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Lunar Affair

by Monarcadia

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1.
Circumstance has met you. Circle, hello. Where have you gone? Stand tall. Fine, don't say. I'm losing. I'm failing. Crying. Trying. You're the pro. You won. You monster.
2.
Here in this town I go dancing in the park. I go out at night. See the red strings in the air? I don't care. I walk away. It's simple; come on, everybody weep. Do you say anything? I don't want you to go. I can't say anything. I can't communicate the ratio of a bird factory. "I get away," I know you'd say. Here in this town I go dancing the night away every night. And here we are. It's so simple to disguise every trouble. Here in this town I go dancing in the park.
3.
Crepúsculo 06:02
4.
The Phone 05:15
I say, "Will you walk away with me?" I say, anyway, "Will you walk with me?" I'm deep in all my plans around every one of these. I'm making all of these plans around every time you don't call me. Every night you leave me hanging on the telephone. When it comes today I'll wait, and I do anyway, anywho. When it comes today I'll say, "Anyway, anywhere." Anywhere, anyway... I need some words.
5.
I can't decide which one to carry on. Which one to carry on? I can't decide anymore who finally found you. Silent pillow, why me? How come? Why lay a peril, silent pillow? I get a little knotted, pillow. I can't, pillow. I can't decide. Everything I've tried died. No more missing you. Everyone could never tend to you. Everything you say: the words are paper cuts on your face. Every little blind eye turns a little every way that it could. Anyway that it goes, I'm touching you. It's watching you. I say, "Why?" I say, "Why say?" "I can't," I say. I say to you inside the misty mountaintop, "Um." I see you in the misty mountaintop. I see you everywhere I go. Your face in the covers-- I want to know what's real. I can't see everything. Everything ok. Know the way. I don't want a yesterday, another "I love her." Everything part of me yesterday: everything I would be today. Everything, I can see the way: everything I can be today. I can't remember you. I can't be a member of you anymore. Saddened day. Certain death. Saturday. Look on. Here come tomorrow. Ok, ok...
6.
7.
8.
Lightbringer 08:01
The moon: a source of energy. The moon: a force of light bringing love through light. Bring your love to me tonight. Bring your love through the moonlight. I call you Lightbringer. Walking in the light. I call you, Lightbringer. Angels wear a normal face. I join the moon at midnight --my guide through my cold, dark mind. I wonder do daywalkers know "real" like I do? I call you Lightbringer. Warm in every way. I call you, Lightbringer. Angels wear a normal face. I call you Lightbringer. The moon: a source of energy. You move a force of light. Bring love through light. Bring love through light, Lightbringer.
9.
In a sad day. Been a sad day. Went to the…. um. And it's Saturday. Been a sad day. When you love, go away. I… Weekends are my days in February morning haze, and I don't have to write. There was a fate; it wasn't mine, and it's on its own. The lovey-dovey love songs are gone. And it's Saturday. Been a sad day. When you love… In a sad day. Been a sad day. And it's Saturday and it's Saturday. Won't go out on Saturday. It's Saturday. Won't go out on Saturday on a sad day. And it's Saturday. Been a sad day. When you love….
10.
My whole life has been a bore. Did they forget their bodies on the river? My whole life has been a lonely one. Did they treat their children well like they were taught to? When I leave everything I know will you say anything you are? Standing beneath the trees, staring at peoples in the clouds. You invent the creatures in the foreground. Put 'em on display. Let them walk off the page. Every little ant crawling just to be what it can't. Be what it ______.
11.
Ash in my cereal. Bugs in my hair. Her love sauce is crusting all over me, and I'm tired of hearing about the signs, tired of hearing about all the signs that people see pointing every which way; I wish some of them would point at me. I spew poetic-sounding slop and you call it breakfast. To think that God is a "where," not a he/it/heshe/they/she/what/he/who/am/is/what/where/why, for places can be any color. I paint mine to remember that you're only a prisoner if you have a reason to go outside. Maybe do you want to go outside? I never want to go outside. I just want to stay in all day and rot in the cereal I've been eating since day one. Go, far away. Go far and pray. Keep praying. Keep muttering. Keep stuttering. Keep saying all the stupid little things that you say to yourself to keep you up at night and keep you going through the day. I only have one word of advice, and that is: to be "cautious"--which is more than just a word--but walk in like you own the place. Be cautious, but walk in like you own the place...like you own it, but you think that everybody is trying to kill you. [scream] It's cool, I know you're all ashamed of me. I know you want what I can't give because I'm so afraid of things like pain and persecution. I've been using since I turned 16 to medicate this thick screen I put between people and me: sheens of smoke to make the daunted choke and back away, and forget ME, but I'm like everyone else, I mean I'm a little hedgehog trying to navigate a balance between alien and real talk, real talk. Real talk. Real talk, real talk, real talk…. Real. Talk. [guttural] And you get more and more disgusting every day--every mirror cracked and coddling your face, mocking you and all your loves that call it truth. All these pretty little doves are calling you, calling you, calling you calling you calling you calling you calling you calling you calling you calling you go go go go go slow slow slow slow slow go go go they're calling you calling you calling you go go go go go calling you calling you calling you calling you. I'm tired and cranky, my body feels like giblets matte-gnashed by beastly maw, my selfhood dangling from a snarl. Pure allegory of a bloodletting, sheer medicinal vocab. Muscle sinews backstop to point zero. Zero. Zero, they're calling you. Zero. They're calling you and they're back. They're always back. They hide in your brain. They jump out and they poison your cereal. You get excited by the lights. The still orange streetlight pixellated by its dispersal in the water. Like some old Atari game, a Vegas marquee like lights on a sign from the side. You spit in the water--spit in the water--and then you drink the water. Sleep all the way. Sleep all the way. Sleep. [catharsis]

