Perpetual Emotion Machine - Background

For the period between late 2001 and early 2005, EtherReal, my previous writing name, was a non-entity. I was not creating music of any kind, although I was still listening to it. This was largely due to the nature of my situation; my relationship was the centre of my universe. My girlfriend/wife became pregnant in late 2002 and I began to work a second job in order to save up extra money. My father, after having been very ill from diabetes and heart problems, passed in December of 2002. My daughter was born in July 2003, and I took a year off work to help raise her for her debut year. Shortly after her first birthday, my girlfriend and I decided mutually to split up for the sake of our daughter, as all efforts to make our relationship work as it once did had failed.

In the fall of 2004, I found myself on the verge of losing my apartment, having fallen behind on the rent, and I was also in a deep depression about the failed family situation, In November of that year, I was involved in a hit and run accident when a car broadsided me on my bicycle in the wee hours of the morning and then took off. I was pretty badly banged up, though with no long lasting damage and only a few small scars. A few weeks later, I moved in with a friend who was in a similar situation with his divorce, and stayed there until July 2005 when I got my own apartment and started to get my life back on track. Around the same time, my ex informed me that she was planning to move to the west coast with her new boyfriend and take my daughter with her.

While all this may seem unrelated to music, it it quite the opposite. By the time August rolled around, I had been through so much difficulty and strife and loss and sadness and anger, that I was ready to tackle music again, with a vengance. This is when Perpetual Emotion Machine was born.

The reason I began writing again is simple: I was clogged up with emotions and I needed to get them out the only way I knew how, and that was through writing; translating the emotions into music. Almost everything I've done since 2005 has been created as a direct result of something that I was going through at the time, more so than any other songs written prior to this. Omega is the best example of this. It is the story of my life for one year, while I was struggling with trying to prevent my ex from taking my daughter across the country and failing at the attempt. It's not explicit in words, because for the most part, there aren't any. But the meaning is there in the notes and phrases.

Omega took two years to complete, by far the longest I've taken to compile a collection, and was released en masse with an EP and a single in June of 2007, but all the initial composing was done in 2005. It was both a emotional as well as a learning process, because I was using new and more modern software, and I wasn't used to the ins and outs of it, having mainly used trackers in the past, and a just smattering of proper studio gear up to this point. I called it Omega because I thought, once again, that this would be the last excursion into music that I would take; that I would purge and be done with it. In that frame of mind, I had originally intended to release it under the EtherReal name, but I eventually stumbled upon Perpetual Emotion Machine instead. So in essence, this wasn't so much an omega, and ending, as it was a beginning.

. . .

Having been really pleased with the sound I got on Omega, I decided not to throw in the towel after all and keep writing. By this point I had hooked up all the friends and contacts I had lost track of for the previous five years, while dealing with my home life. Through this, I was inspired to collaborate on several fronts with people in my circle who I knew would want to contribute.

So, before I had written a single note of mew music, I knew I was going to call the project Glory. The only reason for this is that it was the first thing that came to my mind, and I realized later it was because of the Star Trek episode, The Omega Glory. The two words just seemed to go together.

A lot of the tracks that didn't get used on Omega ended up being on Glory in some form or another. Unfinished tunes, and riffs became full tracks, and this project took took about a year to finish. The idea was for it to be an album of new material, but I have to call it an EP, because there are new tracks as well as remixes, and a three-part track that is spread across the whole album. I rediscovered my love of piano on this record, and there are several instances of it from song to song. Among the more memorable parts on the EP are the contributions by Archibald MacDonald, whose jazz keyboarding stylings add a special element to some of the music.

. . .

By the start of 2007, I had decided that I was going to finally make a big push to promote my music. Tools and services were now aplenty on the internet, and it was a haven for unsigned artists. It gave me an opportunity to really evaluate my work and take a look back at how I got here. I had already had a taste of that in 2006, when I went back to some of the EtherReal material and remastered the tracks that I still had tracker files for. I don't know why I felt I had to do it, really, I had already put ER to bed in my mind, but something compelled me to keep them alive.

. . .

In late spring of 2007, I released Omega, and The Flight Deck single independantly, and started promoting it myself. Glory and a standalone single, Luz En Osciridad were released in August. It's been good going so far. I've met new people as a result of it, and got a lot of great feedback from people who've heard and liked the music I've created. That was always the intention: to get it out there and share it. And to keep doing it.

Doing 'singles' was a really interesting exercise for me. As a record collector, I have a crapload of singles in my collection. My favourites have always been the ones that have more than five tracks on s aingle disc, it makes you feel you've got your money's worth. For PEM, making singles was a great reason to remix, something that I had been doing for years anyway, mashing different things together, either of my own music or someone else's. For Flight Deck, it was easy, since the song was a labour of love for me. I lived and breathed the track for almost two years solidly. So by the time I was ready start promoting, I had several versions already completed and had collaborators help me with others. For Luz En Oscuridad it was so easy, it was almost an accident.

. . .

PEM has been even more of a much needed outlet than ER was, and the work continues.