Spoken word with music album, released 26 July 2015. Stream or download here.
01. The Side-Effects Of October (02.12)
02. 4581 Asclepius (02.27)
03. Wake Up Bad Guy (01.27)
04. The Puppet Has No Master (03.17)
05. 1995 [The Empire Never Ended] (01.42)
06. The Movements Of All Mankind (03.15)
07. Dreamers With Folded Wings (03.47)
08. At The Speed Of Film (02.18)
09. Her Is All (02.35)
10. Cygnusolar (02.41)
11. Black Stars Will Have Their Season (02.35)
12. Where We Circle (02.30)
13. K & I [Panthalassa Shoreline] (03.17)
14. Her Constellation (03.35)
All these tracks were created in the midst of a black depressive blur in the last two weeks of May 2015, and mixed over a long weekend in Avebury, Wiltshire, summer solstice 2015. As I was recording the voice I had a specific soundscape in mind to accompany it. After sketching a few tracks, I realised I'd already recorded several hours' worth of the kind of music I had in mind in the Logos album Shamania. Shamania, for me at least, also explores a lot of the same territory and themes as the Future Ghosts text. The Future Ghosts soundtrack, therefore, draws very heavily on the Shamania sessions, including finished tracks, out-takes, and incomplete demos. This isn't simply a case of me reading over Logos tracks; everything has been restructured, reworked, and recombined. If you know Shamania, you'll hear some familiar things used in different ways. You'll also hear a lot that's new, mixed in with elements that have no connection with Shamania at all.
The text was assembled from short pieces and fragments written between autumn 2013 and summer 2014, many of which had previously appeared in my Twitter feed. I was re-reading Thomas Ligotti and listening to a lot of Swans then, both of which show a definite influence on the text, and to whom I give my gratitude. Gratitude also to Inextremiss, whose strange and beautiful photography I have always enjoyed and which had an influence also; the titles of some of her images found their way into Her Is All. Other influences - though you'd scarce guess it from the text - include the poetry of Jim Morrison, Philip K Dick, T S Eliot, Patti Smith.
My thanks also to Michele Lyle, Keith Donovan, Steve Marshall, Trystan Swale, Jenni McGinnis.
Text / Voice: Darren Francis
Music: Darren Francis / Logos
The Side-Effects Of October incorporates elements of the Logos tracks Anodyne and Bipolar Binary.
4581 Asclepius incorporates elements of the Logos track Anhedoniac.
Wake Up Bad Guy incorporates elements of the Logos tracks deepblue2519 and [ # ].
The Puppet Has No Master incorporates elements of the Logos track Bipolar Binary.
1995 [The Empire Never Ended] incorporates elements of the Logos tracks Hypogirl and Deep Time.
The Movements Of All Mankind incorporates elements of the Logos tracks Friends and Bipolar Binary (Solstice Prologue mix by Jason Oliver).
Dreamers With Folded Wings incorporates elements of the Logos tracks Tesseract and Sunday To Tuesday [No One Calls].
At The Speed Of Film incorporates elements of the Logos track Angel Hair.
Her Is All incorporates elements of the Logos track Dreamer.
Cygnusolar incorporates elements of the Logos track db00215.
Black Stars Will Have Their Season incorporates elements of the Logos tracks Fire In The Mind and Hypoboy.
Where We Circle incorporates elements of the Logos track Unified Field Object.
K & I [Panthalassa Shoreline] incorporates elements of the Logos tracks Sidereal and Shamania.
Herewith some track notes which may be of interest to the curious… I ought to go through at some point and do this for my other albums too.
The Side Effects Of October
The text was written on 25 October (first six lines) and 29 October 2013 (remainder) on my Twitter feed, and I don't think it requires much clarification. Eliot was wrong; October is the cruellest month, not April. It has never been kind to me. Though I have many scars from my self-harming days, none 'touch the bone'; I've never cut this deep, though know others who have.
4581 Asclepius
Why the title? 4581 Asclepius is an Apollo asteroid and near Earth object; upon its discovery in March 1989, it was noticed that it had just passed through an exact point in space occupied by Earth six hours previously, meaning that our planet was separated from a 600 megaton-equivalent collision by a mere six hours. As a title, it seemed apt; drinking and fretting and fucking while world-killers glide silently about us. I don't think the text requires much explanation, though would make the following comments:
"another twilight put through the human thresher" - See The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti.
"the peaked meat of matter" - When first written, this was 'the peaked meat of starlight', which I think is a better line, but I changed it due to the repeat of 'starlight' when putting the separate fragments into one text.
"i down beer at the speed of starlight" - See my text Belong. The rate at which I could once sink beer, when set to it, was startling. This is not a positive quality.
