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VEHICLE

by miRthkon

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1.
Congratulations! With your purchase of a miRthkon Vehicle, you have joined the ranks of an elite class of enlightened consumer. The miRthkon Vehicle combines physical strength, flawless performance, and contemporary design with handcraftsmanship in the true Old World tradition: power that doesn’t compromise space; handling that doesn’t compromise comfort; technology that doesn’t compromise handcraftsmanship; and above all, prestige. Over time you will discover for yourself the miRhkon’s finest details and their deep significance for you and your family. As you discover each new miracle another mystery reveals itself, and the most observant of you will in time become enlightened as the hidden truths of the universe unravel before your very eyes. The ultimate pattern that defines all things awaits you inside, but you must persist at all times in your efforts to discover it! There is no time! No time to lose! You must seek the answers, I tell you. The fate of the Universe is in your hands. Go now!
2.
3.
Banana 03:00
Well whatever you do don't forget to bring banana. Whatever you do don't forget to bring a banana. Don't forget to bring yourself a banana. Banana. Banana. This song is the pathetic example of my indulgent tendencies. When I'm at home all alone in front of a computer with a microphone. That's right. Yeah. Here we go. Banana. Banana. And now it's time to eat a real tasty treat. And try not to slip, better watch your feet. Banana. Banana. Banana. Banana. Banana. Banana. He's gotta banana, it looks like a gun. The other bananas are on the run. Yeah. Run for the hills. Run for your life.
4.
Automaton 04:14
5.
Zhagunk 06:23
What?
6.
Kharms Way 06:48
7.
Daddylonglegz (free) 05:17
8.
"Salutations to LaVeldreaux," said Kleighroi. "How’d you know my name?" asked LaVeldreaux. "I didn’t know. Your name is written on your shirt," replied the Coyote. This surprised LaVeldreaux. "Oh! You can read?" "I can write," said Kleighroi, insulted by LaVeldreaux's condescension. LaVeldreaux saw that his question had offended and tried to smooth things over as he tried to make some sense of his situation. "Let’s not fight," he said with a faint smile. Kleighroi's scowl softened and he too forced a diplomatic smile, saying, "Did not cross my mind." At a loss for what to say next, LaVeldreaux attempted to say something profound. "That’s good because aggression ain’t the way to go." "Well it’s funny you should mention that because I am an expert," said Kleighroi. "Well then you must be the expert on aggression, and you are commonly known as Diggity Doggle," replied LaVeldreaux, increasingly disoriented by the Coyote's cryptic statements. Exasperated, Kleighroi said, "No, that is not my name, you really should just call me Kleighroi." "Well, I’ll be goddamned!" exclaimed LaVeldreaux. "What?!" squeaked Kleighroi, startled. LaVeldreaux shrugged. "I don’t know." They stood for some time in silence. LaVeldreaux, suddenly became aware that he was staring at Kleighroi and, not wanting to give offense a second time, averted his gaze. Kleighroi, however, had no such sense of propriety and continuted to stare quizzically at the man he had been waiting for for decades. Finally, he spoke. "You have no idea what any of this has to do with you!" "Well I really must say that I don’t exactly know how I arrived here," LaVeldreaux admitted. "Let me tell you how!" said Kleighroi with increasing excitement. LaVeldreaux was suddenly seized with fear. "I don’t want to know!" he shouted. "You really need to know!" "Well, I don’t wanna know! I don’t need to know!" Kleighroi came in close, his nose inches from Laveldreaux's, saying, "Then you’ll never understand what I’m supposed to tell you all about your present and your future and your past!" "I don’t want to hear anything about it now," said LaVeldreaux, desperately backing away. "Oh LaVeldreaux, you really should just listen to what I have to say," said Kleighroi in a tone intended to calm things down a bit, but LaVeldreax was having none of it. "Do you honestly expect me to listen to a dog?!" "I AM COYOTE!!" Kleighroi howled in response. "Well it seems that this conversation is going nowhere," thought LaVeldreaux. "Well who is the animal and who's the human?" asked Kleighroi, thoroughly exasperated. "We've argued a point yet I'm not sure what it was," answered LaVeldreaux, exasperated thoroughly. “I’d have to agree,” said Kleighroi, walking off toward the woods and beckoning for LaVeldreaux to follow.
9.
Johnny Yen 04:36
10.
11.
Trishna 03:54
12.
Here's a story 'bout some Bees who like to boogie Make some room to get down Up here on the honeycomb All you have to do is Face the sun to find your Point of trajectory Which leads you to all the fun Honey's on the way Behind the ray! Boogie's here to stay It's the hive mind way! Buzza-buzza-buzza-buzz on my way Gonna get to eat some honey today Buzza-buzza-buzza-buzz on my way Gonna get to meet some honeys today Now that we have found our Source of sticky goodness All we have to do is Fly back just the way we came So the drones and workers Pull out there old HOT PANTS! Then they start-a groovin' To show us the way back home Apropos You know that only when I'm in control That all the piece-a-puzzle Will lock into place But they don't take space! What are they s'posed to be? I'm just a test case!
13.
14.

