Reflections

What follows is a concise presentation of the story behind my new album TEN by my new electro-metal music project ThE AlmiGHty InTerPlanTARy ConSciouSneSS EXPLoSION. Please be patient and read the article in full to understand why this record is so important to me!

In 2018, I began work on a recording project which I named the T.E.N. Project. The goal was to record ten songs over a ten-month period and release each new song on the tenth of the month at 10am.

I recorded the songs in my small bedroom studio in South London, having scoured the Internet for the best deals on home studio equipment and having only a very small budget. The setup was basic, but I was delighted to have everything I needed — software and hardware — to record a mixture of synthesised and live instrumentation.

After the project ended, I had an experimental album I thought I was happy with, although I was aware that it didn’t feel by any means perfect. I made some lyric videos for some of the songs, and did feel some of the songs felt right, but the album as a whole didn’t delight my spirit — I always had nagging doubts about the quality of some of the songs.

I ran a competition to decide upon a title for the album, asking friends, blog commenters, and others to come up with an idea for what the initials T.E.N. might stand for. A few people entered the competition, and the winner I chose suggested the titled ‘Tell Everyone Now’, which I loved because it felt like a title that was intrinsically promotional, and it also appealed to me as a Christian in a ‘preach the Gospel!’ kind of way, which may have been the winners intention.

I manufactured a few CD copies of the album which I sent to the competition winner, to Nightshift Magazine, to Kerrang! Magazine, and to a few friends who had been fans of the music I wrote when I was in the progressive metal band Marconi’s Voodoo earlier in my life. The album only received one review — in Nightshift — and it was not a favourable review, though it wasn’t entirely negative. Nightshift are known for their harsh criticism so I didn’t feel too impacted by their review. There’s a famous saying — ‘all publicity is good publicity’ — so I chose to look at the review in this way and was grateful for the coverage.

After this, the Tell Everyone Now project kind of fizzled out. I continued to enjoy listening to the album myself while travelling around London’s underground network, though with every listen there were mixed feelings about whether it truly was a good enough release.

Several years passed, and I didn’t give the album much further thought.

Around two years ago, I was sitting on the sofa in my flat and the T.E.N. project re-entered my mind. I started to feel disappointed that there were some wonderful songs on the album that I absolutely loved that had never reached listeners. All of a sudden, the idea came to me to weed out the imperfect tracks from the album and release the best songs as a new EP. I considered that, because Tell Everyone Now hadn’t seen official release, releasing some of the songs as part of a new project would be unproblematic and desirable.

I then experienced a moment of true inspiration when I realised five songs from Tell Everyone Now, which was an experimental album, were consistent in style and pretty much perfect in presentation. I spent some time playing around with the order of these songs and much to my surprise I found I had a five-track electro-rock EP that I was delighted with. I decided to dream up a new concept for the record and came up with the name Agony and Ecstasy, which I liked because it reflects the two poles of human experience and also the bipolar tendencies I sometimes experience in life.

The name I landed upon for the EP was ‘Speak Life’, chosen because my favourite song on the EP had that title. Subconsciously, I may have been aware that there is a worship song by Toby Mac that shares this title, though this didn’t come to mind until I was looking on Spotify one day.

I designed some artwork after playing around with some ideas using several different websites and distributed the EP to streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music via SoundCloud’s distribution service.

In the early days of my musical career, promotion was very different in nature. Promotion is always easier when you’re working as part of a team, but since becoming rather notorious as a Christian evangelist and facing widespread rejection from friends, family, blog followers, colleagues, the church, society, and (sometimes it feels like) the world, I felt no one had any desire to support the record, and so I did little to promote it. I made the EP available on StevenColborne.com and wrote a few articles about it, but very few people even listened to it. After running out of money, I took the record down from streaming services and considered the project a rather unfortunate failure.

As I type, I’m on a psychiatric ward in South London, despite being perfectly fine mentally. I was sectioned because the authorities became concerned that I was rising to a level of notoriety and wanted to control me, so the police broke into my flat and dragged me into hospital under the guise that I was having a ‘psychotic episode’ I assume, though they didn’t even offer an explanation of what they thought was wrong with me. I have been suffering in hospital for months as a result of their actions, and am having to trust in divine justice in the absence of Earthly justice.

I am blessed on the ward in many ways, although it sometimes seems as though the staff try to make my life as difficult as possible, moving me from ward to ward, torturing me in my room, ignoring my requests for help, and generally being abusive. Of course, my faith in Jesus is carrying me through as always, and there are many on the ward who are being increasingly prayerful, kind, and devoted to serving God.

Yesterday, I had another burst of musical inspiration and over the course of about two hours, a new album, based on recordings from Marconi’s Voodoo, the Tell Everyone Now album, and the Speak Life EP, came together in a really exciting way. Many of the songs I have written have a futuristic feel, and a few years ago I came up with a band name that I loved: The Almighty Interplanetary Consciousness Explosion. As the album came together, I realised it formed what was essentially a best-of album of the music I have created throughout my life thus far, and not only that, it is a very coherent album in its own right. I felt elated!

This release, I feel, could be huge! It is the result of an exceptional amount of time and effort and the result of three years-long recording projects!

I have asked a member of staff here on the ward if she would be willing to design a cover for the album and she suggested we might be able to do this on Friday, which was kind. I feel that women have exceptional talents when it comes to visual creativity, and I think this member of staff has experience of either designing or distributing promotional materials. In the meantime, I am using this temporary cover I designed while playing around with ideas some years ago:

I contacted an old colleague at Apple about the release, and I need to check back to see whether or not he has replied, but I sincerely doubt it. Much more likely, I will self-promote the record using the shoestring budget I have and hope to reach a few listeners who enjoy it. I feel as though no one except God really understands the situation I am in and why promotion is so difficult for me these days, but I’m convinced that He loves me unconditionally and that’s all that really matters.

‘TEN’ by ThE AlmiGHty InTerPlanTARy ConSciouSneSS EXPLoSION is currently available to preview on SoundCloud and over the next few months I will be working hard to release and promote the album, though I have low expectations in terms of commercial success — not due to the quality of the record, which I think is exceptional, but due to my unfortunate personal circumstances. But you never know what God will do!

You can listen to the album in High Definition here:

https://soundcloud.com/consciousnessexplosion

Thank you for reading — and listening!