Cthonic Cosmographies by Ed Keller

'A time-traveling Dead Man in space.' 
Nicola Masciandaro

The album’s title refers to a longer arc of several years of work on Cosmopolitics, ecology and science fiction, which this album takes on thematically; as well, one track's naming is drawn loosely from Dune, the novel by Frank Herbert.  Nicola's comment on 'Guild Navigator: Widmanstätten', could serve as the organizing concept for the entire album. I have always really loved Neil Young's soundtrack for the film 'Dead Man', as well as the film itself; and the novel 'Stars My Destination' by A. Bester; any and all filmic / scifi implications or references in these tracks is not coincidental, & absolutely welcome. 

For more information about ecological/philosophical/planetary themes which led in part to this album, please refer to my 2015 lecture: 'Thought As Not Thought: From Planetary Timescapes to the Cosmopolitical Gesture ' https://youtu.be/1vOkgiZGmsM?t=37m56s

recorded July 2017 thru January 2018.

TRACK NOTES:
Terlingua, Harmed
Walkscapes, Earth. Farewell to Harry Dean as Travis, in ‘Paris Texas’.

Ast[ar]riding
'The Silence of Infinite Space Terrifies Me.' Star striding, star slide.

Guild Navigator Widmanstätten: one of the least recognized of the Guild Navigators, better described as a rogue AI, this swarm entity uploads to cooling post-planetary debris, and performs calculations across hundreds of millions of years as the molten material cascades across the galaxy. Like Solaris, many purposes have been imputed to the Guild Navigator class intellect, but none have successfully extracted data from the crystalline remains of the Widmanstätten computations.

Rough Seas, Flutter: ‘How his naked ears were tortured…’

Blue Jaunte
Meditation on Gully Foyle's plight, both on Terra and in the Void.

A Harm, Soaring: Sustained elegy, perhaps for Earth.

Leviathan: Dreams of the Heliopause
A sentient ship contemplates the edge of our solar system.

L’arc Daemon Time[less]
Space demon, with a hint of muted earthly nostalgia, the fragment from Timeless that earworms incessantly.

Tracklist

1.	Terlingua, Harmed	5:16

2.	Densities	7:26

3.	Ast[ar]riding	6:15

4.	Guild Navigator Widmanstätten	4:32

5.	Rough Seas, Flutter.	4:58

6.	Blue Jaunte	7:21

7.	A Harm, Soaring.	6:51

8.	Leviathan: Dreams of the Heliopause	7:41

9.	L’arc Daemon Time[less]	5:55

Credits

released August 1, 2018

Ed Keller, improvised solo electric guitar.
All amping/FX were handled in BiasFX on iPad. Signal path was:
Boden7 Strandberg guitar>Audiobus>BiasFX>LoopyHD>speakers. The track 'Leviathan...' includes passages on a Steinberger fretless XZ25 bass.

All tracks were recorded in looped single takes; some were mixed at a later date in a subsequent, single mixing session out of LoopyHD in an improvisatory take to stereo.

cover image: Ed Keller, generativeAI, extrapolated from solar tendrils source: Alan Friedman (Averted Imagination), Big Bear Solar Obs., NJIT

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