Time Triptych

Running Time: 5:40

Released On: "This Time Next Year" - Various Artists (22 tracks)

Label: Charlie Dog Records

Release Date: 1st January 2021

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

Our first release of 2021 and it turns out it was recorded in 2019! Such is the nature of time, past and present merge into one to journey endlessly into the future. Quite prolific for a Wednesday afternoon, innit? I think it's the coffee. The brief from {AN} Eel was plain and straightforward on this one;

T H E   P H O T O G R A P H S

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Past; Always simple to find pictures of yourself from the past and present! So why am I looking for a cupboard to hide in? Yeah, vintage school photo, excruciatingly embarassing, I think circa 1965-66, so I'd have been 7 or 8, and Sam would have been... well... not born for a few more years yet! As a kid, I used to go to Grove School in Frimley, which was still there and thriving last time we were allowed to visit Surrey and the south east in the summer of 2019.

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Future; But where do you get a picture of yourself in the future? Easy! From the Flashbax Omicron 13 event that marked the CD release of Creavolution Reborn on TMR Records in September 2018.  The Doc and Mick Tron popped forward a decade in the Escortron to visit me on my 70th birthday in 2028. How's that for a stroke of luck?

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LINK: Flashbax Omicron 13

http://www.mickmagic.net/2018%20MMR%20Zone%2049.htm

"As we all know," he began, "2020 has been an unusual year. Let's pause as one does at the end of this year and reflect on both where we've been and where we're going in the future. It seems to me amazing, but I think that the simple idea of envisioning a future is at the moment something of a radical act. So reach into that, and bring forth what you will of this theme."
Skit and I look at eachother and nodded knowingly. We'd already done "2020 Vision" as a reflection on the year that was, but pulling past and future into the equation, that could be interesting. We bounced several ideas around throughout the consumption of a coffee and a packet of bourbon creams (*other biscuits are available, yeah, right), but nothing quite stuck.

"Scream Free Triptych!" Shouts Skit.

"What the fuck?" Responded I. Not because I was shocked at the suggestion, rather because he was right next to me when he shouted and I nearly fell off my chair.

"How do you see past, present and future here?" He asked.
"Same-o same-o." I shrugged, "Past, present, future; all much the same, lessons unlearnt. By the time Covid-19 is just something we look nervously back over our shoulders at, we will find ourselves with a unique opportunity to re-imagine the world. With most of the planet's nations skimming the edges of post-pandemic bankruptcy, they will arrive at a key moment in which they could change the global economic system for something better, something more pragmatic and robust, something less self-serving to the wealthy and powerful, something that would better recognise the importance of the low paid essential workforce we have all come to rely on these difficult months. But it's an opportunity I don't think we will take, there will be too many who are not willing to surrender their vested interests for the good of the many. Oxfam will continue pointing out that the richest 26 people on the planet have as much of its wealth as the poorest 3,900,000,000. And the most powerful governments of the world will continue putting their fingers in their ears and going la la la."

"Right," Skit nodded, "but you had me at same-o same-o."

His point was immediately obvious to me. Well, to be honest, it's almost like we know what eachother is thinking at times. The track was a leftover from the Digitalis sessions, one that just didn't seem to fit in with the main body of work, but it was almost perfect for this in every way. A genuine aural triptych, each of the three sections (past, present and future) equally bleak and devoid of hope, nothing much ever changes. A little remixing and editing, re-branding as "Time Triptych", et voila!

MORNING MIST