Penn: Insomnia

It was really only a matter of time before I came out with a work of psychogeography. I’m married to El Sandifer, and my favorite Alan Moore is Unearthing, for god’s sake. Insomnia is a spoken word essay about sleepless nights and childhood magic, haunted by the loss of Home and set to an ambient soundtrack. 

Rather amusingly, the frame story of the piece is entirely honest. I did, in fact, start working on the piece on a melancholy rainy night where I desperately could not sleep. The music is all my piano through various guitar pedals–mostly it’s lots of fancy reverb*

It’s here as a single file, but as this is information I would be interested in, here are the internal track names/approximate start times.

00:00 01 I Get Nostalgic; Insomnia, Part One
00:42 02 The Night is Quiet and My Mind is Loud
05:22 03 Dirty Knees and Technicalities
10:34 04 Lost
15:42 05 The Nominally Real World
19:20 06 Doors I Could Close
22:58 07 Lying Awake in My Bed; Insomnia, Part Two
24:22 08 A Prayer I Can Get Behind
27:44 09 It Seemed Like Magic to Me
30:44 10 Home; Insomnia Part Three
(Total 33:57)

*As this is also information I’d find interesting, here is what I used to make the music:

Piano: Casio CDP-S160 (I love this thing, but especially through my)
Keyboard Amp: Traynor Block10
Pedals: JHS, 3 Series Chorus (and notably vibrato)
Walrus Lore (reverse reverb, goes to space)
Walrus Slo (reverb, modulation, goes halfway to space)
Walrus Ages (overdrive, but mostly used as a clean boost)
CatalinBread Tremol8 (tremolo, modulation)
Gamma Narcissus (delay)
Software: Garage Band (which is where I did all my mixing, and EQ stuff)
Cherry Audio Galactic Reverb (reverb, modulation)
WA Production Outlaw (dynamic volume control)