Dunjun Hexplorer

Mourning: Theory and Practice

Tagged: Album |
Mourning: Theory and Practice front cover, featuring a color-negative, hyper-saturated space scene with a ringed planet which otherwise resembles earth

My first album, this was a creation of a very intense grief. A close friend of mine died, and in the hellscape of US healthcare’s failings, I was not able to process this with a mental health professional. Instead, I turned to my base desire to create, and my lifelong loves of music and technology.

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Track List:

  1. Daemonstuff Drawn (02:40)
  2. Your Duties to Perform (01:59)
  3. Something the Ghost Had Said (01:47)*
  4. Explore This Story Further (03:48)
  5. Otherwise Featureless (03:45)
  6. What’s Happening Outside (02:35)
  7. Impotent Desperation (01:02)*
  8. She Need Not Come Here (02:55)
  9. Go to Hell Forever (02:35)
  10. This Deadly Instrument (02:18)
  11. You Can Be the Judge (02:29)
  12. Not the Best Omen (01:46)
  13. Beauty, Talent, and Loyalty (02:49)
  14. Anything Out of the Ordinary (03:00)
  15. Nothing I Can Do (02:26)
  16. Similarly Negated (03:06)
  17. Remains to the Floor (03:00)
  18. Few Reports (03:40)
  19. How Much Further (01:08)*
  20. As Is Proper (02:46)

In my friend’s honor, the original theme and structure of this album are based on Warhammer 40k, specifically the Space Marine Legions, which is why there are 20 tracks. The track titles, as well, were drawn from my friend’s interests: tracks that represented Loyalist Legions in the lore of Warhammer were named for phrases randomly obtained from the Horus Heresy novel Vulkan Lives by Nick Kyme (a book I first discovered through this friend), and the Traitor Legions’ songs were named for phrases randomly obtained from the Piers Anthony novel On A Pale Horse (which was one of his favorites). (The two unknown Legions’ track titles were taken from Brothers of the Snake by Dan Abnett, a non-Horus Heresy Warhammer 40k novel.)

If all of this Warhammer nerd talk is nonsense to you, know no fear! The music itself has almost nothing to do with Warhammer, or anything really else. They’re explorations of electronica and music theory, almost entirely instrumental. (Three tracks - those with asterisks above - have limited, generated spoken vocals.) Quite a few of them have been described by listeners as reminiscent of dungeons in an RPG - which is quite on brand, I think.