ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ธ.ค. 2017
- Happy Holidays to one and all! This is my gift to all of you :) It is not and never will be for sale. Please go to my bandcamp and download the set if you enjoyed it, it's on me this time. I'm just happy to give back after a life of so many giving so much to me.
a-merk.bandcamp.com/album/lif...
So, what is this? It's a journey, it's a time machine, it's a hyper warp from the 1930s to the future that I conjure up in my dreams. This set takes the listener from the past to the future in a slow burn kind of way, playing with perception, playing with meaning, playing with cultural touchpoints to create something entirely new from the sum of the parts. Please, come with me on this journey. There's a lot of emotions to feel and a lot of beauty to melt into, promise.
As with anything I produce, this is best experienced through a great pair of noise cancelling headphones or a really good set of speakers with sub bass capability. This one specifically, though, benefits from that even more than the rest of my music. The video element has been holding me back for a while... I wanted to release this set over the holidays last year because it really does have a holiday/snow on the ground/old year dying and new year being born kind of vibe, but I didn't feel like I could get the video ready in time. This year I challenged myself mid-December to finish and release it on Christmas, no matter what that meant. I am very happy with the results! There are parts that I think I hit out of the park and parts that I could see myself revising in the future but overall I feel like I managed to give the audio the visual support it deserved, hold the attention of the viewer and work some extra meaning into there as a bonus.
I'll leave the interpretation up to the viewer, other than to just say this: it's been a long, dark, hard year. I have multiple privileges from birth that shielded me from the worst of it, but even still, I feel the pain of the collective. Things are wrong. Life is wrong. The leaders are wrong. Everything feels tarnished and broken and hopeless and sometimes it's all I can do to simply keep existing. We fight our brothers and our sisters, we disrespect the environment that supports us, and many of us refuse to even accept these realities, much less work to change them. It does seem hopeless. War is never-ending and greed and other ills of the ego run rampant. I have no answers for you, my dear viewer. I have no hope to offer you. All that I know is that there is beauty all around us, from something as magnificent as the whole planet viewed from space to something as minuscule as the fractal intricacy at a leaf's cellular level. I'm doing what I can to beautify the world around me and to help people to see the beauty in this experience that we call life. All I know to do is to keep creating, to keep showcasing what humanity could be if we focused on love and respect and creativity. Nothing will change as long as we keep feeding fear and hatred. I'm trying my best to feed love.
I love you. Thanks for watching. Let's all try to make 2018 a better year... I'm trying to start it off right. Please enjoy this token of my appreciation for you, for you who are another tiny fraction of the whole, another reflection of myself, another small piece of what some call god. We are beautiful. We are powerful. We are able to affect the world around us. Do what you can to affect it positively, please. We all need that right now.
A very, very special thank you to: Helen Morgan, Dick Robertson, George Olsen and Dick Gardner, Dinah Shore, Jeaneete MacDonald & Nelson Eddy, Bill Coty, Ruth Etting, all of the musicians involved in the planning and execution of these amazing tracks, everyone who wrote, planned, drew or otherwise executed these wonderful cartoons, Syd Mead, Ishu Patel, Faith and John Hubley, Osamu Tezuka, everyone who makes Rick and Morty a reality, Erwin de Groot, Daniel White and Paul Nylander and "Jesse" and the others from the fractal forums, and especially to Anne Shelton and the musicians involved in creating "At Last" for having such a gorgeous voice and for making me cry at the sheer beauty and joy that music can bring forth from the human soul.
Thank you to Divide by Zero, without whom this set would not exist. You conceptualized, I planned and executed, and even though I didn't follow up on every one of your critiques and edits, I think that despite our differences, we are both very happy with the results. If you see this, I hope you enjoy it. - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
A quick warning to any psychonauts with intentions to view this under certain influences: it has the potential to be a life-changing experience of beauty and introspection and power... but also, perhaps, a life threatening one. At some points, in certain conditions, if you think certain ways, this is easily one of the most frightening things I have ever made. There's just something about the knowledge that the words are being sung by people long dead in the ground that... well, I'll let you see for yourself. On the other hand, this is easily one of the most beautiful and loving pieces of music I have ever created as well. I was in awe of the talent on display, especially in a few specific songs sampled, and I did everything in my power to honour and respect that talent, to enshrine it digitally with every ounce of my own creative and technical ability. I hope that those I owe a debt of gratitude to feel my respect.
Social media/self promotion/etc:
Link to my bandcamp, where the audio can be downloaded as an album: a-merk.bandcamp.com/
Link to my Facebook: facebook.com/pg/the.a.merk/about/?ref=page_internal
Link to my Instagram, where I make trippy fractal art: instagram.com/amerkthetrippyone/
Link to my Medium account, where I write dark, violent science fiction/philosophy: medium.com/@TheAMerk
If anyone loves this video and would like to download a copy, send me a message on my Facebook account. As soon as I have some time, I'll get back to you with a download link. My only request as I give this away for free would be that you credit me carefully and obviously if you repost it anywhere and that you share it with friends of yours that you think would appreciate it. I can't control what you do, but it would mean a lot to me. Thank you, and above all, enjoy! :)