During the peak of mp3.com's hotbed of bedroom producers (circa '00-'02), there's one particular musician that floored me like no other. Original Son of Man, an interesting sound artist hailing from Sweden who crafted dark, electronic, lo-fi dub heavily flavored with samples taken from various Third Reich recordings and/or other controversial origins. Everything that I used as shock value for the sake of thematic and musical juxtaposition, Original Son of Man implanted it directly into his brand of music to be dealt with at face value and somehow made it mesh comfortably. He created something that was the definition of raw and confrontational without relying on abusive noise as a foundation. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. And I don't believe I've come across anyone who's made anything remotely similar in sound or style to this day.
If memory serves, I was first introduced to Svante's (the man behind Original Son of Man) unique brand of aural experimentation through one of his aliases, The Funky Scotsman. (I still have one side of a cassette release from that short-lived project, and sadly, I have this fear that it may be the only surviving copy.) This would have been early to mid 2001 as I had already dropped LSFP's debut LP and believe I was already well under way with my second album when I began reaching out to other
mp3.com alums. After finding we had a mutual respect for each other's approach to experimental music, we began corresponding with regards to remixing each other's tracks. If memory serves, a lot of this blossomed out of respect for a Legend of Zelda remix each of us did around the same time. I still think his reinterpretation of the original LoZ theme is the absolute best VGM remix I've ever heard.
I believe the seeds were planted for a split - possibly a single, maybe an EP - around this time, but nothing ever materialized as correspondence was sparse. The internet was still fairly young and a lot of the conveniences of today's internet either didn't exist or were far too untrustworthy or unreliable. Sending tracks via post was the only viable solution for both of us; therefore, material was traded fairly infrequent. In 2004, as technology advanced tenfold, swapping music became easier and the idea of a split again emerged.
For my part, I had been struggling to create a followup to my last album at the time. Everything I created felt directionless or uninspired and I scrapped songs just as fast as I created them. I created a lot, and I mean a lot, of musical garbage between 2002 and 2004. Eventually, I gave up on the album and nearly gave up on LSFP altogether as I really had no idea where I wanted to take the project musically anymore. Enter Unsere Ehre Heißt Treue, a double album split. I decided to try a very different approach to putting this album together, not only from previous LSFP albums, but from anything I had done up until that point. I relied more on tracking and collage in which I attempted to create an album of incidentals as opposed to actual songs. I recorded hours upon hours of sound snippets with no real idea of how anything was going to be used down the road. However, there were a few songs from my previously discarded album that I thought were good songs and didn't want to see them end up in the rubbish bin for all eternity. And, just for the sake of head-scratching, I decided to add a couple covers that came completely out of left field. Eventually, enough material existed to try and create...something. With a handful of actual songs and a good heaping of orphaned sounds, I tried to craft a cohesive album where key tracks were tied together with mini motifs. This led to numerous demos - demos that changed practically by the day as I was never wholly satisfied with how everything blended. I found myself going to work every day with a totally different mix and layout of the album. Meanwhile, Svante kept sending material for his half. Neither of us really had a hard limit on how much material we wanted to include so it just kept growing over a period of three or four months, maybe more.
Eventually I had so much material between the two of us that I exceeded the limits governed by two CDs and I had to start scaling back the track listing. Come to think of it, I believe the initial concept was for the entire split to fit on one disc. That goes to show how much the project grew as time went on and neither of us really aiming towards some point of finality. Songs were cut from both sides, and I even began entertaining the idea of a truly mixed split whereas opposed to disc 1 equals artist X and disc 2 equals artist Y, instead you'd have a jumbled mess of LSFP and Original Son of Man material. What a stupid idea that was, as going back and listening to a couple demos from these attempts - no overall flow, jarring transitions, pure rubbish.
Between burning myself out on the album by over complicating everything, having to work on another album for another label that actually had a deadline attached to it, and a combination of real-life issues, both on my part and Svante's part that included less and less correspondence as an unfortunate side effect, Unsere Ehre Heißt Treue fell into limbo. As time went on, Svante and I lost touch - something I still regret to this day - and the split became forgotten. Years passed before I began archiving a lot of old files and I ran across a lot of the material again. Not everything was lost - elements appeared on LSFP's final album released in 2005 including Luar E Solidão in its entirety under the name The Gates of Poseidon.
Here it is fourteen years later, and finally the album is seeing the light of day. Whether or not the album is being released in its intended glory or not is a whole other story. It took a great deal of effort piecing this album back together. All my original files were fairly fragmented and/or lacking detail regarding what's what. Most of what's here is accurate as per memory though some songs I think were meant to be cut from the final version. If anything, I'm confident at least everything that surfaced on the major iterations of the album back in the day is present with one exception. There is one Original Son of Man track that I have been unable to recover. There are a few backups in my possession that have become corrupted, but it's highly doubtful that it exists in one of those. I have a feeling that, much like any .txt files, emails, or any of the various imaging files that would have existed at the time in regard to this project, it's simply lost with time or, at worst, was straight up deleted before a backup was ever made.
I know there was a good deal of artwork that originally accompanied this album - I believe both from myself and Svante. Unfortunately, other than a couple half-finished templates, that's all forever lost. Same with liner notes and anything else that may have accompanied the album. But after fourteen years, what do you expect? I should be lucky I have all the music bar one song.
I have done little in the way of editing as I wanted to release this pretty much as I would have released this back in the day. I did however do a lot of cleanup work and fixed a number of issues that were a result of bad recording techniques. Unfortunately, due to the way parts of the album were recorded, I can only do so much without introducing unwanted side effects. As a bonus, I have included two extra tracks by each artist. The two bonus LSFP tracks were songs that were recorded for the split, but I know with certainty were meant to be cut from the final album. I made a couple minor edits within the LSFP side of the album to accommodate these tracks - namely removing particular samples which in my opinion did not benefit the original tracks at all - to alleviate unwanted repetition. The two bonus Original Son of Man tracks are personal favorites that were recorded in 2001/2002 respectively (I want to say) that I'm 99.9% certain were never officially released in any capacity. Unfortunately, Original Son of Man's original discography is not exactly easy to nail down in itself. I have most of what he released pre-2004/2005 in my possession, but I want to say there were some extremely limited cassette releases that likely never made it outside his home province in Sweden, so....
I could delve so much further into the history and detail of this album, but I feel I've written far more than necessary. For those who enjoy Original Son of Man's contributions to this split, my wish is to one day re-release some of his back catalog so everyone can enjoy the beauty of his work. If not, at least this album is now out there, and if anything, I feel I owe him that.
Hope you all enjoy and thank you all for your continued support.
St-Michel
2018
