The seeds of this album were planted in April 2023 and as is often the case, germinated through a combination of various environments and my own somewhat unmanageable imagination. I’d become hyperfixated on the idea of Alternate Reality Games, and the way that through what are essentially acts of play, a person can experience a degree of brain-change. A form of magic. We can all experience other worlds.

I was particularly obsessed with Joseph Matheny’s Ong’s Hat project, and the Incunabula Catalog of rare and deeply weird books concerning conspiracy theory, frontier science, and alternate worlds. I was walking around the suburbs and countryside, in something of a daze, just living in that reality where interdimensional portals were being opened by psychedelic scientists and quantum hippies. There were so many possibilities. What if these gateways could exist anywhere? What if I followed a magpie down a wormhole that existed in a patch of dandelions?

My immediate environment was changed. Everything had potential. There was magic in the mundane. There was beauty everywhere, you just had to look properly. Everything was exciting and charged with power. I went to Other Worlds, which were hiding all along, in… more
credits
released September 20, 2024

Written and performed by Stephen James Buckley
Mastered by Antony Ryan @ redredpaw.com
Artwork by Nick Taylor @ spectral-studio.co.uk
CiS180