching, never arriving, he moves on—leaving only whispers in the night and the lingering melody from the bar's piano.

In time, his legend hardened into myth. He became known as Cold Jack—phantom troubadour, eternal wanderer, storyteller of forgotten ages. Forever on the edge of time, he plays songs no one else could ever write.

Cold Jack

Song Description – “The Sacrifices”

The Sacrifices is a jazz-funk track with a groove that carries more than rhythm—it carries a story carved out of betrayal, broken trust, and the raw weight of human emotion. Written back in 1994 and inspired by a true story, the song reflects on a friendship tested and shattered when loyalty gave way to temptation. The lyrics cut like confessionals, detailing the pain of watching someone you trusted step into the arms of the one you loved.

First released in 2014 on my debut double album Time Machine – Reflecting Shattered Dreams, the track has always stood as one of the album’s most personal moments. Now, in 2025, The Sacrifices returns as an AI-reimagined version, built upon the 2014 recording but re-envisioned with fresh textures, sharper production, and a deeper cinematic edge.

This new release doesn’t erase the original—it amplifies it. The funk basslines still throb with tension, the rhythm still walks that line between bitterness and swagger, but the new AI production allows the track to breathe with the clarity and power it always deserved.

At its heart, The Sacrifices is about choices, regrets, and the cost of losing sight of what truly matters. It’s a story that began in the past but feels just as relevant today.

THE SACRIFICES

[Verse 1]
I heard a rumor
They say you are alone
No one to run to
No friends on the phone
So tell me

[Chorus]
What you gonna do now your love has gone
Who you gonna call it's been so long and so wrong
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Sacrifices you have made now everything is wrong

[Verse 2]
The girl and I were over, it wasn't meant to be
But I trusted you, you were a friend and I told you everything
You listened like a friend should and helped me through it all
But I hear it through the grapevine, see you walking out her door

[Chorus]
So what you gonna do now your love has gone
Who you gonna call it's been so long and so wrong
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Sacrifices you have made now everything is wrong

[Instrumental]

[Verse 3]
So how am I supposed to feel when I told you everything
When I see you drive up, then watch the bedroom lights go dim
So I hear you blame me, your friends are not around
I've put the knife right in your back and no one's to be found now

[Verse 4]
But don't go blame me, it wasn't like that at all
And don't find excuses, you make yourself look small
It wasn't me who changed them, it's you, can't you see
You left without a trace and you didn't care for anything

[Pre-chorus]
You thought the grass was greener
You thought she'd make you smile
So tell me 

[Chorus]
What you gonna do now your love has gone
Who you gonna call it's been so long and so wrong
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Sacrifices you have made now everything is wrong

[Chorus]
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Who you gonna call it's been so long and so wrong
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Sacrifices you have made now everything is wrong

[Outro]
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Who you gonna call it's been so long and so wrong
What you gonna do now the girl has gone
Sacrifices you have made now everything is wrong
(Yeah)

The Sacrifices

Song Description
"The Illusion" is a haunting classical rock track that explores lost faith, blind devotion, and the atrocities committed in the name of religion. Layered within the music is a powerful moment in history—the inclusion of Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, where he famously suggested that humanity’s divisions might vanish if faced with an alien threat from beyond this world.

Originally written in 2014, The Illusion first appeared on my debut album Time Machine – Reflecting Shattered Dreams. This 2025 release is a brand-new AI reimagining of that version, breathing cinematic new life into the original while keeping its spirit intact. Thunderous guitars, sweeping orchestration, and raw emotion collide in a track that challenges belief, confronts hypocrisy, and searches for universal truth.

THE ILLUSTION

[Verse 1]
I've been lost in emotion
I've sailed the seven seas
Searching for reasons
The good book is not what it seems

[Verse 2]
I see it in the distance
Like water on the sand
So tired and weary
It's all I can do just to stand

[Pre-Chorus]
With time
I have come to realize
It's all a dream
Mirage
In the desert of my life
Is all that this came to be
So, 

[Chorus]
Take all your time
If God's on your side
Justify all that you've done
Devoid of feeling
Closed to reason
Closed to love
Can't you see this
All that you do
For your God

[Verse 3]
I've been to the edge and now I've seen the truth
We've sacrificed freedom, we've sacrificed good
We're living this lie
I'll teach you to see the new light

[Verse 4]
The things that you do
In the name of the one
I question your reason
I laugh at your song
You dance to their tune
You are so blind to this wrong

[Pre-Chorus]
If God
Is the thing you use to justify the need
You'll find
Nothing more than dark
When you fall asleep
So, 

[Chorus]
Take all your time
If God's on your side
Justify all that you've done
Devoid of feeling
Closed to reason
Closed to love
Can't you see this
All that you do
For your God

[Written by Ronald Regan]
In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.

