Ondine’s Curse
Posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Here is a story. Something really weird happened while we were doing some tracking last summer for Abode of Kings in a Derelict Kingdom in Cosmonaut Union’s satellite studio north of Philadelphia.
It is after midnight and Frank, Seth and I were laying down some ideas for string arrangements using an Alesis NanoPiano, possibly on the song “Derelict Kingdom.” It is late and we are tired because we have been working all day to make cool stuff to listen to. Seth goes outside to take in some of that fabled, sultry, Philadelphian summer air, or something. Who knows what he was doing out there. He’s a man of danger, that Seth Faulk.
In any event, Frank and I are taking council in the cavern that is the studio, because we are horrible troglodytes that shun the outdoors. All of a sudden, we hear a horrible grinding noise from the monitors. It is loud. It is loud, atonal, and very startling. There is a moment of stunned shocked like when you get hit by a car, or you wake up in a new place, or when your Chinese food arrives and instead of the brown rice you asked for you get white rice and what kind of monster even does that..
Well, it takes our admittedly slow brains a minute to react to a Very Scary Noise that is coming from the monitors. Luckily, Frank has a thought at the same time that I do, and he wordlessly creates a new track in Pro Tools, arms it, and hits record. Then we sit back in baffled silence while something is making distorted horrible sounds, and we begin to realize that they are notes, and there is a pattern. While we wait for Seth to come back and hold us in his bear-like arms like the bewildered children that we are, we reason that the NanoPiano is making this sound, since it’s the only thing plugged in.
Seth comes back. After about 15 minutes of recording these sounds, we decide to unplug the quarter inch cables connecting the keyboard we are using to sequence to the Alesis, which we figure will stop the sound because that’s what would be triggering it.
We unplug.
It doesn’t stop.
We then decide that there are only two possible scenarios to explain this, which I will illustrate presently:
1. The Alesis unit has self-actualized. Its core CPU has developed a consciousness and it is now composing its own complex music by itself and is no longer interested in doing our clumsy human bidding.
2. We have inadvertently awoken a terrible demon presence that was sealed away aeons ago and is now summoning an unholy portal that will cast us into an unspeakable interdimensional golgotha of blood, fire, or both blood and fire. Also spiders will be there.
After some time, probably upwards of 45 minutes or so, we decide that it is our responsibility not only to ourselves, but to mankind, to unplug the power source of the Alesis itself. Frank, Seth, and I–I’m not being facetious here–make a pact that if one of us is hurdled into an endless vortex of unspeakable agony, that the others will somehow find a way in to help. We say our goodbyes, just in case, and Frank reaches towards the Alesis to unplug it.
Before his hand reaches it
the sound stops.
Just like that
Naturally we scream like baby-babies and run out of the room.
In conclusion, we have this recording that the Alesis NanoPiano created, and no explanation for it. We sampled it extensively on Abode of Kings mostly during the segue tracks that I’m sure are the chagrin of the listener. We hope that this true story will enrich your experience of listening to it, and, thanks to Frank, we have the recording we captured of the Alesis freaking the fuck for you to listen to.
Please note: This recording is not altered in any way. It is the raw track exactly as we heard it blasting out of the monitors under the shroud of midnight. I dare you to listen to it alone in the dark. If you do so without crying, I will give you a lot of high fives. You may notice that at around 50 minutes the sound drops out suddenly. This is the aforementioned moment right before we unplugged it but didn’t. What we didn’t realize until we examined the waveform is that there is still sound happening. It is at a very quiet level, and it is much like a siren.
Also, here’s an “album cover” for the track, too, to use in iTunes.
