This is my third offering, named after an event in Bristol in 2002. The bulk of this album was recorded in 2006, although some songs were older and some were finished in early 2007.
My personal favourites on this album are 'The Dark Revenge of Jakob Pettersohn' and 'Beings and Creatures' with 'ZooCity' coming a close third.
Guest vocals include James Rolls on 'Dark Revenge', Allyxa as Kria Soulstealer on 'Dragonsong', and an outtake by Slipdance. The cover art was drawn by Luke Turner.
A PDF version of the cover with full lyrics and liner notes can be found here:
dougtheeagle.com/mce/mythical.pdf
Notes on the individual tracks:
ZooCity was the last song to use Autotune, originally taped in September 2005. I did do a later re-recording without, but it was better in its original form, the pitch-correction giving it a slightly vocoder-like effect. It is based on the post-apocalyptic webcomic of the same name, by J. H. Aceituno.
'Beings and Creatures' was the first song where I felt I'd managed to get the 1970s vibe that I had been looking for. It is based on the interracial tension between magical Creatures and mortal Beings found in the DMFA webcomic by Amber M Williams. The phasing on the drums and the chorus line was done in the traditional manner using two tape decks.
'Crystaltopia' was inspired by the fledgling webcomic of James Rolls.
'Evermore' is a Poe-inspired Poem by E.Voyager, set to music.
'Vampires In Reverse' was actually written in 2004 but was very tricky to perform and had to be re-recorded a number of times until it was good enough. I won't say 'perfect' because there are a number of flaws still outstanding. It was originally supposed to go on the first album, but got pushed off. Then it was supposed to go on the second album but it got pushed off that too.
'The Dark Revenge of Jakob Pettersohn' continues the Jakob Pettersohn cycle begun in 'Songs for the Wild-At-Heart'. The concept behind the song was later extended into a series of short stories set in the DMFA universe which can be found online. The clock at the end is was engineered as a tape loop. Guest-starring James Rolls as the minion.
'Project Dragonsong' was my attempt at an extended piece along the lines of 'A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers' or 'Supper's Ready'. As with such things, the quality of the composition is somewhat variable but it has a lot of nice moments. It would probably have come out better with 16-track recording facilities rather than 8, and a better piano sound but sadly these were not available at the time. The clock at the end is the same loop as used on 'Dark Revenge' (the loop shown on the inner photograph of the cover in fact) but played backwards. This was actually a mistake while lacing the deck but it sounded better that way so I kept it.