about

Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone and brilliant esoteric philosopher, spent the final years of his life studying ways of harnessing what he called “Harmonic Oscillations” using intricate mechanical devices. He claimed that an omnipresent force exists in equal magnitude at all points in space, and that this force is definitive evidence of a “Monadic Spirituality”—a fundamental operator in his refined and beautiful cosmology. Sax shared what he had learned with very few others. His caution was warranted, because he had enemies who wished to destroy him and his teachings. He reasoned that the best way to preserve the fundamental truths he had discovered was to divide those truths into pieces and leave them for a future generation to reassemble. He split his movement in half. The first—the predecessor of the modern New Age movement—was focused primarily on bogus claims about “The Spirit World” and its inhabitants. This philosophy was constructed to be rife with contradiction and misinformation as a distraction from the more important workings of the second half. The teachings of this more mainstream philosophy were designed to appeal to people with weak minds while keeping anyone with a serious mind from looking too deeply into such things. No one will ever discover how completely correct Sax was, because the only people capable of understanding it immediately scoff at the mere mention of such silly superstitions. This is how the secret has been kept. On the other hand, a more exclusive sect known as the Association of Adherents to Adolphe Sax and his Esoteric Wisdom, is the keeper of the truth about Sax’s life and teachings. None of what they teach is actually secret. They themselves have yet to uncover most of the true secrets, though they work very hard at doing so. Their primary function is to make sure the story is alive, but not too prominent. Their story is the one true story among all the misinformation, so keeping it alive—even if the number of people who hear it is tiny—means that in time its truth will become the general consensus. Only when the truth is accepted broadly will it be safe to move forward with the technological innovations Sax’s work makes possible. Sax’s key insight was that any given point in space is at any given time being bombarded with energy from many sources and from many directions. In general all of those waves cancel each other out, leaving no net vibration at the point of interest. However, Sax discovered that the energy sign at most points had a consistent shape with a consistent orientation with respect to the direction of gravity. This meant that at every point in the universe within a sufficiently strong gravitational field there is a tiny amount of energy free for the taking. It was this fact and the irrefutable evidence for it that Sax shared with three young men just days before his death. Those men were Michael Rothko, John Keely, and Maurice D’Adlin. Each of them was instructed to entrust the principle only to good men they could trust. Sax explained his strategy for covering their tracks. They would promote a subculture of pseudoscience and quietly slip the true principles in among the trash. The teachings could be publicly preserved without drawing undue attention to themselves until the public could be prepared to accept them. All would be hidden in plain sight. Intelligent men would be unaware of the diamond hidden among the jagged pieces of glass. The fools willing to sift through the shards would get cut. The few wise enough to find the diamond would be those best equipped to possess the secrets and use them wisely. Once Sax had shared his secrets, each of the three men received plans for a device Sax had designed based on his new principle. Unfortunately, he had only just begun this work when he became ill, so none of it was complete. His heirs would have to continue his work without him. To D’Adlin was given the latest redesign of the saxophone and the plans for it. This was the only one of the devices for which Sax had a working prototype. He said nothing at the time to indicate anything that this was anything other than a well-designed new saxophone, but it is now widely believed that it was an indispensable part of his larger scheme. Partial copies of the plans exist, but the originals have been lost. The