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Makeshift Hyperdrive

by Neil Quillen

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1.
Liftoff 04:00
2.
Adrift 05:00
3.
4.
3241 03:39

about

Makeshift Hyperdrive is an album about moving forward despite uncertainty.

I wrote this music in the fall and winter of 2016 and just into January, 2017. I wrote the track “Makeshift Hyperdrive” just after moving to Los Angeles that January, when courageous and terrifying leaps forward were very much on my mind.

It’s painfully ironic to me that I would become stuck in a mire of uncertainty and neglect publishing this for 2 years.

I have close to a dozen Cubase files named something along the lines of “album sketch,” all intended to be more tracks for this album. I couldn’t manage to get any of them to feel right with the four tracks I had. But my little 4-track EP felt like it was too small to release as is.

So the project was pushed aside by other projects with clear deadlines and teams depending on my contribution, and Makeshift Hyperdrive became idea debt.

Idea debt is what happens when a creative individual has a project they’ve started but aren’t prepared to finish, and refuse to let go of. It’s a dull pain in the back of our minds, essentially guilt. And it can be horribly crippling if one allows it to stack up.

I’m releasing Makeshift Hyperdrive to celebrate two years of living in Los Angeles, to share music from a very meaningful time in my life, and to allow myself to move on - to move forward despite uncertainty.

P.S. The original idea for Makeshift Hyperdrive was to be this far out sci-fi concept album. Luckily I had the sense to realize that this was way out of any reasonable scope for the project as the impetus was simply to explore a new genre, but I wrote a little prologue chapter of the story in 2016 following my initial burst of inspiration:

A tremor shook the break room. A potted plant fell from a shelf, landing on its side and flinging dirt across the pristine tile floor. Johva could see the crumbs of dirt tremble as another tremor rolled across the floor. Fearful, she abandoned the various parts of her disassembled S-tablet to investigate, but not before noting the strangeness of seeing a mess in her mother’s authoritarianly sterilized laboratory.

Johva opened the door methodically, pushing on it ever so slightly and peering through the crack before opening it the rest of the way. The lights in the hallway were flickering erratically.

She hurried down the hall and took a left, making for the exit. There were few windows in the complex, and none near the exit. She assumed the exit would be the place to be anyways, if her mother’s mystery project had gone awry.

Johva had pried her mother for details on her project to the full extent of her powers as a 12-year old. Capitalizing on her innocuous nature, she learned that her mother was working for G.O.V. and that the project required the best minds in artificial intelligence. When she continued her questioning, her mother gave Johva one of her famous “I know you know not to do that” looks.

Johva was halfway to the exit now. She was temporarily halted as another tremor wracked the building. She imagined a giant robot destroying the facility from the inside out. What else would G.O.V. want with her mother’s A.I. team? An alternative hypothesis arose in her mind, but Johva quickly banished it to her subconscious.

A door opened back in the break room hallway. She heard stern, but hurried footsteps. She decided that who or whatever was heading her way, she’d like to meet it outdoors, where she could run if she had to.

Her heartbeat vastly outpaced her steps. She broke into a nervous half-run, not daring to look back at whatever would surely be turning the corner at any moment. It clearly wasn’t a giant robot, but it moved with resolute purpose, seemingly untroubled by the tremors.

Johva ran the last 10 or so steps to the security gate by the exit, flinging the loose door aside. Her breathing was short and panicked as she reached for the exit.

Many things happened in the moment she opened the door. The door slammed close with enough force to push her off balance. The glass windows above and below the handle shattered, launching shards of glass above her head and around her knees. She heard her mother scream for the first time in her life before her head hit the floor.

“Johva!”

As she regained consciousness, her mother’s face came into focus. Dr. Arleana Ramoor had a harsh but beautiful face, forever furrowed in a calculating grimace. Her pale blue eyes were sapphire beacons perched atop a short, dark coffee nose. Large, clunky, blue-rimmed glasses obfuscated their radiance.

She tended to Johva’s legs, which, as Johva regained awareness, stung immensely.

“Can you sit up, Johva?”

She slowly sat up with her mother’s help, grating against the pain in her legs. Arleana could tell how much it hurt.

“This won’t work.”

Dr. Ramoor was tall and muscular. She lifted Johva up deftly, and began carrying her back into the complex.

“Mom,” Johva said somewhat deliriously, “we can’t go back in, what about the robot? Aren’t we running from the robot?”

The look she received told Johva everything. There was no robot. The tremors were bombs.

Periodic riots had been planet-wide for weeks. After breaking the child-safe blocks on her S-tablet, Johva learned that people were protesting “widespread corporate monopolies” and the “exploitation of the working class.” They wanted the “puppet” government to step down and to establish a new government to protect the lower classes.

The Nobles had been oddly silent about the protests. Usually they’d send their Knights to scare the protesters off, arrest a few, shoot a few, to remind them who had the muscle. But last month at the “End G.O.V” rally, there was no sign of the Knights. Most hailed it as a triumph, thinking that the Nobles were losing their nerve. A few were worried, or as least skeptical of the silence. Johva’s mother was one of those few. And she had been right.

Another tremor shook the facility.

credits

released January 1, 2019

Album art is of the Bubble Nebula, taken from the Hubble Space telescope, which has been released into the public domain by NASA.

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all rights reserved

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about

Neil Quillen Chicago, Illinois

Welcome to my musical bazaar! I’ve gone on many adventures only to bring you the finest of musical experiences.

All of this music has a special place in my heart, and I hope there’s something you find here that brings you joy. Thank you so much for visiting my page and supporting my music.
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