In this series of blogs, I chronicle my path bringing The Singularity to life as a rock album, graphic novel, and concert experience. My previous blogs can be found here: “Discovering Metal,” “Writing the Record,” “Variety of Voices,” “Instrumentalists,” and “Boingo Boys.”
For most rock records, the processes of writing the music and lyrics, and then recording guitars, bass, drums, and vocals would nearly complete the album. However, with The Singularity these foundational elements were only the beginning, providing an epic canvas upon which I hoped to paint with flourishes of orchestra, electronics, and folk music colors from around the globe!
UNEXPECTED COLORS
After striving to make sure that layers of vocals, guitars, basses, and drums were covered by world-class musicians, I was eager to infuse The Singularity with colors from outside the rock genre. From 2021 through 2023, I recorded a diverse group of musicians and singers to augment the album with unexpected flavors.
“Roko’s Basilisk” features one of the album’s most unusual colors, that of the Javanese gamelan, an orchestra of Southeast Asian metallophones tuned in unique scales. In the song the ancient heptatonic (seven note) gamelan “pelog” scale clashes aggressively with the familiar western twelve-tone scale of the electric guitars and bass, creating a disconcerting dissonance that augments the song’s wickedness. I asked vocalist Jens Kidman, of Meshuggah, to sing the track with his signature scream, as he would not need to tune to either scale. That song’s distinct combination of heavy metal instrumentation, southeast Asian pelog gamelan scale and Kidman’s expressive screaming forms one of the most striking combinations on The Singularity.
“Exiles” required an authentically Celtic sound, so I turned to my frequent collaborator Eric Rigler’s bagpipes and pennywhistles. (Lead singer Griogair also contributed incredible performances to the track!) The song also features bagpipes by the talented Archy Jay, India’s first professional female bagpiper, an inspiring musician I have wanted to collaborate with for years. With additional layers of pipes provided by lead vocalist Griogair Labhruidh, the song features a beautiful blend of different pipers forming a cohesive, fascinating sound.
Several more of my frequent collaborators in film and television scores took part in The Singularity, including Malachai Komanoff Bandy on viola da gamba and Paul Cartwright on violin. The album’s rustic Nordic string colors were provided by Erik Rydvall’s nyckelharpa and moraharpa. These string players have collaborated with me prominently on at least a dozen scores, including The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the God of War games, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Battlestar Galactica, Outlander, Da Vinci’s Demons, and many more.
The relentless cello layers in “Last Stop” were provided by none other than legendary cello virtuoso, my friend Tina Guo.
Mongolian metal band Nine Treasures brought their gifts to the Asian-cinema-inspired rock anthem “Tatarigami.” Their powerful Mongolian throat-singing and a haunting folk instrument called a morin khuur brought authentic new dimension to the song.
IN THE MIX
The combination of drums, bass, electric and acoustic guitars, vocals, folk music soloists, synths, orchestra, and choir placed the track count for most songs on The Singularity into the thousands. Without the skilled ear of an expert music mixer, my record might have resulted in cacophony. I wanted someone who truly understood making heavy metal records. Bryan Beller recommended I speak with a talented mixer based in Australia, named Forrester Savell. Forrester had a solid reputation for blending metal bands with unique colors – the exact skillset I was searching for!
I reached out to him at the end of 2020, when production was ramping up. Forrester was softspoken and a little hard to read, especially over a camera on the internet. Still, I suspected he grasped the scope of my ambition. He volunteered to demo of one of my songs, so we could feel it out. We sent him the multitrack of “The Last of the Old Gods.” I felt this brooding operatic aria masquerading as a Nordic metal song would be solid test of Forrester’s skills, because it had a little bit of everything – equally rooted in symphonic styles as it was in rock, with a heavy splash of folk instrumentation.
A few weeks later, Forrester sent his first mix. Listening to first draft mixes is always stressful – probably my least favorite part of the creative process. This is where the vast potential dreams for my project clash with harsh reality, and I must trust in the skills of an outside expert to fully realize my vision. A strange thing happened, however, when my speakers started to vibrate with Forrester’s first mix. I heard crisp nyckelharpa riffs chugging against rich cello strings. Sigurjón’s booming baritone soared confidently above orchestral fanfares before the bombastic metal riff exploded. I sat transfixed, having completely forgotten I was supposed to be listening critically. Instead, I heard a song I had worked on for eighteen months as if for the first time. I think I cried.
Forrester, now a member of my core creative team, mixed The Singularity for three years. During this time, I realized he understood the project so fully that I did not need to lavish time giving him voluminous notes. Most of the times that I wanted to change something on a mix, he would send me a new draft that fixed the issue before I even commented on it. Forrester was clearly a true artist, motivated by his own personal desire for the songs to reach their potential. Our creative collaboration was a thrilling one, even though we rarely communicated verbally more than a single sentence email. I am accustomed to the film and television mixing process, in which the engineer has a week or perhaps two to find my musical vision. The absurd three-year mixing process on The Singularity ultimately served the music. Songs that started out as my favorite mixes became the worst on the record when he made subsequent ones sound even better, so we would circle back and improve the old mixes, over and over again. Forrester and I kept returning to each song – tweaking, changing, improving – until the mixes were finally complete in early 2024.
