Read Online Hallucinating by Stephen Palmer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Palmer
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crumpled. "Hey, that's, that's..."
"Save your head," Nulight says. "You'll need energy when you play. We gotta be perfect, man, just perfect."
Suddenly Zhaman is animated. "I'm totally in with you, but, listen up, the aliens won't just arrive when we gig. They'll have a plan. They'll be subtle."
"They've got high technology," Kappa remarks.
Nulight shakes his head. "We've gotta draw them down, we've gotta make them appear so nobody can deny they exist—even more than we did at Stonehenge. Then we've really blown their cover. Then they can't do what they wanna do. You hear about the Gesang Der Junglinge? That was us too. The aliens are protecting their own, that's why we couldn't complete the hit. That music is about to explode out of its basement, you get it? So we gotta force the alien hand."
Zhaman nods, seduced by Nulight's verbosity. Nulight, when he is on form, has the gift of the gab.
So the plan is put into action. Over the next few weeks Nulight calls in all his favours, contacts all his friends, all the organisers of free festivals, all those in co-operatives and musicians' matrices and free information nets, and after only a week has put together a tour of fifteen dates, from the first to the thirtieth of September. The band are to be called SemiAutonatic. It is a dreadful pun, but it says what is meant to be said. And it says, 'We are here again'.
All the band's keyboards are set to respond to the alien music scale. This is a difficult job and it costs Nulight dear. He is trying to forget that the Mystery Trend album that was meant to pay for all of Marcia E's creative accounting is now dead. He realises that they must record their early gigs and release a livemix album, since there is no time to sit down and record stuff. The publicity will need to be steaming, however, or else the sales won't cover the deficit.
But there is hope in that direction. Just before the first gig Kappa turns up a software defector from Ukraine, a tall, thin, pale dude called Grigory, who is cool enough to have heard of Hanging Gardens Of Fungus. Grigory claims he can design them a soft pack that will mutate their initial auton riffs and store them as multitracked AIFF's, so that with just the flick of a virtual mixer they can create a master file with all their live tracks done studio quality. In other words, live feel plus studio sound. This is most pleasing. Nulight feels he can go ahead with confidence.
Some of the final year students at the Avalon Faculty have been persuaded by Kappa to design viruses that will harmlessly but forcefully advertise the new album. One such lady, Vanquara de Musique Nouveau, a mixed up freak who only wears green, makes a Celtic pack that can infiltrate the British Underground via the net. It is a leap forward. Sales projections are eight thousand. With luck, enough revenue will be generated to keep Marcia happy while they find the rest of the cash.
But that is all breadhead stuff. Nulight has a thousand other things to attend to.
The gigs begin. The weather holds. Thousands of merry undergrounders come out and have a great time. Nulight gives away one-track mini-CDs as a taster of the album, which is to be called "Auton de Musique Nouveau" in honour of the virus lady.
The music papers have all picked up on the new development. They say SemiAutonatic's gigs are impure because it is well known that only computers can compose auton, but they applaud Nulight for his audacity, and as a result sales of other Voiceoftibet albums pick up. The news that Mystery Trend have been dropped is suppressed for a week, and then some hacker kid breaks the news over the net, an event that makes Nulight furious, despite that fact that he expected it.
Near the end of the month, with three gigs to go and still no aliens, they release the album. It charts indie at number twenty-one. This is fantastic. First week sales are somewhere between four and five thousand. If they can keep this up then the gamble will have
"Save your head," Nulight says. "You'll need energy when you play. We gotta be perfect, man, just perfect."
Suddenly Zhaman is animated. "I'm totally in with you, but, listen up, the aliens won't just arrive when we gig. They'll have a plan. They'll be subtle."
"They've got high technology," Kappa remarks.
Nulight shakes his head. "We've gotta draw them down, we've gotta make them appear so nobody can deny they exist—even more than we did at Stonehenge. Then we've really blown their cover. Then they can't do what they wanna do. You hear about the Gesang Der Junglinge? That was us too. The aliens are protecting their own, that's why we couldn't complete the hit. That music is about to explode out of its basement, you get it? So we gotta force the alien hand."
Zhaman nods, seduced by Nulight's verbosity. Nulight, when he is on form, has the gift of the gab.
So the plan is put into action. Over the next few weeks Nulight calls in all his favours, contacts all his friends, all the organisers of free festivals, all those in co-operatives and musicians' matrices and free information nets, and after only a week has put together a tour of fifteen dates, from the first to the thirtieth of September. The band are to be called SemiAutonatic. It is a dreadful pun, but it says what is meant to be said. And it says, 'We are here again'.
All the band's keyboards are set to respond to the alien music scale. This is a difficult job and it costs Nulight dear. He is trying to forget that the Mystery Trend album that was meant to pay for all of Marcia E's creative accounting is now dead. He realises that they must record their early gigs and release a livemix album, since there is no time to sit down and record stuff. The publicity will need to be steaming, however, or else the sales won't cover the deficit.
But there is hope in that direction. Just before the first gig Kappa turns up a software defector from Ukraine, a tall, thin, pale dude called Grigory, who is cool enough to have heard of Hanging Gardens Of Fungus. Grigory claims he can design them a soft pack that will mutate their initial auton riffs and store them as multitracked AIFF's, so that with just the flick of a virtual mixer they can create a master file with all their live tracks done studio quality. In other words, live feel plus studio sound. This is most pleasing. Nulight feels he can go ahead with confidence.
Some of the final year students at the Avalon Faculty have been persuaded by Kappa to design viruses that will harmlessly but forcefully advertise the new album. One such lady, Vanquara de Musique Nouveau, a mixed up freak who only wears green, makes a Celtic pack that can infiltrate the British Underground via the net. It is a leap forward. Sales projections are eight thousand. With luck, enough revenue will be generated to keep Marcia happy while they find the rest of the cash.
But that is all breadhead stuff. Nulight has a thousand other things to attend to.
The gigs begin. The weather holds. Thousands of merry undergrounders come out and have a great time. Nulight gives away one-track mini-CDs as a taster of the album, which is to be called "Auton de Musique Nouveau" in honour of the virus lady.
The music papers have all picked up on the new development. They say SemiAutonatic's gigs are impure because it is well known that only computers can compose auton, but they applaud Nulight for his audacity, and as a result sales of other Voiceoftibet albums pick up. The news that Mystery Trend have been dropped is suppressed for a week, and then some hacker kid breaks the news over the net, an event that makes Nulight furious, despite that fact that he expected it.
Near the end of the month, with three gigs to go and still no aliens, they release the album. It charts indie at number twenty-one. This is fantastic. First week sales are somewhere between four and five thousand. If they can keep this up then the gamble will have
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