prototype, missing for nearly 40 years after Sax’s death, is now in OAS hands. Unfortunately, it has been damaged and repaired by non-initiates, so reverse engineering is difficult. Rothko and Keely each received plans for a device supposedly capable of harnessing energy from the Unified Monadic Force and amplifying or transferring it to another use. Keely was successful at completing the design fairly quickly, but did not honor his word not to go public with the technology. In order to keep the technology a secret, Rothko replaced Keely’s equipment with replicas which were clearly accomplishing their tasks by fraudulent means. Keely was discredited. The secret was safe. Rothko, a brilliant theoretician, never had quite the same talent or enthusiasm for crafting the devices he designed, so he took on his good friend Nicholas Slate as a collaborator. Slate was initially skeptical of Rothko’s claims—in particular he doubted that such a device could work if it was not electrical. As their research progressed, however, he began to understand the possibilities. Of Sax’s three schematics, this one was the least complete, by far, and the one about which Sax was least optimistic. However, with Sax’s insight, Rothko’s guidance, and Slate’s technical abilities, success was coming within reach. Just at the point of this breakthrough, Slate and Rothko came into disagreement about what should happen next. Slate, now fully accepting the reality of Rothko’s free energy claims, assumed they would go into business manufacturing these devices once the technology was perfected. However Rothko, ever loyal to Sax, refused, taking the not quite complete model and all of their drawings and designs, stuffing them into a valise, and heading for the door. Slate arrived moments later, and on seeing what had happened flew into a furious rage, shouting out the window at Rothko as he disappeared down the Paris street. Slate takes several days to calm down and decide upon a course of action. Ultimately he telephones a business associate who might be able to help track Rothko down. This friend, a fellow scientist, is head of research at the Electrix Works Corporation. Word gets to the new boss of the Company, Mr. Hudson, a very powerful and ruthless man. Hudson is very knowledgeable about the technologies emerging at the time, and has devised a plan to create an empire of influence by shaping these technologies to his ends. He will go on to create one of the first motion picture studios and is among the first to seize on the idea of advertising as a way of controlling the behavior of the masses. Keeping energy scarce is a key principle of Boss Hudson’s new model of society. The great industrial giants of his time were dinosaurs, he thought, because they control things and not people. Now, for the first time in history, it would be possible to control vast numbers of people across an enormous geographical area. The Empire of Influence would control the flow of energy, the flow of information, and the flow of capital, not through the heavy-handed means of the Bolsheviks, but by manipulating the wills of the populace so subtly that no one would suspect, let alone detect, the manipulation. Hudson knew that this society could never come into being be if the technology Slate was developing came into general use. So, he concocted a plan to implicate Slate in a plot to kill Rothko. Hudson converses with Slate, saying he understood how important it is to give this great gift to the world. Slate agrees and is happy to have such a powerful ally. Slate gives Hudson’s men, who he takes as friendly police investigators, some information about Hudson and his last known whereabouts and direction. After a few questions, they thank him and say they can begin their investigation. These men, however, are under orders to kill Rothko and to seize all materials and bring them back to the Electrix Works offices for review and destruction. Meanwhile, Rothko has been on the run. After Paris he had assumed the worst and moved quickly to cover his tracks long enough to do what was necessary to save Sax’s legacy. Now, nearly a week since the altercation, his work is nearly complete. He has constructed three boxes. One contains a prototype of the completed power module, but with a slight flaw to discourage reverse engineering. The second contains