Track By Tracks: Docker's Guild - The Mystic Technocracy Season 2: The Age Of Entropy (2022)


1.Terminus:

This is the album intro and it sets up the story from the main character's point of view, Jack Heisenberg. The music is taken from Mozart's Fantasy n. 4 in C minor K475 and the lyrics are taken from Jack Heisenberg's Diary, which originally appeared on the previous Docker's Guild album "Book A", so the song links the two albums seamlessly.

2. K475 W.A.M.:

This instrumental song basically continues Mozart's Fantasy, but this time it alternates between original sections and Mozart sections. It was my intention at the time to write something very neoclassical in the vein of Yngwie Malmsteen. It's a very challenging song to play, intricate, technical, and with many time signature changes.

3. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle:

a. Nocturne
b. Rings
c. Lucy

This is the first of the three suites on the album. The three movements were written during different periods of my life, but they all share the same theme of irreparable loss, so it made sense to combine them together. Nocturne was a classical piece that used to be my live piano solo when I was in the AOR band Biloxi in Los Angeles, back in the '90s. Rings is one of the earliest songs I ever wrote, dating back to 1986 when I was 18 years old. It was about a friend who had cancer, but I could never finish it and write the lyrics, so it stayed there. I finally pulled it out of the archives and wrote new poems, which deal exactly with that topic: losing someone to cancer. Lucy is one of the most recent songs I wrote for the album. It is a dark and brooding song that deals with love and loss due to the madness of religion.

4. Die Today:

This was one of the last song I wrote for the album. Originally it was actually written for another project that never happened. I knew that we had something special with this one, it sounds like an instant hit and it brought something heavier and a little more modern to the overall sound.

5. Machine Messiah:

a. Part I
b. Part II
c. Part III

With Docker's Guild, I like to challenge myself with little games, one of them being the insertion of 2 covers on each Docker's Guild album. The rule is that they have to fit with the story I wrote either lyrically or emotionally in the case of instrumentals. I am a huge Yes fan, and the heavy atmosphere and dark lyrics of Machine Messiah from the album Drama (1980) perfectly fit both the story and the general tone of the album. It was quite a challenge to record!

6. Le Chemin:

Atlantis Town

The other cover on Docker's Guild albums has to be a Rockets song. This band will not say much to most metal fans, it is a French space rock band that had huge success back in the '70s in Italy where I grew up. I can't even begin to explain the impact they had on me. These two songs have the same theme of Atlantis, which is part of the story, so I decided to record them both. Plus it gave me a chance to sing in French. They turned out quite nice and give an extra space rock flavor to the album.

7. The Arrow:

This is both the oldest and the newest song I wrote. The chorus comes from an old song from 1986 that talked about vampires The verse is the most recent music I wrote for the album. This song too was originally intended for someone else, namely Tony Mills, but it never made it on his albums. Tony then accepted to sing it for Docker's Guild, but he sadly passed away before he could do it. He was a good friend and I miss him dearly. Lyrically, the song seems to talk about love, but it is actually about Entropy and the Arrow of Time, and why the degree of chaos in the Universe never stops growing.

8.Crusades:

Another rule I have for Docker's Guild albums is that there should be two instrumentals. There are actually more on this one if you count Terminus and Nocturne, but the main ones are K475 and Crusades. They are completely different however, K475 being a heavy neoclassical composition, while Crusades is lighter with a definite funk vibe to it.

9. Into the Dahr Cages:

a. The King in Purple
b. Cassilda's Song
c. Urbs Aeterna
d. Pornocracy (Saeculum Obscurum)
e. The Head

This is the third suite of the album, and also the most complex and articulate one. There are five movements that go from Gregorian chant, to growl and scream, and it features all the singers in the cast of special guests, notably Amanda Somerville and Anneke van Giersbergen. This is where the album takes a very dark turn, preparing for the future installment "Season 3 - The Age of Darkness". The lyrics are particularly abrasive, with many references to The King in Yellow, the fictional cursed book by Robert W. Chambers, the cursed city of Carcosa, and the character of Cassilda. There are definite Lovecraftian overtones here.

10. S.O.S. Spazio 1999:

This is a bonus track that was actually recorded and released only to the pledgers of the crowdfunding effort for "Book A" back in 2015/16. It is the Italian soundtrack of a TV series I loved when I was a kid, Gerry Anderson's Space 1999. It was written by an Italian band called the Oliver Onions and it gave me a chance to sing in Italian as well.

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