NEWS FLASH!

Greetings, Hermites.

I apologize for the disgracefully long delay in communication. I did not expect to be incommunicado for a full year.

Let me address the new Hermetic Science album first. When I posted in May 2007, the band had recorded two-thirds of the album, having most recently recorded the epic 15 ½ minute rock-and-roll marimba concerto “Triptych” in January 2007. Immediately thereafter we began rehearsing the final third of the album: an 18 minute segment of four interlocking, continuous tracks built around the scintillating vibes-dominated “Aion,” which I believe just may represent Hermetic Science's finest work ever (the drum part, with its perpetually faster rhythmic values as the track progresses, is truly amazing), and the chilling closing keyboard prog extravaganza, “The Second Coming.” This music was recorded in June 2007, giving us the necessary fifty minutes of music for the projected album. I spent the next six months meticulously working through the music in production and post-production stages: I promise you this album has far and away the best production values of any Hermetic Science album. In December 2007, when I was finally satisfied that all production work was truly done, I reached agreement with Bernard Gueffier of Musea Records for the album's release on the Musea label under the title These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins . The album represents the first Hermetic Science studio release since En Route in November 2001.

Some of you may recognize the title as the (almost) final line of T. S. Eliot's epic poem The Waste Land . Eliot intended the line to convey both a sense of fragmentation and loss, and the sense that a new whole could be built from the fragments. For me, the making of the entire album represented a psychological journey; this was a far more personal album for me than any of the three previous H.S. albums, and I believe the title captures some sense of my own personal experience across the nearly two years it took to complete this album. In early 2008, surrealist artist Paul Whitehead, best known for his album covers for early Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator, contributed a magnificent album cover (see the “Music” page) that I think beautifully captures both the music's solar/lunar dichotomies and its theme of forging a new whole through uniting the fragments of the past.

Musea released the album on June 9, 2008 . We have updated our “Orders” page to link directly to Musea's order page; for our American customers, we have linked to Amazon.com's order page. The CD will soon be available through Kinesis at a lower price than Amazon.com; check http://www.kinesiscd.com / for details. Both the entire album and all of its individual tracks are available for download through Mindawn digital music distributors: see the “Mp3s” page. As we are under contract with Musea, we cannot sell you the album directly, as we have been able to do with our previous releases.

The making of a Hermetic Science album is always an intense experience, but I think it is fair to say that the making of this one was easily as difficult as the first three put together. Given this circumstance, I take some pride in the fact that this is the first time that a single lineup stayed together long enough to complete an entire album—to put it another way, this is the first Hermetic Science album recorded entirely by one lineup. Alas, the lineup did not long survive the completion of the recording process, and I regret to say that Angelique Curry is no longer a member of Hermetic Science. I know that Jason joins me in thanking her for her contributions to this album, and wishing her the best in her future endeavors.

We have recently added a good deal of new content. We posted a transcription of the interview I did with André Steijns last June (2007) for his web site/radio show Paperlate on the “Interviews” page; this interview focuses especially on my most recent book, Endless Enigma . We've added a substantial new review of Crash Course: A Hermetic Science Primer that appeared on the Proggnosis web site on our “Reviews” page. We have created a new page for These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins , accessible from the “Music” page, that includes Mp3 excerpts from all seven of the album's tracks. We have revised the band biography (see the “Biography” page) to reflect the full story of the newest album's creation, and have added three new pictures to the “Gallery” section. Finally, as stated above, on our “CD Orders” page we have linked with Musea, Amazon.com, and Kinesis so that you can order our new album directly from them, and on our “Mp3s” page we have linked directly with Mindawn for those who would prefer to download tracks (or the entire album) in Mp3 format. We hope you'll enjoy the additions.

I have two important announcements concerning my activities as an author. As I announced in the last News Flash , I contributed a chapter called “Theodor Adorno, Pink Floyd, and the Psychedelics of Alienation” to Open Court 's Pink Floyd and Philosophy: Careful with that Axiom, Eugene . The book was published last November, and on the whole I think it's pretty solid; of course, like all books that collect a series of articles it's a bit of a mixed bag. I believe my contribution represents one of the best, and most important, short monographs I have ever done, and an important contribution to Pink Floyd scholarship.

Then, of course, there is my 867 magnum opus, Endless Enigma: A Musical Biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer , published by Open Court in July 2006. Back in early 2006, I told the person who was Open Court 's head publicist at that time that I would be ashamed if the book sold less than 2,000 copies in its first two years of availability. Needless to say, from time to time I checked the book's availability on online venues such as amazon.com, etc. I was shocked to see that in January 2008, it had suddenly became impossible to order a new copy of the book on amazon.com, and used copies were suddenly selling for $70 or $80. I was appalled to learn, on further inquiry, that Open Court had only published 1500 copies of the book, and that as of January 2008 it had sold out its first print run; it certainly would have sold out a print run of 2000 copies by July 2008, its two year anniversary. Fortunately, after nearly six months out of print, the book has come back into print in late June 2008, and new copies are once again available at a reasonable price through amazon.com, Borders, and other major distributors.

The Hermetic Science MySpace page continues to grow. Remember, it contains several Mp3s of entire tracks, which this site does not. If you would like to visit the page and/or add us as a friend, please click here ( http://www.myspace.com/hermeticscience ).

 

Best,

Ed Macan