"The machine remembers all, but forgets humanity."

(Aria, August 2025)

P a r t   1 :   M   i s   f o r   t h e   m y r i a d   r e a s o n s   w h y   t h i s   p r o j e c t   t o o k   s o   l o n g . . .

Four and a half years all told. It began with a message from Dimitris Tsironis, aka Olympus Cosmos, the man behind Melophobia and the Default Standard Records label in Greece. It was a very welcome invitation, the Bullet had only been going around 16 months at that point, our home nation was still in Covid lockdown, schools closed et al, so it certainly put a smile on our faces when we needed it most. In spite of Sam still running her business full time and myself home tutoring the then 7 year old Twizz, we were still finding time for some recording projects, though the World Tour was on hold for now. A week before the message arrived, we'd recorded a 35 minute piece (the length was so it would qualify as an 'album' for the purposes of Elling Lien's RPM Challenge), called R.F.A. (short for 'really fucking annoying', which it was, being composed of discordantly juxtaposed sine waves, like those ones they used to play at TV closing down time, the ones that would get inside your head and force you to turn the set off) and we had no idea what we were going to do with it, so the invite came at a very opportune moment. However, Dimitris decided he didn't want to inflict tinnitus on his supporters and opted to hold on for something "less difficult" and "more interesting". The best laid men of mice and plans, as they say. Did he make the right choice? We still love it, but hey, you be the judge...

   R.F.A. (Humane Edit) (6:59)

What with one thing and another, 2021 turned out to be a very busy year for us, produced over 50 tracks for 24 compilations, a single and 6 albums. We had also been clumsily coping with the world re-opening and life gradually and grudgingly getting back to some semblance of normality, as had much of the population. Thus it ended up being the beginning of 2022 before I sent a rather apologetic message to reconnect. Luckily, he was very understanding and we soon settled on the idea of doing a split with his Melophobia project, but I still found myself warning it could be a few months before we had anything to send him as we yet had the "final assembly to do on a 7 hour mega-album for The Church Of Noisy Goat, plus putting together a sampler album for Hamfuggi, and a hard copy special edition of Communitas, and a piece to finish for OTCRAH's Valentine comp. Looking forward to working with you!" Purely as a point of interest, the 7 hour mega-album is where R.F.A. ended up, and the hard copy special edition of Communitas never happened. Such is life. A couple more months went by as all of that (well, most of it) was taken care of, then we finally got to the 'ideas stage'; we put forward two concepts to start with, one based on works inspired by favourite bands (we were gonna do Faust), the other was 'Project M', as in M is for Magic Bullet, M is for Melophobia, track titles can begin with M, and M is for the macrocosm of possibilities that creates. 4th April 2022: Dimitris says okay to 'Project M'. It begins, and it had only taken fourteen months...

TO BE CONTINUED...

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