Eternal Returns Deluxe: A Retrospective Reflection
They say it takes ten years to write your first album, and ten weeks to write your second. Not untrue in my case — though the selected tracks comprising my first solo record were never really intended for public ears.
Long story short: I had a biblical moment where it became apparent that I could snuff it at any time (as we all can), so I thought, what the hell — I’ll just put out some material. Generator followed rather quickly thereafter, upon discovering just how nifty it is to write with keyboards and synthesizers for the first time whilst finding myself vivaciously immersed in early ‘70s German post-rock. Great combination indeed. But while I've loved electronic music for as long as I can remember, this more recent venture into such methods of musical composition (or just songwriting, as my Northern sensibilities would have it) was highly cerebral in its thematic conception. Perhaps a tad abrasively so.
Willfully and deliberately heady as it is, at its core Generator is nevertheless a closed concept album — written for and about its time (in part sardonically, often earnestly) — loosely speculating on a socio-metapolitical projection thereon. It’s essentially a thematically Carlylean music essay disguised as a Krautrock-infused sonic experiment and altogether shot through with a faint tinge of a schizoposting Landian retweet. Given all this uber-modern grandeur, however (and as is the case with most storytelling artists), it’s not without its life-personal, solitary reflections. There is indeed much of it. But I’ve never much liked discussing the private meanings of my music, and these notes aren’t about the second album. That’s for another campfire tale.
The first album, on the other hand, is quite a different beast: a far more emotive and decisively English collection of compositions, and not intended to be taken for its time nor for any perceivable parallels to contemporary para-existential conditions. It is, in fact, an audio-narrative statement of a sort of beyond-time, entirely devoid of political pontification and social commentary and instead presenting a well-nigh unavoidable display of one’s emotional interiority in the process - hence its peculiar and slightly malapropistic Nietzschean title. To convey a concise distinction: the first record is paint, the second is symbolism.
The current incarnation of Eternal Returns began as a private sonic-philosophical experiment in an attempt to induce and explore a steady Theta state conducive to casual relaxation, therefore aiding an engagement in perennialist ideas of introspection. The 20th century German psychologist Dr. Johannes Heinrich Schultz conceived of a similar process–a form of meditative self-hypnosis, as it were–which he named autogenic training (AT), so you can think of something along those lines should you find yourself utterly bewildered for reference at this point.
Over several years, this evolved into a lay study of consciousness itself, an effort to capture the unique sounds I was hearing while dreaming — both lucid and unconscious — through which I came to refer as “sonic dreamscaping”. Inevitably, the philosophical themes I’ve previously touched upon in my journalism for Public Pressure are partly a result of this work. I had initially wanted to call the project "Dreamcraft" as an artful tribute to the Old English, vaguely mythical conception of melody-making, but some black metal band already had it. The bastards. So, "Icelation Works" eventually had to do (because snow is pretty, and I wasn’t in a band at the time).
“The result is, at core, a forty-five-minute medley of simple guitar-based melodies and transgressive wall-of-sound textures…an attempt to make the guitar sound like anything but a guitar."
Every sound on the record originated from the electric guitar (made interesting courtesy of a somewhat modest array of effects pedals) and later expanded through layers of vocalised harmonies, with the latter intentionally mixed low for the purpose of sonic immersion. Thus, TER was never conceived as a conventional ‘60s-manifest-’90s “Britrock” record per se, but as a psychoactive (and admittedly highly brickwalled) sonic meditation achieved through layering & multitracking, the sampling of guitar and voice-led pitch shifting, and the (rather abundant) use of reverse reverb techniques. With regard to long-term influence here, every Scouser and (honest) Mancunian wielding a guitar will, at some point, confess an indebtment to the proto-psychedelic drones of John Lennon’s Rain and Tomorrow Never Knows. There’s something of that spirit in Eternal Returns; unapologetically presenting mind over matter, to let sound itself become a form of simple metaphysical reflection. Well, I suppose I'm saying I should have played on Revolver, ye know?
And while all this might sound self-indulgent on paper, the result is, at core, a forty-five-minute medley of simple guitar-based melodies and transgressive wall-of-sound textures. In other words, an attempt to make the guitar sound like anything but a guitar. Because I’m avant-garde like that.
The Deluxe Edition features newly remastered audio, isolated tracks, and previously unreleased demos and codas - some of which were recorded during old tape-looping sessions I produced back in the day (snapshot collage pictured above during my shoegaze-rigging era). Hours of distorted, reverb-drenched improvs and vibrato-fuelled warblings failed to make the grade even for this expansive twenty-track setlist, as I opted to restore only that which follows a strongly melodic structure and/or palatable droning. I'm of the persuasion that the older a recording, the more life it possesses and can potentially recreate. Plus, it's trendy for artists to disclose their behind-the-scenes archives these days, is it not?
It’s all very analogue-sounding, and I dare say I’ve grown quite fond of its lo-fi execution and audio-journal time-capsuling, if not for their occasional blurry-eyed optimism and popping, audible naïvetés of escapist wonderment. Needless to say, that all changed rather drastically with the 2024 follow-up, which we’ll get to later.
Wincing self-criticisms aside, I hope you enjoy listening to these just half as much as I enjoyed writing and performing them. Happy daydreaming, 'Campers.
The full set is available now here
Written by Jack Dolan, 25th October 2025