Projekt Gemineye has moved on from the ‘In the Year 3073’ series with ‘What Lies Beyond,’ but Mark Anthony K tells Preston Frazier that the two projects are actually linked. He also discusses the inspiration for these new songs, how working with Joe Bailey has impacted his career and the artist who completes every album:
PRESTON FRAZIER: The difference between What Lies Beyond and your prior release, In the Year 3073: Book III, is that this isn’t a continuation of that storyline. When did you start conceiving the new album?
MARK ANTHONY K: The vinyl edition of Book III took forever to get done, and that was the catalyst for making this. While I was waiting for the vinyl to come out, I was making videos every once in a while to say, “Please be patient; it’s coming, it’s coming” to all my supporters. Rather than waste my time stressing about things like this, I thought: “I’m just going to go and start writing some music.” It’s always been the thing that kept me levelheaded and grounded. So I just started working on music without considering it a record. Once I started listening back to some of my ideas, I was like really pleased with some of them. And I decided to continue working on these songs, kind of behind the scenes.
PRESTON FRAZIER: It sounds like you have changed your approach to vocals on this album.
MARK ANTHONY K: I’m a lot more confident in general in my singing. Working in the Dark Monarchy with Joe Bailey, a great singer who’s always been very encouraging, has helped.
PRESTON FRAZIER: In the past, you’ve done most of the instrumentation on the Projekt Gemineye albums, with a few bass players stepping in. I know Joe has helped out, too. But you handle all the instrumentation for What Lies Beyond. The drumming on your albums has always been very aggressive. I think it’s even more so with this album.
MARK ANTHONY K: I enjoyed doing the drums. I think I wanted to be a drummer in my younger days. The drumming, for me, is very much based on the guitar playing itself. If the guitar riff is very upfront and very punchy, then I think the drums need to complement it. And I tried to do that as well with the softer passages, not to make it so bombastic and overtake the acoustic guitar. When an acoustic guitar comes up, it needs to be front and center more than the drumming should be.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Tell me about the development of “Cyber Wonderland.”
MARK ANTHONY K: “Cyber Wonderland” was written about halfway through the album’s writing sessions. When it was done, I knew it would be the first song I would release. I made it the first song because I thought it was catchy. It wasn’t too long. Surprisingly, a five-minute piece is sort of short for me! I was happy that I was able to do that and make myself satisfied with that because the late Chris Squire very much inspired the bass guitar. I love Yes music, as you know. I have an Ibanez as SD 400 SR 400 bass guitar. It’s active, and I have a punchy bass sound. As for the lyrical meaning of the song, it’s inspired by a National Geographic article I had read about, I don’t know, a year or two ago, talking about cyber technology and its effect on humanity. There was an interesting little quote where a professor said that once medical technology fails us, we will depend on computer technology. We are saying that you must be very careful with how dependent we are as a society on computer technology, and how addicting it can become.
PRESTON FRAZIER: The next song is “Angels Scream,” a well-crafted 14-minute track. I think it’s the longest track on What Lies Beyond, with a great chorus of guitars and really apocalyptic lyrics.
MARK ANTHONY K: Musically, it came to me first. It was the very first song that I wrote. Ironically enough, I never would’ve thought that I would write a 14-minute song first thing out of the gate – but it just came. I didn’t fight it. I was really happy with the clean sound. Another blending trick that I did, was I recorded acoustic guitar and then I got a Fender Stratocaster and recorded a very clean guitar acoustic and electric guitar, then blended those two tones together to get that sound at the beginning of the song. Lyrically is the part where I think it’s a bit special to me, because the song is inspired by the invasion of Ukraine.
When that first happened, I was sitting at home and my mother was here – and my mom, the look on her face when it first happened. I had only seen that face look on her face once before, when she was very shocked over something. I asked her what was going on in her head, and she said that she felt almost like a sense of deja vu because she lived through the invasion of Czechoslovakia. My father and her were there when it happened – wow. And they left, one suitcase in hand and got out of there. They had a pretty normal life at that point. They had a home and they had farmland and all kinds of stuff. They had a comfortable living, and they had to leave everything behind and get out of there because of the invasion. I really wanted to use out of her firsthand storytelling into the lyrics of it.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Side 2 starts with “Seed and Soil.”
MARK ANTHONY K: “Seed and Soil” was another one of these songs that were written near the end of my writing cycle. I played my Strats for leads and most of my rhythm guitars were Les Paul. I asked Joe Bailey to get involved in the orchestration on this album. His input and his contribution on that end were very significant, because that orchestration that appears on “The Angel Scream” and in this song, and even the last song, I think really helped give it a bit of a more grandiose tone. The section he put at the very beginning was so great. I can’t even imagine starting the song with just the drums and bass. With that orchestrated at the beginning, it really added some real mysticism to the whole musical part.
The lyrical end of this touches on broken promises made by politicians here in Ontario about green lands and the forestry, that they wouldn’t touch it. They wouldn’t come down and cut parts of the forest down. It’s an issue where there are so many immigrants coming in now, and we need housing for them – but we also want to preserve land. The opening line, “I live here 30 years passed from father to son,” that’s a direct passage talking about passing land from generation to generation and how this new policy may disrupt that. What’s more important housing or food?
PRESTON FRAZIER: So the last non-bonus song is “I’m Free,” which is more than 11 minutes long.
MARK ANTHONY K: “I’m Free” was inspired by the COVID situation. The main message I was trying to put across in there is that I find that sometimes as a people we don’t see each other’s opinions and respect them enough. I wrote it with that whole opening line as a dialog between the two views around COVID.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Such a powerful song, with great guitars. I love the feel of the song, especially the acoustic guitar intro. The compact-disc edition of What Lies Beyond has a bonus track, “Brutal World.”
MARK ANTHONY K: “Brutal World” was a song that I wrote about halfway the writing process for the album. Normally I record everything, mix everything, master it, and I go and sit there and say, “OK, what am I going to put on the record now?” I always want to release a vinyl version – and as you know, the limitation with vinyl is you need to do about 20 to 21 minutes side. I had to go through and pick out songs that would complement that side.
When I completed “Brutal World,” I really liked that song – and I did initially try to find a way to put it in, but it just wouldn’t fit. I was determined that I wanted people to hear this song, so I put it on the CD as a bonus track. But with the vinyl, there will be an extra disc that not only has “Brutal World,” but three other additional songs as well.
PRESTON FRAZIER: The Project Gemineye albums always have such great artwork.
MARK ANTHONY K: I appreciate it when somebody buys my albums, and I’d want them to feel like they’ve spent it wisely. The album cover on this is once again done by James McCarty, who has done all my album covers.
PRESTON FRAZIER: He’s your Roger Dean!
MARK ANTHONY K: Yes, My Roger Dean. The back cover designs that he makes are great. Once again, there will be a poster as well for this.
