Nocturnal

Noctourniquet

 The Mars Volta entertain with a mature, complex record that will leave the listener in a dazed wonderment.


Even under closed eye visuals I could see it all.
 

I awoke to damp sheets and a sick rain knocking at my window. I unclenched my fists from the bed sheets and took a second to catch my breath. I put my glasses on and ignited the lamp. Strangely enough a gray thick light oozed from the fire. Distressed by this I opened the window to release my doubts. I was greeted by a gust of freezing rain that licked at my clammy skin. And hiding behind a school of clouds, directly above the rigid stone town I had known for many years was a black sun.

I staggered back unable to discern what I had just seen. I raced out the room, down the steps and into my basement. I let out a sigh of relief to see my laboratory as I had left it. All of my vials were in the right position, selected experimental solutes were being processed and my books were scattered as before.
 However, I noticed the same anomaly from the lamp occur with my bubbling mixtures and distilled compounds.  They were illuminating shades of gray and black. I tried pushing this surreal reality out of my head with the aid of my beloved books. But the more I leafed through them the less of a grip on reality I held. Somehow all my work had been transcribed into gibberish. Welt up in confusion and rage I flipped through my entire collection only to meet the same result.
None of this could be true, I must be dreaming. I slapped and pinched myself a couple of times but nothing happened. I could feel my stomach churning and my fingers tensing up, I was undoubtedly awake.
And so I burst out of my house into a nocturnal world. I observed my surroundings in search of something peculiar like the black sun. But everything seemed normal, my neighbors lawn was unkempt as usual, the sidewalk leading to my house was still corroded and the column of elm trees that stood at the foot of the street were still leafless.

And suddenly, as if it appeared out of thin air, I saw it.
Past the scenery in the negative spaces of everything, a subtle displacement of the earth.

In such confusion I couldn't even put together a concrete question towards what I was witnessing. It was as if god himself had beset blasphemy upon my me.  Bound by arduous amounts of stress I wandered into the stone town.
 As I arrived to the main street I noticed it was as lifeless as the morbid moon hanging above me. I walked on the cobblestone street, the constant click clacking, echoing my presence. I looked in the small stores along each side of the road but no soul was insight. Instead colonies of cobwebs and dust had conquered the vacant space. Past the main street a cathedral centuries old stood erect in the blank illumination of the void above. This magnificent monolith carved of limestone and mortar was a testament towards my undying yearning for the truth behind these anomalies.

It had been years since I had entered a cathedral. In fact, I had almost forgotten how majestic such buildings were. From the perfectly smooth arches, hand-crafted gargoyles, to the ornate stained window glass and bountiful flying buttresses. This cathedral held an ethereal aura to it that felt different from any other place in this nocturnal world or for that matter the real world.

I sat at one of the pews and after an exhausting couple hours, let the halcyon setting consume me. At that moment when I had let go of worriment and stress I felt something exhale from the room. I opened my eyes quickly as if to catch the escaping gas before it was too late. But instead I found that the cathedral began to decrease in size. Slowly the large wooden doors began shrinking and the wide Gothic vault fell closer and closer towards the ground. Jesus was on the cross and seemed to be the only thing aside from myself to retain its original size.

At this point I didn't run from what seemed certain death. There was nothing for me in this blackened world, nothing but unanswered questions and unsettling discoveries. Soon after, everything began crashing into itself. What took decades to create soon began to crumble away in seconds. Such beautiful architecture and design untouched by time deteriorated in front of me. Large blocks of limestone came crashing down; smashing pews and altars next to me. The stained glass windows cracked away and large pillars came tumbling down. Finally I saw it falling down, another block of stone that would finish me.
And in that small amount of time I had left in my life, everything slowed down...
Like a perfectly patterned puzzle of missing people and places, I could peer into the past and approach what seemed a pleasant peril.
I could see it all.

Prairie

Apocalypse
Bill offers more than just a tranquil American-Folk album but a witty truth stitched in every song.

Dusk approaches and still the gentle warmth of the sun brushes at my skin. As I stroll along the billowing hills I run my fingers across the waves of wheat. And subtly, like a faint whisper, I sense my past generations deep in the damp dirt. 

Just at the edge of the field I see my father cutting wood. Slowly, night crawls up his wrinkled pants, up his cracked fingers, up his heavy arched back and finally up his sweating brow. Adjacent to him smoke plumes out of the cabin chimney and through the window I can see my mother brushing my sister's silky hair.

The prairie wind whips at my dress like a whip on a horses back.

My father collects the firewood and heads to our cabin. He looks my way, our eyes meet and for a second we stand there, staring at each other. But nothing was said and he closed the door behind him.

