Writing

The White Swan [Edition 0]

Cover — peacock-feather mandala in iridescent blue and gold, title in Isenheim caps, ‘Notes from an Unfinished Novel, Part 1a: Sound’
Colophon — Studio 417K imprint, copyright, publication details, ‘Set mainly in Bembo, with some hints of Utopia’
Epigraph — Studio 417K header, ‘Iridescent Asymptote’, poem in coloured Isenheim lettering: ‘Once upon a time, I saw a hue of blue, so transcendentally beautiful and bright’, OC monogram
Selected Reviews of Current/Past Words — reader testimonials in bordered cards, from a Sterling Professor at Yale to a former coworker at Duke
Introduction — opening essay, ‘a multimodal fugue in thirteen movements’, justified ETbb body text with line numbers and coloured navigation dots
Template page — Transcendence as format explainer, QR code, moon photograph, waveform visualisation, radar chart, song box metadata, essay in ETbb describing the anatomy of each track page
Track I: Subzero — Ben Klock, Before One EP, dark forest corridor cover art, kanji 鼠, essay on minimal techno and the Berghain sound
Track II: Black Russian — DVS1, Klockworks 13 vinyl sleeve, kanji 牛, essay on the bass as membrane, time dilation, and the Klockworks label
Track III: Aurora Centralis — 747, alien-sculptural silver cover art, kanji 虎, essay on acid techno, the aurora, the last wolf on Earth, and White Fang
Track IV: Solah — Amotik, Amotik 005 white-label vinyl, kanji 兔, essay on ethereal synthetic sadness and the Berliner Dom at sunset
Track V: Steep — Holden Federico, Dust EP on SK_eleven, circular vinyl photograph, kanji 龍, essay on Sisyphus, grandeur, and the Olympian ascent of sound
Track VI: I (One) — Aoud, Se Mkii on Persephonic Sirens, cumulus cloud photograph, kanji 蛇, essay on thundering cloud, crashing tsunami, and desert dunes
Track VII: Nyctophilia — Dorian Gray, Edit Select remix, orange marble vinyl on Android Muziq, kanji 馬, essay on night, Oscar Wilde, and chaotic aesthetic hedonism in Berlin
Track VIII: Marionette — Mathew Jonson, Gothic ink-sketch cover art of wide-eyed faces on Freedom Engine, kanji 羊, essay on Lovecraftian sound, Dresden, and Caspar David Friedrich
Track IX: Phantom Studies — Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock, cover of silhouetted hands over a figure on Ostgut Ton, kanji 猴, essay on the label’s 100th release, Sense8, and the Wachowskis
Track X: Nostalgia — Introversion on ARTS, orange coral and lichen texture cover, kanji 雞, essay on acid techno’s primal divine and the memory of emotion
Track XI: Target Line — Rødhåd & Vril, dark forest photograph on WSNWG, kanji 狗, essay on machine music, the autobahn, and the unmistakable call of Valhalla
Track XII: Night Terrors — Ø [Phase], Modwerks holographic moiré logo, kanji 豬, essay on intensity fluctuations, House of Leaves, and the doors of perception
Track XIII: Paradise Engineering — Barker, Memento Mori skull painting on Ostgut Ton Utility, kanji 貓, finale essay on trance and the outer limits of dance music
Back cover — pure black with ‘Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear’ in faint script at the bottom

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