a full set of schematics for building the device, but also contains errors. The third contains a full working prototype and a full set of accurate schematics. This last one is constructed with a lock set by a large internal spring. The box can only be unlocked when the spring runs down in five hundred years. The boxes are opened using a small mechanical key shaped like a little robot man. The little man’s functions are fairly primitive, but remarkably, as the one actual working unit running on a miRthkon power module, he can trudge on indefinitely, repairing himself, and behaving according to a heuristic mechanical design that ensures he will find his way back to the boxes in time. Ultimately, this part of the story does find its way, in highly fictionalized form, into miRthkon corporate lore. The little key man, to whom they’ve given the fanciful name of “Tom Automaton”, is their mascot, appearing in corporate literature, in numerous logos, and as the hood ornament of the miRthkon line of automobiles. In their version of the story, Rothko plays Geppetto to Tom’s Pinocchio, feeling a rush of paternal love toward his tiny invention just before being confronted by Boss Hudson’s men. This part of the story, too, has a basis in reality. Work was completed on the three boxes and the key the very evening the men caught up with him in a small room above a baker’s shop in London. The large box containing the genuine module and plans had already been hidden away by Rothko on the continent. The two smaller boxes, containing the misleading versions of the technology, are hidden in the apartment with him. The key, completed less than an hour before Hudson’s men swept into the room, was small enough to escape their attention. After a brief confrontation, they dispatch with Rothko and place all of his papers and other belongings—including the boxes—into a crate to be taken back to Elextrix Works. Hudson and Slate meet again two weeks later to investigate the contents of the crate. Most of the material—the valise, Rothko’s personal papers, etc.—most was of little apparent use, though it would all be thoroughly investigated further at a later time for clues. Then they came to the box. This was clearly the big find. It seemed impervious to all methods of lock picking or prying, and they were reluctant to destroy it for fear of what might be inside. For the moment it was enough for Hudson that Rothko and his secret had been destroyed. Over the years he would often consider simply destroying the box and having done with it, but he always thought better of it. It was his. Whatever it was, it was something worth having, and he had it, and someday he might be able to make it pay off. In any case, the Electrix Works was starting to run things in this country. Everything was going according to plan. Rothko’s son Henri spent his entire life investigating the mystery of his father’s disappearance. He always maintained that Slate was involved, and it was widely assumed that Hudson was behind it—at least among people who ever gave a second thought to those things. Mr. Rothko, Sr. left only a handful of references to his mysterious final project, referred to in his notes as miRthkon, and Henri adopted this as the name of his company. He had inherited his father’s scientific and technological acumen. Henri was able to subsidize his research by using his skills to create useful technologies for every day use. Of course, he had to be careful of Hudson’s influence, but now it was a different age. Hudson’s vision had become reality. Henri Rothko was inconsequential enough to escape notice. Henri was able to put together a good deal of the story before he gave his life in World War II. He knew that there were three boxes containing vital information about his father’s research. He knew that the boxes could not be opened without a special key, but he did not know where that key might be hidden. He had uncovered evidence of some relations between his father and instrument maker Adolphe Sax. His records would form the foundation of the OAS archive. We are dedicated to piecing together the rest of the story, to revealing the truth about Phuaegan interference in human affairs, and to mastering the technology made possible by the tireless research and unfathomable genius of Adolphe Sax, instrument maker to kings and nations.

