Hello, I’m Atlas Sinclair and this is Atlas Is Bored, the blog version of my YouTube channel about breaking through the suppression field of modern life by creating stuff. Today, we’re going to start making track 2 of my Half Life concept album by the concept band The Last Frequency. I absolutely love how track 1, The Overture, came out. It was a lot of fun to make and ended up being better than I hoped. It’s got me even more excited about this concept album project. Now it’s time for track 2, and it too is called Time
I wanted to create a song that would demonstrate Gordon essentially being programmed by the G-man to perform whatever it is the G-man is intending. He’s this mysterious character who exists in and out of time, has some power to manipulate time which is never really explained to us. Gordon is basically an agent, an asset, about to be released—part of some master plan he’s otherwise unaware of.
Gordon has been in stasis, he doesn’t know for how long, and it’s confusing. He’s going from nothingness into a mission, deployed to City 17.
Musically, this track is a bit of a departure from the majority of the album. It’s more techno trance electronica and spoken word, whereas the rest of the album is rock. No singing, just the G-man espousing his own brand of propaganda. Instructions for the mission.I wanted it to feel kind of roiling, boiling, coming into consciousness from a deep sleep.
I worked for a food processing plant once and I was on call all the time. It was miserable. I’d get calls about breakdowns at 2am in the morning. This would happen multiple times a week so I was getting very little sleep at the time. There was this feeling of being woken up from sleep, exhausted sleep because you keep getting woken up in the middle of the night, and the caller is describing the issue to you and you’re supposed to provide the solution.
Your brain is trying to wake up and process information at the same time. It’s disorienting and sometimes it just feels like you’re dreaming but awake. That’s the feeling I’m trying to get across with this track.
Atlas Sinclair 