78 Minutes: The Complete Arc

78 Minutes: The Complete Arc

Present Day, May 2026The album is 78 minutes. Twelve tracks. I want to describe the arc briefly, because I think the arc is the point and the individual tracks only fully make sense within the arc.The album begins with the dream and ends with the children. The...
The Orchard Sleeps

The Orchard Sleeps

Present Day, May 2026The Orchard Sleeps is the hardest song I have written in a very long time. Harder than Black Sun Rising, which required precision and restraint but not grief. Harder than Children of the Ember, which required finding the genuine warmth underneath...
The Architect’s Dream: Why the Perfect System Breaks

The Architect’s Dream: Why the Perfect System Breaks

Various, consolidatedThe Architect’s Dream opens the album because it is where the geometry always begins: in the conviction that this time, with sufficient intelligence and sufficient resources and sufficient will, it will be possible to build something...
Banks, Not Armies

Banks, Not Armies

Florence, 1490sThe thing about the Medici that is most relevant to the present moment is not the art patronage, which is what they are remembered for, but the banking. Lorenzo understood something that most political leaders of his era did not fully grasp: that...
The Feast of Ghosts: Present Tense

The Feast of Ghosts: Present Tense

Present Day, May 2026The Victorian comparison I keep returning to is this: the salons where the wealthy consumed the performance of contact with the dead while the living poor were consuming cholera in the streets below. The performance was elaborate and expensive and...