I have rarely met someone who understood my music more thoroughly or deeply than Forrester. He delivered beyond my wildest hopes, proving his nearly supernatural gift for crafting bombastic rock impact without sacrificing the detail and clarity of my anachronistic supporting ideas. He is the unsung hero of this project. The Singularity would not be what it is without him.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
The recording alone of The Singularity was a staggering operation that ran for three years. Preparing recording sessions, alternate mixes, lead sheets, charts, and digital asset deliveries for each song, for each player, was a full-time job, managed diligently by my administrative and technical teams at Sparks & Shadows. My manager, Joe Augustine, worked for months with artists’ management to wrap up paperwork. My crew struggled to keep pace with me as I charged ahead, bringing in dozens of musicians. I wrote with confidence that at times resembled reckless abandon. I could do this because I had complete, unwavering faith in my team’s ability to handle the logistics; they were already accustomed to our complex workflow from scoring media. Every time they finished one task, I gave them three more – this went on for years. Without the contributions of my production company, Sparks & Shadows, this complex album could never have ever been finished.
Executive Producers: Bear McCreary and Joe Augustine
Album Produced by Bear McCreary and Brendan McCreary
Mixed and Mastered by Forrester Savell
Recorded by Ryan Sanchez (drums), Ben Sedano (Gene Hoglan, Billy Boyd, Ryan Hurst, Orgil, Askhan Avagchuud, Nars, Eric Rigler, Rufus Wainwright, Asdru Sierra), John Chapman (Scott Ian), John Ewing (Slash), Jackson Roe (Lee Pace), Kristinn Sigurpáll Sturluson (Sigurjón Kjartansson), Anton Soder (John Avila), Andy Taub (Danai Gurira), Nathan Yaccino (Kim Thayil), Rasmus Faber (Erik Rydvall), Christopher Bartek (Steve Bartek), Tristan Hardin (Corey Taylor)
Edited by Pierre-André Rigoll, Dayna Ambrosio, Ryan Sanchez, Ben Sedano
Project Coordination by Bailey Gordon, Hannah Lustine, Reed Trachy Album Coordination by Gabrielle Fastman
Assistant to Mr. McCreary: Marisa Gunzenhauser
Cover Art by John Hofstetter
Album Package Design by Mo Shafeek
Drum tech for Gene Hoglan: Geoff Bruce
Ensembles:
Budapest Scoring Orchestra and Choir
Slovak National Symphony Orchestra
Conductors: Bear McCreary, Johannes Vogel, Peter Illenyi, Zoltán Pad, Gottfried Rabl, Márton Tóth
Orchestrators: Bear McCreary, Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson, Jonathan Beard, Jamie Thierman, Benjamin Hoff, Sean Barrett
Special Thanks: Mat Groom, Kyle Higgins, Eric Stephenson, Michael Busuttil, Adam Conarroe, Patrick Stannard, Eduardo Ferigato, Etienne Monsaingeon, Joanna Pane, Brian Claeys, Mo Shafeek, Scott Gimple, David S. Goyer, Glen Mazzara, Jörn Weisbrodt, Jeff Varner, Rob Shallcross, George Tonikian Maxx Vick, Jim Merlis, Joe Miale, Alec Siegel, Daniel Woiwode, Daniel Rosien, Juan Dussán, Tracy McKnight, Veigar Margeirsson, Johnny “Vatos” Hernandez, Ira Ingber, Doug Lacy, Pete Griffin, Richard Kraft, Laura Engel, Malay, Justin Wahlborg, Miles Dean Garcia, Phil Plait, Todd Bullock, Sinéad O’Connor, Elmer Bernstein, Laura Kalpakian, Jay McCreary, Raya Yarbrough, Brendan McCreary, Sonatine and Arakel McCreary.
FINISHING THE RECORD
My journey with The Singularity began in the summer of 1995, when I wrote an instrumental rock song called “Escape from the Machines” and recorded the electric guitar parts with my friend Ryan Ho into my Tascam 4-Track cassette recorder. Fittingly, The Singularity would at last be complete when its final recording session took place – nearly three decades later – in November 2023, when I recorded those very same guitar parts with Slash in his studio.
I was nervous as I drove to Slash’s studio. I had been working on this song for decades and felt I had never yet unlocked its full potential. I knew this session would be the last: if Slash couldn’t make this riff work as I heard it in my imagination, no one could. My anxiety evaporated as I first heard the searing pattern come to life beneath his fingers. Just as we had done when we recorded “The End of Tomorrow” a year prior, we spent more than five hours together in the studio, experimenting, layering, and feeling that communal joy when music clicks into place. Slash’s take on the main riff was exactly what the song needed.
With Slash’s lead lines, John Avila’s virtuosic bass solo, Joe Satriani’s insane improvised solo, Gene Hoglan’s blistering drum parts, and full symphonic orchestra, “Escape from the Machines” had, at long last, lived up to the potential I heard in my imagination when I wrote it three decades prior. To pay tribute to the song’s long creative journey, I started the track with ten seconds taken directly from my original 1995 cassette tape recording. Ryan Ho’s original guitar performance that we recorded together in high school, “Escape from the Machines” is a track that literally took me thirty years to produce and has come to symbolize my entire career as a composer of rock music.
Listening to the album’s sprawling narrative sequence, I am struck by how many diverse and vivid musical and emotional colors are woven together. This record encapsulates everything I have ever loved about rock, film music, and dramatic storytelling. I am not surprised it took me nearly thirty years to figure out how I wanted to weave all these disparate ideas together. However, the album is only one dimension of The Singularity. As the writing, recording, mixing and mastering of this ambitious record drew to a close, I turned my attention to the other mediums in which the project could shine: the graphic novel and the live concert experience.
In the closing weeks of work on the album, I expressed my overwhelming feelings of excitement and exhaustion to Slash, with whom I had become quite close over the past couple years. He laughed and reminded me to savor it, assuring me “You’ll miss it when it’s over.”
—Bear
