Track By Tracks: Borehead - Vita Est Morte Est Vita (2024)

The concept of the record is loosely based on the idea of a spiritual or emotional journey, realized into the physical world: discover, enter, understand, become.

1 . Estate:

A journey of discovery starts with uncertainty. Trepidation. Sometimes even chaos. The frantic and glitchy opening, in that odd 7/8 time, aims to give that feeling of unease and confusion. Is this even the right record? It builds, cuts, and then drops. The riff comes in and the fog of confusion is lifted. 7/8 time is reintroduced partway through the track, but this time it’s less chaotic; building off the riffs that precede it. The sample in the second part of this section is our little homage to Electric Wizard. It’s a couple of lines from John Donne’s Holy Sonnet, and to us, represents the discovery of one’s mortality.

Steve Burns’ fantastic watercolor artwork comes from a chat he had with Richard about the meaning of the track. They ended up delving into tales of Aleister Crowley, and the legends of hidden passages under Boleskine Estate on the edge of Loch Ness. The passages remain undiscovered.

2. Circadian:

Circadian is the longest track on the album and serves as a portal to the final two tracks that follow. It consists of a number of movements; each one a new threshold, but with shadows of the previous movement cast upon it. It pushes and pulls. Builds and drops. The rhythm of life repeating, and finally opening the doorway to understanding.

The sample in this track contains the album’s title, taken from the film Eternal Evil. Every end is a new beginning, whether chosen or forced upon you.

Justin Fink’s artwork mixes two themes. The cyclical struggles the sun’s arrival brings, and the plot from a forgotten sci-fi novel where it was discovered that suns themselves were the only other intelligent organisms in the universe. The background is an inverted exploding star, and the writing is something NASA sent into space for our alien brothers.

3. Zoonosis:

This is the story of understanding oneself – and society as a whole – through pain, tragedy, and struggle. The inspiration for both the music and the samples was the horror of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, and the countless people who were affected by it. But mostly it’s about those who, at the time, fought fear with compassion. This, for us, is the true essence of the human spirit.

The track builds very slowly. Glimpses of light are introduced to punctuate the darkness of the rolling bass line. The tension builds and builds until it must be released. The riff explodes and marches on forcefully, before breaking into the triumphant, but chaotic, outro section.

Edu Canalejo’s artwork speaks for itself. Sickness. Death. Beauty. Life.

4. Macadamia:

The completion of the spiritual and emotional metamorphosis. The track starts with the mellow groove of the bass overlayed with the guitar playing a counter-rhythm. The two become one. This theme continues throughout the track, either by the juxtaposition of different grooves, or the overlapping of time signatures. Finally, the track crescendos into a hypnotic and repetitive movement that signals that the journey is complete, and all has become one.

To us, Lauren McIvor’s artwork is a visual representation of the track’s overall sound. Colourful. Twisted. Intriguing. And what of this journey? A grotesque dream, or perhaps just a nightmare.