Veil & Subdue Blog

“V…”

Orbs spinning. Music enveloping – one minute New Order, the next Siouxsie and the Banshees. An eclipse of consciousness…yet total awareness and contentment, too.

In spring, 2007 I spent many a Friday night at a tiny club in Jacksonville, FL., called The Eclipse. It was a wonderful space of isolated darkness and color, a place for me to find myself perfectly and vindictively alone. I would learn later that it was a fragment of an earlier, very popular club, which had (I had heard) disintegrated from in-fighting and disagreement. Nevertheless, in those first few months I would dance from 10 till maybe midnight in ignorant bliss, until the cigarette smoke from the latecomers became unbearable, and then I’d leave, chilled with sweat in the nighttime air, the demons exercised. I would drive home in that sweat, savoring the dizzying passion, and free for a while of the ache of loneliness and maybe the fear of mediocrity.

It was a perfect locus of focus, a space which symbolized the whole reason for moving from Lexington, Kentucky the previous winter. I needed change, adventure, and – honestly – a place to dance! Jacksonville, though conservative as much of the Deep South is, still offered much, including a subtle, cool underground music scene, as well as some personal memories from childhood. Finding the past has always been a driving force within me, and for me Jacksonville was the core of where it all began. I’d always known I’d eventually move here and explore it. The time had come. Life had made way for me to choose a new path, and I’d chosen. Here I was. Finally.

Peter Murphy now. Cuts You Up. It can’t get better than that, can it? Actually yes…as Concrete Blonde sends up The Bloodletting Song one more time, and then, almost inexcusably, the unlikely romantic ballad of The Cure’s Friday I’m In Love. I am embraced, and am home in this little concrete floor of a club. Most perfect and mine. I could have made it up.

“eil…”

It was during this time that I first saw the name. I typed it first, as a random thought about what might be a cool name, either for a band or a group or something. Just randomly brainstorming. The name almost showed up before I thought it. I had something in mind…a new project, as I always am thinking of new projects to do. But the name hit right away. I stared at it, and considered what it might mean. I mean, I had some things in mind…the next music project was already on track to be a real “concept album”. The topic at hand had been night terrors, and I’d been thinking of poetic ways to communicate the idea, mythological ways to convey the passion and tragedy of it. A name would sum it up…

“Veil & Subdue.” Wow.

In early 1995 I’d recorded a 60-minute work, entitled Parliament of Rooks. Dutifully I’d distributed this horrible little cassette tape to all my lucky friends. I’d recorded it all on a 4-track Tascam recorder, and felt quite proud. Well, though the recording was lacking in many ways, many of the songs still echoed every now and then inside of me, and for quite a few weeks after moving to Florida I’d considered re-recording the whole album, finally doing it justice after all these years. It was about to happen, really! But then the idea came. The name came…like a tempest, a whisper in my heart…

“Veil & Subdue.”

It’s now. I’m listening to the masters, sent back to me from Disc Makers. Soon I’ll call Disc Makers and give them some final guidance, and then it will finally – after three years of recording and writing and seemingly non-stop editing – be made into a final, 2-CD product. I am hearing it in my headphones right now, “somnium dementus…”. Has it all finally come together? It’s strangely easy to remember when it started…and very hard to believe that the story and music have finally entwined and woven themselves into a cohesive tale.

I still go to The Eclipse sometimes. They are still playing some of my favorite music on Friday nights. At least until after midnight, when they start playing bump-and-grind bootay music, and I am squeezed out like a grape. Ah, lads…what’s the lure in unromantic, monotone dance music???

Just got an email from Disc Makers a few minutes ago – they’ve dropped the finished music masters in the mail and it should arrive tomorrow or Saturday for me to proof!! Also got business cards today – FREE through a very generous printer friend of mine. Very nice…

The first song on Veil & Subdue is called, appropriately enough, “Veil & Subdue.”  This song showed up after I realized that “Bed of Ashes” wasn’t going to be the first song on the CD after all. I’d recorded about half the album with the thought that “Bed of Ashes” was the perfect opener – really full of dark energy. As the story evolved, though, “Bed of Ashes” sort of found its real place (middle of the second act, to be specific), and I couldn’t argue with it.

Once that happened, I knew I needed another Cuchicheo character song to open the opera with, and it had to have the same kind of energy – a real rocker. I wanted it to have the feel of frenzy, and especially with a potential audience in mind, a mood-setter for the evening’s performance.

In 1991 I lived in Auburn, Alabama. While there I connected with some guys and we briefly formed a band. During that time I’d composed a song called “The Horse”. It was fast, had some good hard-rocking energy. It was also a song that stayed in my head in the many years after the band broke up. When this gap opened up in the new project, the song echoed within me once more.

With some major lyric rewriting it became the perfect show opener, completely serving the purpose of telling the audience exactly who The Black Sultan was through the eyes of his Chief Adviser and Servant, Cuchicheo. A few of the songs in this opera began their life many years ago as other songs, and have traveled all this way to call Veil & Subdue their final home. I’m really happy this one made it in; I always knew this little tune of mine was going to show up somewhere down the road!

When I finally worked on this for Veil, by the way, it was a one-sitter…with a glass of chiraz and guitar in hand, I composed the complete lyrics in about an hour, with no corrections at all…  By then I’d really become entwined with the story, and it was amazing to watch the words come flowing out, like they’d already been written down somewhere…

Veil & Subdue – the lyrics
©2009 Masque

Tear the darkened shroud
Call upon the sweetest taking
Breathless, yet so loud
Close your eyes, the Sultan’s waking
Silken visions tie
This dream you can’t deny
Veil & Subdue…
Veil & Subdue…

Cast upon the land
Sand and dust, the spell is taking
Visions come at last
Caught within, there’s no mistaking
Darkened strands that bind
Step into his mind
Veil & Subdue…
Veil & Subdue…

The vision…just a mirror…
No matter how you try to leave behind…
Shards of self dance away…
A crystal-clear voice echoes…
Far away…it gets nearer…
Just a truth, a whisper in your heart…
Held down now, he sees you there…
A screaming in the night won’t let go…

Give into the night
Give into the dream
Morpheus is about to have his way
Now extinguish light
As the wicking candles dream
Morpheus is about to have his way

Every sleeping soul
The ripest fruits are for his taking
He may not eat you whole
But the bite is of his making
And if he’s moved to love
The darkest of doves
Veil & Subdue…

So, here’s the news… First, you can now pre-order Veil & Subdue! Just go back to the homepage (www.veilandsubdue.com) and fill up the cart with however many you want! ;^)  This is through Paypal, the best money manager in the web business. Second, the mastered music CDs are due back to me for review on Feb. 26. If all is as I’m hoping then I’ll give the go-ahead with the manufacturing, and send in my packaging graphics, and we’ll be completely on our way! I expect that we are now looking at a mid-March release date! That’s almost my birthday (March 21) by the way! A truly cool way to start Paul’s 42nd year here on planet Earth.

…reached Disc Makers today! They’re probably working on the songs right now!!! Man, I’d love to be a fly on that wall…