Christian Molenaar

Musaceae Equinox

Christian Molenaar

Musaceae Equinox began life as a series of improvisations on my neighbor's piano while I watched their cats. (Hi, Coopers!) Those piano improvisations started calling out for other instruments to join the mix and soon I thought I'd have a new collection of chamber pieces, until those chamber pieces started calling out for words and lyrics. After six months or so of work, I have a new album incorporating everything from orchestral synthprog and lo-fi trip-hop to progressive metal and cosmic Americana. This album covers a lot of ground and I'm deeply proud of the final product. I played every instrument on the album including the aforementioned piano, drums, strings, various guitars (acoustic, electric, lap steel) and more trombone than I've touched since my high school ska band days. The pieces are even more kaleidoscopic and ambitious in scope than those on Folies Meurtrières but also more cohesive and, dare I say, listenable. I was inspired by Mary Shelley's "modern Prometheus" to make this album a true process of transformation. Besides Frankenstein, the album features notably fewer literary references than most of my recent work, though of course they appear (it's me, after all): "The Devil in a Forest" takes its title from the eponymous Gene Wolfe novel, "Gigue Like This" borrows from Pound's Cantos and "Piccolo Paradiso" sets the Harold Norse poem of the same name. The cover is one of my bats' blood paintings, which for some reason or another tend to pop up adjacent to Shelley.