P a r t   4 :   M   i s   f o r   M o t h e r ,   M o u r n i n g   &   M e l a n c h o l i a . . .

My mother had only been a part of my life for 15 years, but it hit me like a sledgehammer. Whatever the circumstances, the woman whose womb I had originated in had gone, my 15 years with her was up. Coincidentally, she was only 15 years old when she gave birth to me, and this was England in 1958, so she was given zero choice as to what was to happen next. She didn't even get to see me, just a glimpse of a heel she told me, I was taken from her virtually straight after birth for an adoption pre-arranged by her mother; with the instruction to my new parents that I never be told, and to her own family that this never be spoken of again. And in her mother's lifetime, it wasn't. But when the law of the land changed to allow birth mothers the right to search for children they'd given up for adoption, she spent two years trying to trace me, finally succeeding just after my 50th birthday. That was the rather life changing day I went from being an only child to one of five overnight. It's hard to over emphasize the emotional impact of that, so perhaps if I just say BANG! You'll get the idea, I'm sure. I'd always been kind of 'disconnected' before that, she had been my tether to a world I'd never previously felt I belonged in.

"All hail to The Second World, I'm a stranger here..."

(Demonic Attack, 1996)

We'd been celebrating one hundred Magic Bullet releases as recently as June 1st with 'Centurion', but I can't say I felt much like promoting it at that moment, and the only new track that would appear in the six months that followed her death was specifically inspired by it,  'Requiem Maternus', in collaboration with Argentinean electro-experimentalist El Zombie Espacial, originally released on the ninth volume of {AN} Eel's 'Two Halves' compilation series in the July, then later on 'Kollaboratis', a collection of Magic Bullet collaborations put out by, maybe ironically, Default Standard Records...

   Requiem Maternus (7:23)

That was built on the back of some quality stems from El Z, what followed could only be described as a creative drought, that and an almost complete lack of will to do anything about it. My A.S.D. condition has a habit of swinging me back and forth between driven and apathetic at the best of times, but this spell was pretty much all the latter. It wasn't a period entirely without effort though, just one without any really tangible results. In the August, I'd starting working on something with a didgeridoo. On the front page of the 'Centurion' edition of The Magic Net at the beginning of June, we'd announced a change of plan for Project M; the Mars thing just hadn't been coming together in the way we'd envisioned (annoyingly), so the idea had come about to do a sequel to  the 'Man + Machine' album we'd done with Mean Flow. The didgeridoo thing was intended as a backing track for something to represent early humans, though as it turned out, it would sit there for two years under the non-working title of Didgeridon't, before finally forming the foundation of 'Original Man (Vox Humana)'.

From the October 2023 (Magic Bullet's 4th birthday) edition of The Magic Net;

"As for Project M for Default Standard, I am saying nothing. It's like a damned jinx every time I open my mouth about it, so not a word. Suffice it to say next time you hear about it, it'll be because whatever it has evolved into will be finished."

However, that creative paralysis wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. To be honest, I damned near threw in the towel. Then, with almost perfect timing, an e-mail arrived on October 5th from my old friend Don Campau inviting me to do a monthly radioshow for KOWS in California. It wasn't the first time he'd asked, but on the previous occasion, time would simply not have permitted, so I had regretfully had to turn it down. This time, however, it came as a saving grace. If not for the fact it gave me something to focus on and a regular deadline to do it by, I really do think that would been it, finito. As it turned out, it also provided an alternative platform for the Mission To Mars idea to play out on. We managed a festive track for Default Standard's 'White Noise Christmas III' in the December, but could only hope 2024 would be better. It wasn't...

Me and my birth mother, Sally Chennelle,

 the day we first met, 10th August 2008

The infamous Didgeridon't Session...

Don (right) pays us a visit - October 1991
L-R: Sam, Pete Program, Lulu and meself

ON TO PART V