I see my my family sitting down for dinner and in my mothers soft melodic voice and my fathers coarse firm touch I feign my pain doesn't exist. For the truth of my families future is withering away in the wake of a toxic world.

But for my three and the rest before I, I walk down to the simple cabin and behind it I stand before my grandfathers tomb and his own and my mother's mother. Carved in stone are their names and their passing and their legacy. Time hasn't take them away yet..

But like a quick zap of lightning my life was taken, taken away, from you, from before, once ago, once more.

Alien

Outer Isolation
Vektor accelerate past our galaxy with other-worldly riffs and galactic screeches that'll induce even the most voracious of aliens to thrash and headbang.

Space runs far and deep...across echoes of lifetimes and windows of mystification. Infinitesimal amounts of energy seep in and out of higher dimensions, finally returning to us in the form of light. 

This is how I awoke, by the boundless force of luminance. 

A thick layer of sweat hung unto my body and a sharp pain rose up my neck. As I reached to wipe my dripping face I realized I was still in a spacesuit. Above me the vast sky looked clearer then I'd ever seen it before. Schools of spectral stars and orbs of pulsing red fire decorated the nebular canvas. But in the midst of such a euphoric state a harsh reality caused stark shivers to quilt and quiver down my spine.

I wasn't in the Milky Way.

And so I arose to a bleak and barren world composed of jagged rock and floating asteroids. Hovering above me in the atmosphere was a colossal structure far more complex than any technology i'd ever seen. Its outer core seemed to be fabricated out of a robust shiny metal that allowed the ship to effortlessly move across space. It's shape was similar to a leaf; slender and agile which reduced its surface area from outward attacks. Its backside was aligned with boosters and its front with ultramodern lasers. At that moment I knew the only to get back to Earth was to board that spacecraft. And without further hesitation I leaped and hopped across the deserted terrain in search of something I wasn't sure of yet.
The landscape was riddled with fissures; ranging from small slits to enormous gaps that stretched for miles. Luckily zero gravity allowed me to fly across them to other districts of the unknown planet.  It seemed like hours had passed and slowly but surely my body was giving in to the radical topography. One thing I hadn't noticed until now was that there was an increase in pressure and it felt as if any minute I would burst out of my suit. I soon became savage and delirious, burdened by these unknown pressures and lack of water I maniacally roamed the astral terrain. But by the miracle of god I scoped something in the corner of my eye. It was small and had similar characteristics to the spacecraft suspended above me. I galloped towards the mysterious object inattentive of the possible dangers that may lie ahead. As I approached the construct I noticed a myriad of particles floating in the middle of it ranging from all colors of the spectrum. It stood at 7 feet in height and it had an uncanny aura to it. Could it be a teleporter? I ground my teeth at the thought of what would happen if I stepped in but I had no other options.
 With all the courage I could muster I dived into the particles headfirst.
Before I could conceptualize what was happening I had arrived. The teleporter had spat me out in a tenebrous green chamber filled with shapes and objects unfamiliar to my human eye. After further analysis I realized I was in a storage room filled with eerie gadgets and contraptions. I found what seemed to be stairs and from the size of the steps I could guess the stature of the extraterrestrial beings. They where small and slim and seemed to have multiple limbs. A sticky glop oozed down the steps which had a thick pungent smell to it. I continued up the spiral stairs as silently as I could until I found my self in a large hallway that led to a main control room. The sound of machinery and gears shifting could be heard across the hall. I tip-toed to the edge of the entrance and peeked into the room. A sleek thick transparent wall sat in front of the command center allowing the outer space to be seen. And in front of the command centers where small dark green beings that left me so astounded by their bizarre nature I nearly slipped on the slimy glop that layered the floor.

I counted eight of these creatures,they were all facing the glass wall and seemed too busy attending to the ship to notice me.  I had no idea what these beings were capable of; surely they were small but their intellect was far superior then my own. However I had one thing they didn't, the element of surprise and if I played my cards right I might have the opportunity to turn this ship around and head back to Earth.
After further thought I took a step into the room.
Suddenly everything grew gravely quiet. The monitors stopped beeping, the buzzing machinery sat still and the bobbing heads of the viscous aliens turned to face me. I froze on the spot like a frightened deer and before anything else could occur a white beam of light enveloped me.


Little did the man know that all of his actions where being monitored since his awakening. The twisted aliens where simply toying with him; seeing how far he would go until he succumbed. They did not expect him to get as far as he did and while they did respect his perseverance they could not allow the game to continue any further.  And so at the expense of none he was vaporized into thin air.