about

Lunar Affair emerged largely from a series of post-midnight recordings I had made between Las Vegas and St. Louis--I moved from Vegas to STL with my sister Addy in August 2013, and lived with her there until just before Christmas of that year. I would stay up all night recording, usually until/past sunrise. I have always felt some kind of deep connection with night and especially the moon. Something about night simultaneously energizes and relaxes me; I feel centered and lucid in the late night and do most of my creative work when most people are asleep. In St. Louis in the latter half of 2013, it started to feel like some kind of secret, like an affair I was having with the moon. I tend to keep my work confidential until I'm ready to release it; I prefer it that way until I feel that I have material I believe is worth sharing. Consequently, no one really knew what I was up to, just that generally I was working on music. I thought a lot about my relationship to night and day, moon and sun, darkness and light....duality yes, but where I fit in between those things, especially in the midst of a pretty serious depression. I was also dealing with immense heartbreak, feelings of betrayal and mistrust, and learning how to re-enter the world after close to a year of almost total isolation in my bedroom in Vegas.

I deliberately aimed to break from the electropop style of my previous album "Don't, Don't" (monarcadia.bandcamp.com/album/dont-dont) and filter my audience with the first track. I wanted to make it clear that I'm not a pop musician, and intentionally allowed the recordings to remain unpolished; I'm interested in creating honest music that I find interesting and different from anything else I've ever heard.

The audio quality also resulted from my process. I believed that Don't, Don't took me too long to make, relative to the speed with which my ideas were emerging--I couldn't keep up with my own momentum. For Lunar Affair, instead of tracking into GarageBand and editing, I relied on my Allen & Heath ZED10FX mixer to live mix externally and record live as much as I could in as few takes as possible. The ZED10FX records into a DAW through a USB cable. As a USB mixer, it cannot multitrack into a DAW; rather, what begin as multiple hardware tracks emerge within the DAW as a single track. This makes it pretty much impossible to edit individual tracks post-recording. I think the songs work fine, and I vastly prefer this way of working over the painstaking, meticulous clicking on a screen typically involved in today's digital production. I think digital production appears convenient but is actually a painfully slow process that can totally ruin creative momentum and encourage perfectionism and delay. I thrive creatively and have more fun when I am creating quickly, when I dive in and have to think on my feet. This album was an effort to minimize the distance between creative ideation and execution, inspiration and realization.

This was also my first experience ever in audio mastering. I acquired Logic Pro sometime during the recording of this album and started learning how to master tracks in it, which I did after everything had been recorded. I was very poor and, at the time, living on people's couches in St. Louis (Hart, Gareth....), and my sister Sinéad's in Evanston, IL. I did the mastering on my Macbook Pro through bad, old Bose headphones on these couches, in the Northwestern University library, and at my grandma's house in Albuquerque, NM. Really not the best way to master an album of tracks that were already of rough quality. Still, I'm ok with how it came out.


While I do not want to expose every detail of what each song is "about" (some of this has to be open for you to discover your own meaning), here are a few notes on content and production--mostly on production:


I'll Show You Where It Lurks

This is a tone poem that, through the sonic conjuring of a fantastical visual atmosphere, beckons the listener into whatever monstrous region of the brain hosts depression, and thus into the album. I whistled the bird sounds and that is my phlegmy voice growling/snoring/screeching as the monster at various moments. I used a sustain pedal to get those long keyboard drones. This was one of the recordings made entirely in Las Vegas, actually during the mid (second round of) Don't, Don't sessions in late 2012. I decided later that it was exactly what I wanted to open Lunar Affair with. I really do love this piece.


Moondance Make Up!

Recorded in St. Louis. This song has a title inspired by Sailor Moon's transformation exclamations (Moon Cosmic Power, Make Up! etc.), because I am a superfan and I personally identify with Usagi Tsukino in many ways. I actually would go out with headphones on and dance in the streets near where my sister and I lived in University City, St. Louis really late at night when no one was awake or around. In Chinese and Japanese folklore, the "red string of fate" is said to connect two destined lovers. Something to consider.
I wasn't thinking of him at the time, but this song really ended up sounding uncannily like Thom Yorke, to me. I considered not releasing it for that reason, but went ahead anyway because I love this song. The beat was made by playing the iKaossilator app like a live instrument, and live-looping that. The song consists of that, vocals, and my guitar--I used wah to create feedback for the chordal loop that you hear.