credits

released May 26, 2009

Tracks 5, 7, 9, 11 Basics recorded at Polymorph Recording Oakland November 2005, Overdubs recorded at Polymorph and 43rd St Studio Oakland January – May 2006 Engineered by Mark Stikman and Wally ScharoldMixed June – August 2006 by Dan Rathbun at Polymorph Recording Oakland Tracks 2, 3, 4 , 6, 10 Basics recorded at 43rd StStudios Oakland April 2007 Overdubs recorded at Polymorph, 43rd St., Wally’s SF AptJune 2007 thru April 2008Engineered by Wally Scharold Mixed by Dan Rathbun at Polymorph May – October 2008 Tracks 8, 12-14 (and a little bit of drums for track 4) Basics recorded at Polymorph Recording June 2008 Overdubs recorded at Polymorph, 43rd St, Wally’s SF AptJune 2008 – March 2009 Engineered by Mark Stikman and Wally Scharold Mixed by Dan Rathbun at Polymorph December 2008 – March 2009 Mastered by JJ Golden.

miRthkon is:

Wally Scharold – electric & acoustic guitars, singing, speech, keyboards, percussion, miRthkon Virtual Orchestra, sound design, conceptual and narrative design, art direction
Rob Pumpelly – electric & acoustic guitars, clapping
Nat Hawkes – bass guitar, vocals
Carolyn Walter – piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone
Jamison Smeltz – alto saxophone, baritone saxophone – tracks 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12-14
Matthew Guggemos – drums tracks 8, 12-14 (and about 30 bars of 3/4 on track 4)

Jarred McAdams – conceptual and narrative design, text and literary adaptation, speech, sound design, video

miRthkon alumnae and honorary members:

Dickie Ogden – drums - tracks 2-3, most of 4, tracks 5-7, 9-11
Dave Reminick – alto saxophone tracks 5, 7, 9, 11
Aram Shelton – Alto Sax on track 2 (and the very end of 14), Eb Clarinet track 6
Matt Lebofsky – Piano track 6, Rhodes track 10, fearless bass sub!
Nick Peck – Hammond B3 Organ track 14
Danny Shorago – Kleighroi vocals track 8
Robin Reynolds – Hive Mind Vocals track 12

Tracks 1, 3-8, 10, 12, 14 composed, arranged, and lyrics by Wally Scharold
Tracks 2, 9, 11, 13 composed and arranged by Rob Pumpelly

Front and back cover art – Kiriko Moth • kiriko-moth.com
Daddy/Coven/Camelo/Disk art – MuYoung Kim • theartofmu.carbonmade.com
Automaton art – Sarah Dungan • industrialfairytale.com
Honey Key Jamboree art – Steph Laberis • flyingclam.com
Banana/Zhagunk/Kharms/Johnny art – Scharold
Bapps art McAdams
R page by McAdams, Jon Adams
Flash/Trish/Black art – Megan McKearney, Pumpelly, Scharold

Produced by Wally Scharold
Copyright © 2009 miRthkon/Omua ASCAP

Thank You: 127, Gene Baker, Mark Bartscher, Blipvert, Seth Chapla, Jenya Chernoff, Darling Freakhead, Nicolas Dobson, Ben Doitel, Edmund Welles, Steve Feigenbaum, The Flux, Brian Kenney Fresno, Fuzzy Cousins, Davin Gaidano, Gates of Light, Go Go Fightmaster, JJ Golden, Gutbucket, Phil Halseth, Brad Harper, Dan Hillman, Terrell Holmes, Jeff Holt and Juan Prophet Organization, Hour of the Shipwreck, ICS, Inner Ear Brigade, Invincible Czars, Keith Kelly, Kids and Hearts, Zev Kusin, Steph Laberis, Matt Lebofsky, Marcello Marinone, Megan McKearney, Michael Mellender, Midline Errors, Kristin Miltner, MoeTar, The Molecules, Mute Socialite, Gary Niederhoff, No Doctors, Dickie Ogden, Orange Tulip Conspiracy, Sam Ospovat, Nick Peck, Jonathan Pfeffer and Capillary Action, R&D, Dan Rathbun, Will Redmond, Dave Reminick, RNBFJGS80, Aaron Seeman, Aram Shelton, Hiro Shimozato, Danny Shorago and The Fuxedos, Slydini, Matthew Smith, Mark Stikman, Starry Plough, Sudhu Tewari, Think Tank, Tholus, Three Piece Combo, Upsilon Acrux, Richard Warp, Bill Wolter, WITT, Wu Fei

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