Musics I done

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Clubbing inspiration

Hello again.

Inspiration is a funny thing.
I have an idea see, to do a track called 'Burnt Ogre' as the opening track on a debut album 'burnt ogre' by a band called Burnt Ogre, that - crucially - does not feature the lyric 'burnt ogre'. And I've just moved to Birmingham too, how funny.

The music is written. The cover art is sorted. The trouble is, writing to a brief is hard, even when it's your own brief. So I had these images of a forest cottage, some sort of traditional fairytale ogre. But it didn't go any further than that.

Then I remembered a few ideas, that sort of drifted in; the line 'moor reclaims the graveyard'; an old image, of a sort of darth christ, the broken body of the annoited one encased in heavy sauron-style armour, ruling cold and tyrannically for 1000 years.

And then I remembered the programme I'd watched last night, although I hadn't watched the whole thing because the presenter appeared to be played by Robert Webb; it was about the history of archeology, and started with Constantine. Apparently he sent his mum off to find hard evidence of Jesus. Quite an interesting idea. What was really interesting was that after that anecdote, the programme skipped forward 1000 years - literally a millennium - to the next interesting thing that happened.

What I learnt was that from the secession of Xtianity, you could basically skip to the lead up to the Renaissance and the enlightenment. 

All of that came stirring into the mix, and I had an idea. The iron christ, leading an army into Rome, ruling Europe for the promised millennium, but then being supplanted by nature - that is to say, science. The realisation that the world isn't black and white, the gradual embracing of chaos. The fight between the Hammerites and the Pagans from Thief, and the fight between the cathedralic and humourless forces of order and the viney, forest-dwelling forces of chaos. 'Moor reclaims the graveyard' suddenly became a line that describes this exact conflict, and the fall of the living god himself. The only thing is - who is the burnt ogre? Is it the christ, burnt like anakin skywalker and living on life support? Or some woodland god, the cottage dweller of tradition, coming back to the city to take back civilisation? That is still to figure out (although I think that in writing this I've basically figured it out).
And this concept even chimes in with the cover picture I want to use: Blake's Orc, the spirit of rebellion against the dry conventional Urizen, which is obviously influenced by milton's conception of the lame and moribund Jahweh.

And all of this is a proof-of-concept for Kno; a metaphorical epic poem set to a post-prog track. I'm excited.