[Outro Chorus]
So, take all your time
If God's on your side
Justify all that you've done
Devoid of feelings
Closed to reason
Closed to love
Can't you see this
All that you do
For your God

Time Machine - Echoes of Shattered Dreams

The Illusion

“The Book” is one of the most emotionally raw and personal songs I’ve ever written — a classical rock ballad that captures the moment I finally told my mum the truth: that I had been sexually abused when I was around eight years old.

Written in 2003 and first released in 2014 on my debut album Time Machine – Reflecting Shattered Dreams, this 2025 AI-reimagined version breathes new life into that moment of painful honesty.

At fourteen, I was torn between silence and the unbearable weight of memory. The lyrics unfold like a confession — a boy’s attempt to open his “book of shame”, haunted by feelings too heavy for his young heart to carry. Each verse is a page from that book — fragile, fearful, but necessary to read aloud.

The arrangement builds with emotional precision — beginning with soft piano and strings, then swelling into electric guitars and orchestral textures that mirror the storm of confession. The chorus, “Why must I fall and break your heart,” captures the impossible fear of hurting the one person who’d always protected me.

The closing line — “I cried” — is not just a lyric, it’s the truth. There’s no dramatic ending, only the release that comes when silence is finally broken.

“The Book” isn’t about blame; it’s about courage — the courage to speak, to face the pain, and to begin healing.

THE BOOK

[Verse 1]
I could read you a story
From my book of shame
I'm haunted by feelings
That find me again

[Pre-chorus]
I can't run away
I can't find a place to hide
From this memory

[Chorus]
Why must I fall and break your heart
I've prayed for salvation, no one comes
I cred

[Verse 2]
I'm lost in emotion
I'm feeling the pain
I'm tired of reasons
I have nothing to say

[Pre-chorus]
I must find a way to hold onto this pain
You don't want to see this

[Chorus]
Why must I fall and break your heart
I've prayed for salvation, no one comes
I cried

[Vocal Adlibs]
[Instrumental]

[Chorus]
Why must I fall down and break all your hearts
I've, prayed for salvation but no one comes
So, why must I fall down and break all your hearts
I've tried to fight this, but I just can't go on

[Outro]
So, why must I fall down and break your heart
I've tried to fight this, but I just can't go on

[Spoken]
I cried

The Book

About

I’m Dean R. Chandler — a London based songwriter, recording artist, and storyteller. My music is rooted in a lifelong search for meaning, weaving together themes of love, loss, faith, alien contact, and humanity’s future.

My upcoming double concept album Human Odyssey (set for release in January 2027) is the culmination of decades of writing and reflection. It’s a narrative journey that begins with a search for God and ends with an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence — exploring not only what it means to be human, but also where we might be heading as a species. Musically, it draws inspiration from the epic storytelling of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, the synth-driven edge of Gary Numan, and the emotional depth of artists like Tori Amos and Chris de Burgh.

I previously released Time Machine – Reflecting Shattered Dreams (2014) and continue to revisit my archive of songs written across 35 years, reimagining them with today’s tools and sounds. Some pieces remain intimate and acoustic, while others expand into dark rock, industrial, or orchestral landscapes — but all are connected by a focus on emotional honesty and cinematic storytelling.

Beyond music, I’m fascinated by the intersection of creativity and technology. I’ve been experimenting with AI-driven composition and production to bring old demos to life and to spark entirely new works. For me, these tools are not replacements for human artistry but extensions of it — ways of unlocking stories and emotions that otherwise might have remained hidden.

At its heart, my work is about connection: to the past, to the future, and to the unseen mysteries of existence. Music, for me, isn’t just entertainment — it’s a chronicle of transformation, a conversation between spirit, science, and sound.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-r-chandler-b19715382/
www.deanrchandler.co.uk

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