the steel leviathan
By neon liminal on April 5, 2026 8:52 pm
Long song warning part 3. Also lots of text part three. Also part 3 of Titan City Nights.
Yes, nearly 12 minutes again. It's a bit of a journey, if you skip through it you will miss things, and you'll kinda miss the point, but then most folks can't afford the privilege of giving me their ears for 12 minutes, so don't worry if you can't. But there is an argument for durational music - ambient in particular - that still has structure but is also built on the premise of creating an atmosphere and mood that can't be established inside just a few minutes.
› story
‹ story
The refinery district rises like an iron mountain out of the neon-rainbow fog. Great blackened conduits snake their way into the sky, venting their exhaust heat into the void beyond the dome. Warning lights pulse in the dark at the tops of towers and antennae, poor substitute for a starry night sky, but some nights I'll take what I can get, whatever gets me away from the crowds for just a few minutes. Some nights I wander this metal labyrinth for hours and never see another soul.
But not tonight; he rounds a corner, startled that I'm standing here under the awning, last dregs of a cigarette glowing red in my hand. There's a heartbeat of hesitation, eye contact, the shift of weight on feet, the prolonged stare, a second of a knowing smile, a moment's recognition. He comes closer, "got a light?", and of course I do, a brief touch while I pass him my lighter, faint grin of thanks. Thirty seconds feels like an hour while we lean against chainlink fence, edging closer, the shadows in the alley behind inviting us to something more.
The ground roars and vibrates, the klaxon signals a shift change, and footsteps echo across the fields of the great steel leviathan, and we exchange disappointments through nervous eyes.
"I got a friend performing at Cowboys tonight, just outside the Mining Quarter. You should come," he says, stifling his cigarette on a wet fence pole.
"I'll see you there," I say, but he's already fading into the newly-risen crowd, and lost to the cacophony of the machines.
I wait for the tide of humanity to ebb, and wander back into the night.
› composition notes
‹ composition notes
This is another edited live performance with much the same semi-modular/modular gear:
ASM Hydrasynth on a self-playing patch for the main drone, plucks, and the "big moment" chords
Moog Grandmother on Bladerunner-esque swells and haunted screaming synth sounds
Pulsar-23 beating a heartbeat, as well as industrial-sounding metals and crashes
Various effect pedals and modular effects
Recorded to a 1010 bluebox eurorack version.
I dug up an old patch on the hydra for this one, tweaked it to play nice with microcosm and adjusted some of the performance macros. It literally plays itself with just a little guidance, but this one apparently I was clever enough to add some envelopes on note-changes so that there's a good swell of drama. It works well for the "big moment" segment of the track.
Grandmother had something of a Bladerunner-style patch, but decidedly Moog vs Yamaha cs-80. It sounds good, and I built in some feedback via the highpass filter so I could really fuck with the sound and make some haunting synth screams.
Pulsar is kind of my greatest-hits ambient echoing nonsense heartbeat percussion. Tons of reverb through the chain, lots of echoes.
Two takes, both in excess of 15 minutes, and I used take 1 for the hydra and then mix and matched the rest from both takes. I'd wanted to add another synth element in DAW but ran out of time.
Decided not to edit this down much less than 12 minutes because there were complaints! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE 
