Mark Anthony K of Projekt Gemineye discusses What Lies Beyond (2023)
PF: What Lies Beyond will also come out on CD download and vinyl around April 21st. Is that right?
MAK: Yeah. What the digital will come out on the 21st, and the CD will be shortly after that, but for the vinyl, I'm going to start the pre-order as soon as possible, and then hopefully, it won't take long
PF: Your CDs have a lot of great artwork.
MAK: I appreciate it when somebody buys my albums, and I'd want them to feel like they've spent it wisely.
PF: The difference between this and your prior release in the year 3073, book III, is that this isn't a continuation of that storyline. When did you start conceiving of What Lies Beyond?
MAK: it's funny because we just mentioned the vinyl taking forever for Book III to get done. That was the catalyst for making this because while I was waiting for this to come out, I was making videos every once in a while to say, please be patient, it's coming, it's coming to all my supporters. Rather than waste my time stressing about things like this, I'm just going to go and start writing some music. It's always been the thing that kept me levelheaded and grounded. So I just started working on music without considering it a record.
But once I started listening back to some of my ideas, I was like really pleased with some of them. And I decided to continue working on these songs, kind of behind the scenes.
PF: It sounds like you have changed your approach to vocals on this album.
MAK: I’m a lot more confident in general in my singing. Working in the Dark Monarchy with Joe Bailey, a great singer who's always been very encouraging, has helped.
PF: You handle all the instrumentation. Now you've done most instrumentation and all the Projekt Gemineye albums. I know you've had a few famous bass players step in. I know Joe has helped out, but here it's all you in terms of all the instrumentation; the drumming on your albums has always been very aggressive. I think it's even more so this this album.
MAK: Yeah. I enjoyed doing the drums. I think I wanted to be a drummer in my younger days. The drumming, for me, is very much based on the guitar playing itself.
If the guitar riff is very upfront and very punchy, then I think the drums need to complement it. And I tried to do that as well with the softer passages, not to make it so, you know, bombastic and overtake the acoustic guitar when acoustic guitars and it comes up; it needs to be front and center more than the drumming should be.
PF: Tell me about the development of “Cyber Wonderland.”
MAK: “Cyber Wonderland was written about halfway through the album's writing sessions. When it was done, I knew it would be the first song I would release and make it the first song because I thought it was catchy. It wasn't too long. Surprisingly, a five-minute piece is sort of short for me! I was happy that I was able to do that and make myself satisfied with that because the little voice in
The late Chris Squire very much inspired the bass guitar. I love Yes music, as you know.
I have an Ibanez as SD 400 SR 400 bass guitar. It's active, it has a little EQ for a . And I have a punchy bass sound.
As for the lyrical meaning of the song, it’s inspired by a National Geographic article I had read about; I don't know, a year or two ago, talking about cyber technology and its effect on humanity.
There was an interesting little quote in that a professor said that once medical technology fails us, we will depend on computer technology. We are saying that you must be very careful with how dependent we are as a society on computer technology and how addicting it can become.
PF: The next song is “Angels Scream.” It’s well crafted. 14-minute track. I think it's the longest track on the album. I hear a great chorus of guitars and really apocalyptic lyrics.
MAK: Yes., Musically, it came to me first. It was the very first song that I wrote. Ironically enough, I never would've thought that I would've wrote a 14 minute song first thing out of the gate. But, it just came. I didn't fight it.
I was really happy with the, the clean sound. Again, another blending trick that I did, I recorded acoustic guitar, and then I got Fender Stratocaster recorded a very clean guitar acoustic and, electric guitar, and blended those two tones together to get that sound at the beginning of the song.
Lyrically is the part where I think it's a bit special to me because the song is inspired by the invasion of Ukraine. When that first happened, I was sitting at home and my mother was here. And my mom, the look on her face when it first happened, I only seen that face look on her face once before when she was very shocked over something. And I asked her, her what was going on in her head, and she said that she felt almost like a sense of deJa’Vu because she lived through the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
My father and her were there when it happened. Wow. And they, and they left one suitcase in hand and got out of there. They had a pretty, you know, normal life at that point.
They had a home and they had farmland and all kinds of stuff that they had a comfortable living, and they had to leave everything behind and get out there because of the invasion.
I really wanted to use some of her firsthand storytelling into the lyrics of it.
PF: Side two starts with “Seed and Soil”
MAK: “Seed and Soil” was another one of these songs that was written near the end of my writing cycle. The song with that bass and drum sequence . I asked Joe Bailey to get involved in the orchestration on this album. His input and his contribution in that end was very significant because that orchestration that appears on “The Angel Scream “and in this song, and even the last song, I think really helped give it a bit of more grandiose tone.
The section he put at the very beginning was so great. I can't even imagine starting the song with just the drums and bass with that orchestrated at the beginning, it really added some real mysticism to the whole musical part.
The lyrical end of this touches on broken promises made by politicians
Here in Ontario around green lands and the forestry and all that stuff, that they wouldn't touch it. They wouldn't come down and cut parts of the forest down preservation. There is
And issue where there are so many immigrants coming in now and we need housing for them but we also want to preserve land.
The opening line., “I live here 30 years past from father to son” , that's a direct passage talking about passing land from generation to generation and how this new policy may disrupt that.
What's more important housing or food?
I played my Strats for leads and most of my rhythm guitars were Les Paul.
PF: So the last non bonus song is “I'm Free”, which is over 11 minutes.
MAK: “I'm Free” was another song that was inspired by the Covid situation . And the main message I was trying to put across in there is that I find that sometimes as a people we don't see each other's opinions and respect them enough.
I wrote it with that whole opening line as a dialog between the two views around Covid .
PF: Great. Such a powerful song. Great guitars. I love the feel of the song , especially the acoustic guitar intro.
The vinyl copy of the album has a bonus track, “Brutal World”.
MAK: “Brutal World” was another song that I wrote about halfway the writing process for the album. Normally I record everything, mix everything, master it, and I go and sit there and say, ‘okay, what am I going to put on the record now?’
I always want to release a, a vinyl version. And as you know, the limitation with vinyl is you need to do about 20 to 21 minutes side
I had to go through and pick out songs that would complement that side.
When I completed “Brutal World”, I really liked that song. And I did try initially to try to find a way to put it in, but it just wouldn't fit .
I was determined that I wanted people to hear this song so I put it on the CD as a bonus track
but with the vinyl, there will be an extra CD that not only has Brutal World, but three other additional songs as well.
PF: Let’s discuss the artwork
MAK: The album cover on this is once again done by James McCarty, who has done all my album covers.
PF: He’s your Roger Dean!
MAK: Yes, My Roger Dean. The back cover designs that he makes are great. Once again, there will be a poster as well for this.
PF: Where is the album for sale?
MAK: It’s available through the website for Projekt Gemineye as well as Bandcamp.
https://projektgemineye.bandcamp.com/album/what-lies-beyond