"sirens but there's ever sirens" - Throughout the 1990s and until 2005, I lived in New Cross in south London. Sirens were an ever aspect of the accustomed to and ignored background din.
"epiphanies but there's ever epiphanies" - See Philip K Dick - 'Took drugs. Saw god. BFD.'
Wake Up Bad Guy
The text is straightforward, I think, and requires little in the way of clarification. The first four lines date from 5 January 2014 and appeared on my Twitter feed that day. The remainder is older; I can't say when exactly - likely c.2008 or earlier - I came across it while leafing through old notebooks in search of something else, and the two texts seemed to fit together. I'd imagine it was inspired by my first falling for the woman who became my ex-wife, in a London goth club in 2001.
Regarding the first four lines, I once half-jokingly commented that I passed much of the first decade of this century drinking heavily, playing computer games, and making crop circles. I'm still trying to catch up with myself. The title, Wake Up Bad Guy, will of course sound familiar to Halo players. Puppets and puppetry are a recurring motif throughout Future Ghosts, no doubt due to my re-reading Thomas Ligotti at the time of writing much of it.
"2000 light years from home" is, as many of you will no doubt be aware, the title of a Rolling Stones song (and one of the few Stones songs I'm a fan of). It is also referenced in my text An Alien Alcoholic In London.
The Puppet Has No Master
As with the rest of Future Ghosts, the text was all originally posted - piece by piece and as it was written - on my Twitter feed in autumn 2013 (first three sections) and spring 2014 (remainder). I've mentioned before the influence of Thomas Ligotti on Future Ghosts; the meaning of the title should be clear. A couple of textual comments:
'i am stood aside; i look on; where am i in that?' - I've always found this aspect of depression fascinating; externalising oneself, viewing it as an experience one is having rather than a defining factor of one's character. Not that it makes the suffering itself any easier to handle.
'i want to phone my employer...' - Coincidentally or not, the day after writing this section on 18 November 2013, I was indeed signed off work by my GP for an extended period on mental health grounds.
'i move so quickly from one assumed persona to the next...' - See also the track Scarecrow from God Thing; 'blink out. one world. one sky. reach for notebook and drop a mass of papers. ten year novels. somme notes. undated rants. crop circle workplans. vic. mutable. inkling. zila dell. df. legal sec. i switch so quickly from persona to persona. i become my own hallucinations.'
1995 [The Empire Never Ended]
This was written 25 April 2014, and posted on my Twitter feed that day. I have little desire to elaborate on or clarify either text or title, though part of the title at least will be familiar to readers of Philip K Dick, in particular the book Valis.
The Movements Of All Mankind
Much of this text was initially written as sketches for a supporting character in a future fiction. The title is from a mental health assessment of sometime Jack The Ripper suspect Aaron Kosminski: "he declares that he is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind; he says that he knows the movements of all mankind..." My text does not concern the Whitechapel killings; I was more interested in Kosminski's mindset. Do I think he was the killer? Probably not.
Some textual comments:-
"night is collected in your room / you breathe its rhythm..." This line was likely inspired by the song Kosinski by The Angels Of Light (Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home album, 2003).
"london's dead lots" - See Preludes by T S Eliot: 'And now a gusty shower wraps / The grimy scraps / Of withered leaves about your feet / And newspapers from vacant lots.'
"these memories are no longer mine" - see my text Fissure King, from God Thing: "Golden and ghost boy, where are you? Fool; you lived that life as if it were real. I don't recognise you any more. I don't recognise myself any more.'
"suburbia foxed / under streetlight / car beams / you blade-dig for welcome blood" - In part a sketch for a new character in a new fiction, as mentioned above, in part an imagined memory of my ex-wife, at her parents' house as a late teen and before I met her.
"your skin tastes of tears / of could have been / of a life lived in the passenger seat" - Have I changed at all? Has anything changed? All things are my property, yet never a part of me. This, perhaps, is the crux of the matter. All things my property yet never a part of me. Promise of ever now but nothing I can hold on to.
"when the cosmic joker / fucks with you / he never fails / to do so / with style / and a sense of irony" - I wish I could remember which particular sequence of events inspired this.
"you finger-write your love / in a bus window's steam..." This line was indeed written on the bus home from work, drawing my twisted sketches, listening to my iPod, and people-watching. Note to self: a moving vehicle is a poor choice of venue when trying to draw a perfect circle.
"...stepping into the waves and never turning back." An imagined other, or autosuggestion?
Dreamers With Folded Wings
There's little I'd want to add by way of comment on this one, other than that it was largely inspired and influenced by Swans' 2014 album To Be Kind, in particular the track She Loves Us! It wasn't until later that I noticed I'd accidentally part-borrowed the latter's line 'come to my lungs'.
