or, The Gospel According to Sid Meier
music and lyrics ©2019 by colin nicholls
The Internet blew my mind exactly twice:
In July 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter, and we visited Mitchell at the university the following day and watched him scroll through astronomical imagery of the event taken by Hubble after the planet had rotated into view, and uploaded to the Internet. It seems standard operating procedure now, but at the time it felt like pure Sci-Fi.
In July 2002, users with NVIDIA graphics cards (that would include me) could download a 2.6MB application called Keyhole Earthviewer and use it to explore a 3D globe. Nowadays this technology is known as "Google Earth".
These two things were definitely in my head when I wrote the lyrics for this.
This project has been on the back-burner since 2007 but in 2018 I returned to working on the suite with freshly polished lyrics, and inevitably much-updated software...
Some of my 70's progressive rock influences are exposed pretty overtly in this suite.
One afternoon in 2002 I was playing around with various patches on the Korg TR-Rack, Roland Fantom, and D-550 synths and came up with some interesting themes. At the time, I was thinking about composing a long format suite on the subject of the Kon Tiki expedition - or, more accurately, the supposed pre-Columbian migration from South America to Easter Island and the Pacific Islands: Nautical astro-navigation; the journey of brave explorers on fragile vessels, launching into the unknown.
I recorded the fragments and saved them in my demo folder, for later review.
As of writing, I haven't pursued the "kon tiki" concept any further, but some of the musical ideas made their way into "The God Program" suite:
In 2003 I had the idea of a new song-cycle: This was the germ of "The God Program": I had a half-verse of lyrics, and a shuffle-rhythm of bass line. I also knew I wanted some kind of Jobson-esque instrumental middle section, full of Chapman Stick bass and disturbing time signatures:
Inspired by some nice sounds in the Roland Fantom sythesizer. It establishes the overall feel, if not the notes
Other projects held my interest until 2007. As is the way, one afternoon I was improvising on a patch on the Roland Fantom - piano and strings - and returning to the rising piano "kon tiki" motif, recorded a kind of stream of conciousness of inter-related themes, coming back to variations of the four note phrase.. some of the themes were from the old Kon Tiki demos.
Out of this improvised ramble the plan for almost the entire suite crystalized into sections, lyrics, and song titles. This improvisation would be refined into "Cathedral of Hosts", an overture of sorts for The God Program suite.
The first two thirds of the suite came together pretty quickly, the basic structure anyway. Here are the earliest demos I have in the archives, from 2007:I hadn't figured out how to do the vocals at this point. I have a number of later versions, vocal trials, in the achives (150 bmp; transposed up a 4th; etc) but nothing the world is ready to hear.
This is actually pretty fully-realised. The solo in the middle is performed on a fretless nylon guitar, FWIW. I removed the frets myself, and filled the slots with wood slivers.
Earliest version I have. I tried many variations and orchestrations before settling on the final one.
By the end of 2007 I'd run out of energy and inspiration. Apart from the vocals, I probably thought it was "nearly done", ha ha. This was also around the time I realized that if I was ever to release an actual finished CD of our music, I would need to perform a "mental reset" and focus on a different set of songs. That adventure is covered elsewhere on this site...
Instrumentation (in order of appearance):
Our protagonist gets their executive time interrupted by a prompt to download some exciting new software...
Instrumentation (in order of appearance):
the angel arrived while i was watching streaming video
with digital download, registration free
”we promise you efficient use of RAM
anti-virus; the End of Spam”
The end-user license was one click to agree
installation replaced the operating system
a shiny desktop portal, clean and new
”you see the Earth afloat in Space
a planet in a mouse embrace”
nations, towns, exposed for my review
rotate! zooming in! anticipating future sin
placing every judgement call for free
chance and fate are second-rate
when Nature gets corrective surgery
infinite zoom is my New Year's resolution
24 hours, real-time TV
”channels yielding holy visions
assisting people in decisions”
lessons in a new theology
this Little Piggy? thinks he deserves an upgrade
the Big Bad Wolf's about to commit a crime
”with choices you decide they take
fix their major life mistakes”
Doom™, a HALO™, or Once Upon A Time
media pirates, let it rip, with a burnt-out bargain chip
peer-to-peer nets linking to their souls
Evercrack; Sim City™ hacks;
their Second Life™ is under my control
with a flick of the mouse, i turn my attention to Jupiter
the sentient gas-bags had never seen the light
”under coloured bands of cloud
a curious glow, beneath the shroud”
alien minds approaching in the night
Jovian thoughts and reasoning? incomprehensible!
in a moment of gravity, i get to call the shots.
”a passing comet's halo light
makes an impact, fusion-bright”
illumination really hits the spot
Yes, the title is partially a reference to an existing track by another much-loved prog rock band...
Instrumentation (in order of appearance):
Our protagonist begins to suspect all is not as it seems.
Instrumentation:
take me to the green screen
put me in a different scene
choose another theme
could it be a lucid dream?
Ideally this would be a separate track but in this world of streaming and randomized playback, I think it made more sense to attach it to the beginning of Head Crash.
Instrumentation:
Things do not end well for our protagonist. They should have read the EULA.
Instrumentation:
the medium saturates, wet with sex and violence
fills the cache of memory, with void
”cracked and broken dual displays
liquid crystal pixels pray”
a storm of sibilance, losing the signal to noise
by the end of the month, my 30-day trial had expired
exhausted, over-clocked, and out of time
”chaos and confusion rule
your mind reduced to molecules”
poetic justice never seems to rhyme
reality recedes
master slaves begin to feed
pressing random keys
Shakespeare from the chimpanzee
disconnect the screen
hiding from the fax machine
normal now obscene
endless looping sub-routines
When I was compiling the components of the "God Program" suite, I was going through the archives to see if there were any "good parts" that I'd forgotten about, and realized the first minute of the original piano improvisation made a pretty nice end cap to the suite, and so I re-created it for "Cathedral (reprise)".
Instrumentation: