These are notes I made to myself after listening to the song-excerpt we’re premiering in this article:

“I have never awakened in a house on fire. I imagine that would send me in a nanosecond from somnolence to a rocketing fight-or-flight level of adrenaline. I’ve never escaped a raging inferno and raced outside only to discover that everything around me is also in flames. But listening to this music, those are the experiences I imagine. In listening to it I also imagine the terrible feeling of loss that would come from the inferno-destruction of everything, every memento and memory, that I enshrine in the place where I live.”

Obviously, those are some intense emotional reactions — a commingling of exhilaration, fear, and despair. And those reactions were provoked by only a portion of the entire song, the roughly 8-minute excerpt from “Awake!“, that we’re now presenting. The full song is a daunting 21 minutes long, but I’m anxious to hear it and I think you be will too after you listen to what we’re streaming below. Continue reading »