Okay, it's been a while since I posted any music, so here's a big one to help make up for it. As has often happened I've ended up with most of an album's worth of material and then been stuck for that last track. There is an instrumental I was grooming for that position, but I got stuck and went back to a song from a few years ago, variously known as '256.cwp' or 'The Windows Song'.

Originally this was a gripe about Microsoft's monopoly, but fortunately the world has moved on from those days. Still, I liked the music so I decided to finish the song first and then worry about writing new lyrics for it afterwards. And that was a problem, until I hit on the idea of taking my side comic 'The Dark Angel' and wrote lyrics for a very abridged version of that story.

For those interested, the comic can be found here: http://projectfuturecomic.com/darkangel.php?strip=cover

Then work went crazy so it's not been easy to find time to finish it. There's still a couple of things which I should fix, the pipe organ is distorting and will need to be redone, the reverse piano could be a lot better and I need to clean up some of the stray sounds before or after the vocals.

The playout at the end with the spacey noises is something I did before on 'Demonhunter' but I decided it was time to try it again.

Equipment used:
Otari MX80 2" 24-track recorder
TASCAM TSR-8 1/2" 8-track recorder
Studer A807 1/4" stereo recorder
Allen and Heath GL2600 mixing desk
SM900 tape and American Standard razorblades

Hammond XM-1 organ module, Waldorf Streichfett string machine
Roland JV1010 with orchestral expansion card, Roland MVS-1 vintage synth module
Manikin Memotron, GEM RPx piano, Alesis DM10 drum machine
Moog Voyager, Waldorf Pulse
Hammond SK1, Raspberry Pi with Aeolus pipe organ synthesizer
Epiphone Thunderbird Gothic bass

Watkins copicat tape echo, Zoom RFX-2000 digital delay
Strymon Blue Sky reverb, Strymon Deco flanging pedal, EH4600 Small Clone chorus

"Oh no," said he, "you must love me
And obey me without a frown
Unless you do I shall execute you
For insulting the Kingdom's crown"

There was a king
He was a tyrant
He acted like an overlord
He used to have opponents but he put them all to the sword

A pair of men
Two swords for hire
Were blackmailed into robbing the king
Regain the stolen treasures he had taken under his wing

So this is the story of Ordros the King
A story of dragons and dreams
A story of hubris and righting of wrongs
Where nothing is quite how it seems

When they were caught
They struck a bargain
The princess had been stolen away
Unless they could return her they would lose their heads right away

There was a land
Owned by a dragon
The place the princess had been seen last
The headsman tagged along to make sure both men stuck to their task

So this is the story of Ordros the King
A story of dragons and dreams
A story of hubris and righting of wrongs
Where nothing is quite how it seems

Deep in the forest where none would hear
The headsman made his position clear
"I know you won't trust me
But I hate the king and he must be stopped!"

They knocked the door which was tall and stout
The dragon answered and threw them out
"We'll have to try trickery instead, then"

Once past the walls, they scoured the halls
For some hair or a scrap of dress
They found that day, to their dismay,
That the dragon was the princess

So she explained
Why she'd absconded
The queen had been beheaded for treason
The princess fled in case she faced the same end for the same reason

They had a coup
Led by the princess
The headsman did away with the king
It turned out he could shapeshift and so no-one noticed a thing

So this was the story of Ordros the King
A story of dragons and dreams
A story of treason and righting of wrongs
Where nothing is quite how it seems