Crepúsculo

Crepúsculo is Spanish for "twilight" (not THAT Twilight, Stephanie Meyer fans) and I feel is both hopeful and melancholic, like the time just before sunrise when the night must regretfully end. I think of it as both an ode to that time and an effort to represent that moment and its attendant emotions musically. This was mostly recorded in St. Louis. The drum beat came either from the iKaossilator app or the drum sequencer on my Casio XW-P1; whichever the case, I live looped it, and during playback added the choral synth as an improvised live take. I recorded the classical guitar part much later, in December 2013, from a bedroom in my grandma's house in Albuquerque, NM. The song existed as a dull choral synth over a beat before then, so thankfully the guitar rescued it! I recorded the guitar directly into my MacBook Pro through the internal mic, since I didn't have any of my equipment available at the time.


The Phone

This beat was made with the iKaossilator app in my bedroom one night in St. Louis. You might be able to tell that part of this song was very obviously copy-pasted to double the middle section. Sucks when someone you love doesn't call you back, no?


You're My Nightmare

Another St. Louis song. Lyrically this song revisits the subject of Don't, Don't. I see it as the darker side of Don't, Don't. If there's any narrative going through my work at all, you should find some of the more torturous moments within this song, though they may not sound that way at first. This seems to me to be the emotional center of Lunar Affair. It's meant to be an acousmatic recording but I would love to play the whole thing live one day. It was largely generated through an extended improvisation that was then trimmed to omit the particularly awkward bits. I relied heavily on my DL4 for this song. The drum beat toward the end was iKaossilator played live like an instrument. I added vocal harmonies after recording the initial vocal+guitar track.


Difficult Confessor 1+2

Sometimes it's easier to say what's on your mind through music alone. There isn't an exact "confession" per se; sometimes vocalization is ineffectual and also just irrelevant. I can also be pretty quiet in person and I consider myself private about a lot, unless we're close of course. I improvised the whole recording while trying to keep those things in mind, literally trying to speak extemporaneously through the music. Before releasing this I cut the recording in half because the sections seemed distinct enough for that to make sense. The drum loops were made by live-looping. All sounds here were made with keyboard patches.


Lightbringer

I made this song and immediately told my sister Addy that I thought I had just made "psychedelic flamenco". I used my Cordoba CWE-S guitar for this, building guitar loops and recording them into my sampler, then improvising lead guitar over this. There was originally a first part of this song called "Safe to Love Again," but I didn't include it in the album for reasons I cannot remember.
This song is for someone I met ("T") in St. Louis who became extremely important to me and a kind of spiritual guide. She might be an actual angel. I learned a great deal from her and she helped me discover my inner peace, among many other life lessons that completely and permanently changed me for the better. She is a sun person, and I a moon-type. We're both water signs. Nevertheless, I did actually call her "Lightbringer" once toward the end of my time in STL. I'll never forget you, T, and I hope we can see each other again someday. Eternal gratitude and love to you.


He Say No Buddy Call

A sample I have returned to many times (you may recall it from the "Celibate" bonus track at the end of Don't Don't). I made it with live-looped and sampled keyboard tones. In a rare move for me, the drum sounds here were MIDI: made, effected, and arranged within GarageBand. "Saturday" and "sad day" can sound very similar. This is a very sad song, has a very personal subject matter that I won't get into here, and actually one of my favorites. Recorded in St. Louis.


Forget Their Bodies

This began as something I started singing to myself in my backyard in Vegas. There were other verses originally, but since this particular recording emerged in St. Louis as a one-off, I couldn't recall the other parts. I was satisfied with this ultimately, though, so I thought, "why not include it?" I live-looped that part at the end.


G0dfxck SL0p 4 BrechhFa$$

This is the first of what will hopefully be a future series of tracks that combine my poetry with music in such a way that the two complement each other. I wrote the poem, then recorded the music to highlight the poem's tone and represent some of the thematic content, and then read the poem over the music. Certain performative elements like screaming, I feel, give the poem new life that would be impossible as mere text on a page. I guess you could think of this as a kind of performance poem. The mention of "hedgehog" in here refers to the Hedgehog's Dilemma. I'm pretty sure the music was all made with various live-looped keyboard patches.

credits

released February 21, 2014

Alaric López - all vocals, guitars, sampler, keyboard, pedals, iKaossilator, GarageBand MIDI (drums on track 9).

All songs (music and lyrics) written, recorded, performed and mixed in Alaric's bedroom studios in Las Vegas, NV (September/October 2012), St. Louis, MO (late August to December 2013) and Albuquerque, NM (December 2013).

Cover art by Alaric López.

Mastered by Alaric López in St. Louis, MO, Evanston, IL, and Albuquerque, NM in January and February 2014.

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Monarcadia

Monarcadia is musician, intermedia artist, and poet Alaric López.

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