At The Speed Of Film
The text was written on 23 February 2014, on a train from Waterloo to Guildford, after an evening spent with my friend and co-writer Simon Lewis. I was born in London, lived there until ten years ago. I still spend a lot of time in the place and have a great fondness for it, but am glad I no longer live there. The text had no particular inspiration, merely some thoughts after a good evening with a good friend and a few beers as my train slid through the night.
Her Is All
This text dates from March 2014, and largely explains itself. Several lines from the last section borrow from the art of Heather Baker / intextremis - http://inextremiss.deviantart.com/. I've been a fan of her work for a while and its often been a source of inspiration.
Cygnusolar
This one was written 20-22 June 2014, in Avebury, Wiltshire. I often spend the solstice period in and around Avebury, and on this occasion was staying with my good friend Steve Marshall, whose book about Avebury and its history will be published this spring; I'll have to post some links to it closer to the time, for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing (as I am).
Some comments on the text:-
"epiphany come / epiphany go / i slap them / against the window / see which crack first / glass or dream / see how solid / each render reckons itself" - When you've been in the epiphany game as long as I have, you learn to test any new arrival before embracing it. Reminds me of my time on the occult scene in the 1990s; however successful you think your demonic or angelic summoning, and however much belief or reality or paradigm shift you invest in it, treat anything that subsequently occurs or manifests with extreme suspicion until it adequately verifies itself.
"by avebury stone / i drink myself blank / strand of all season / bleeding through / for solstice sun / for ancestor stain / for history come / i drink" - This was indeed written at Avebury stone circle on the summer solstice, 21 June 2014, in the midst of what Terence McKenna may have shaken his head at and disparagingly termed a 'heroic dose' of alcohol, and also in the midst of mental collapse; the second, and longest, of my breakdowns that year. Yes, I know alcohol and depression is not a recommended combination; nor, for that matter, is alcohol and anti-depressant medication.
"either go away / or go all the way" - See the Jefferson Airplane track Hey Frederick (Volunteers album, 1969)
"bring the sun" - See the track Bring The Sun by Swans, from their 2014 album To Be Kind. I was listening to this album a great deal at the time.
"miss speed miss delic" - In both their literal senses and in their pharmaceutical connotations.
"it's only / human pain / it's just / the stink of love" - See the Swans track A Little God In My Hands (To Be Kind album, 2014; see also note above): 'Oh universe you stink of love'.
"cygnusolar / stolen sun / shine /motherfucker shine" - Aside from the “by Avebury stone” section (which, as noted above, was indeed written by Avebury stone), the whole of the Cygnusolar text was written while sat in the garden of my friend Steve Marshall's house in Yatesbury, Wiltshire*, at the onset of a mental breakdown, listening to much Swans and hefty 60s psych. Sometimes madness is necessity, the only feasible response to the circumstances in which one finds one's mind. Fields budding and fecund in every direction, mama sun beating. I need to ditch my accessories; cigarette in left hand, beer can in right, screen before me and headphones in my ears. At one point I imagined a perfect experience of communion with the ineffable, an ascended moment that would be immaculately complemented by these things. I was wrong. We don't get where we should be by acquiring, by adding to what we currently are; we get there by stripping away.
* = It was also in Steve's house and garden (and in the Red Lion, Avebury) that I mixed the Future Ghosts album exactly a year later, over a long weekend at summer solstice 2015.
Black Stars Will Have Their Season
The text was written Summer 2014, in the midst of one of my mental breakdowns (breaksdown?) and - with that in mind - doesn't require much explanation, in my view.
Where We Circle
There's little I would add regarding this one, save that the text was written Summer 2014. The first half concerns making crop circles, the second half a desire for connection with, and sense of dislocation from, nature (this being a theme continued, and elaborated on, in K & I [Panthalassa Shoreline]). 'Silbury' is of course Silbury Hill, near Avebury, Wiltshire.
K & I (Panthalassa Shoreline)
This was written 9 August 2014 (part 2) and September 2014 (parts 1 and 3) and I don't consider it a particularly difficult text to decipher. Part 2 was written while with my friend Keith Donovan - the 'K' of the title - at the tail-end of a heady weekend in Wiltshire. The line 'hack pen' alludes to Hackpen Hill, one of my favourite parts of that county.
Her Constellation
This dates from early 2015 (except for the last two sections, which were written April 2014). Though I don't consider it a particularly difficult text to decipher, the reader is invited to note that the 'she' herein is not necessarily a universal she and to also note the varying use of 'she'/'her' and 'you' throughout the Future Ghosts text; in each case this is deliberate, referring to two separate people.