Veil & Subdue Blog

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Spent this evening with Tina, watching the newest episode of Battlestar Galactica and, a bit later, some episodes of The Tick (the live action one). The Tick was a brilliant show! Only one season, but so well done, and freaking clever. Goes especially well with a bit of wine and some Red Hot Blues chips! ;^)  We also did some yoga.

Unbelievable…it’s Florida, and we’re freezing in this house, which was never designed for cold weather. So cold tonight…even with heat I can’t feel my toes.

Talked to the CD mastering guy at Disc Makers yesterday about the small changes needing to be done to the project…they’ve now been done and shipped off to me; I should get them tomorrow for the final proofing! Then it will be time to send off the packaging artwork. Cool! I’m getting lots of commitments to buy already, which is awesome.

“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???