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,” “Boingo Boys,” “Mixing the Madness,” “Finding Story in Sound,” and “From Music to Images.”
In the summer of 2022, The Singularity album was mostly finished and its graphic novel adaptation was well underway. The story shaping up told of a seemingly immortal being, Blue Eyes, who pursues a mysterious woman with Yellow Eyes from universe to universe, while a mysterious character named Red Eyes threatens to annihilate them at every turn. With a polished script, vivid concept art, and inspired pages coming in from artists, the idea then occurred to me to further the creative feedback loop by injecting elements from the book back into the album audio. I was inspired to record monologues from the book with actors, supported by cinematic score, as if a scene from a movie.
THE ACTORS
I had to prototype this concept! One scene seemed the perfect candidate. At the story’s midpoint, Blue defiantly faces down Red Eyes, the living embodiment of entropy. Red speaks to Blue with a curious empathy that masks his vicious brutality. Discovering too late they are vastly overpowered, Blue is crushed. I worked with Mat to revise the scene into a monologue that might work as a standalone spoken piece.
I needed the right actor to bring the character to life. Ever since I read the earliest draft of the script, I had only ever heard one voice in my imagination for Red Eyes, that of Ryan Hurst. Known for his work on Sons of Anarchy, I had scored Ryan’s work during his memorable stint as Beta on The Walking Dead, and most recently with God of War Ragnarök. His motion-capture and voice performance in that game provided a fresh take on the god of thunder Thor, brimming with rage and yet evoking pathos. I reached out through a mutual friend and was thrilled at his enthusiasm to work with me.
Ryan and I recorded in January, 2023. I had never before directed an actor of his caliber and felt a new exhilaration as I witnessed The Singularity expand beyond the simple collection of songs I had once imagined, into a nuanced and dramatic story arc, populated now with vivid characters. Red Eyes was brought to life through his resonant low-end rumble. He brought a surprising warmth to the character, that further augmented the monologue’s gradual shift to determined destruction at the climax. Ryan’s vocal crescendo at the final line was bombastic. “Then look into my eyes, so that in your last moments here, you may know the truth: your fear is correct.”
I drove home buzzing with excitement and composed new music around his performance, scoring it as if it were a scene in a film. The resultant track, “Red Eyes,” was incredibly cinematic, with Ryan’s brooding curiosity and mounting anger supported by a riveting theme in orchestral strings. Even Ryan admitted he’d never gotten chills hearing his own voice before he heard this mix! With three main characters in the book, I now knew I needed to produce two more monologues, one each for Blue and Yellow.
Blue Eyes was a challenging role to cast, because the monologue takes place early in the story. Blue is in a dark place, recounting for Yellow all the ways in which they have died in various lifetimes, yet gradually revealing his dogged determination to pursue her for answers. The monologue was laced with nuance and even moments of potential humor. I kept imagining the voice of Lee Pace, the renowned actor from, among other hits, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Hobbit trilogy, whose work I had scored in the indie sci-fi thriller Revolt, and the Apple+ series Foundation. I reached out to Lee and he was excited to be a part of the project.
We recorded “Blue Eyes” in March, 2023. Lee was an absolute professional, and a joy to direct. With each take, he mined the material for more depth. He injected a surprising humanity and humor to a monologue that reminisces about dying multiple times in grisly ways. I was delighted by his unexpectedly nostalgia-infused laughter when he recalled being killed by a wood-splitting axe. The reach of his skill was on full display when he pivoted to a wistful, bittersweet tone to say “And, yes, old age. A few times. Much less than you’d think.” His hesitation and vulnerability here make the character real – I felt my eyes tear up. Lee brought everything I ever hoped for to Blue, by communicating his approachable warmth when we first meet him, and gradually revealing the fierce determination that will drive him in the second half of the story.
I underscored his voice with an orchestral foreshadowing of “Antikythera Mechanism.” I loved how the musical underscore represents the narrative shift that occurs at the same point in the novel.
For the album’s final monologue, I was grateful to work with an actor who I knew could beautifully communicate Yellow’s stern gravitas and enigmatic empathy, Danai Gurira. An accomplished playwright and actress, she is perhaps best known to global audiences for her appearances in Black Panther and other Marvel films and in her many memorable seasons as Michonne on The Walking Dead, where I scored her remarkable performances. I recorded Danai in May, 2023, and I absolutely loved working with her. Danai revealed the vulnerability at the character’s heart that had remained hidden behind a cold exterior for most of the story. I underscored her with orchestral variations of one of the album’s most emotional harmonic passages, the verse to “Type III.”
Completing the piece in the middle of May and adding it to the album’s track list marked a stunning milestone: after nearly four solid years of writing, I had actually completed the last new track. For the first time, all twenty-five tracks of The Singularity existed.
The album’s monologues, “Blue Eyes,” “Red Eyes” and “Yellow Eyes” make clear to the listener that a story exists inside the music. They also divide the album into four quarters, marking shifts where new musical styles take over. These monologues formed the final piece of a creative work that allowed me to exercise every muscle of my creative mind, from shaping script and story, to directing world class actors, to scoring, to album production. When I listen to The Singularity now these monologues feel as vital as the songs, and I am shocked to recall they were a relatively last-minute experiment.
These three monologues instigated a creative feedback loop unlike anything else I have ever worked on. My music inspired a story, which inspired actors, which in turn inspired me to write new music. My hope with these three tracks is that anyone who listens to the album without knowing there is an accompanying graphic novel will intrinsically understand that there is a narrative at play in the music, even though they likely can’t fully grasp it.
After the completion of the three monologues, the rest of 2023 was spent working on the final mixes and masters, focusing on the incoming pages from our band of brilliant artists, shooting promotional interviews and music videos, and laying the groundwork for potential concert opportunities. All the various aspects of The Singularity barreled towards their finish lines simultaneously.
INTO THE WORLD
During the five years my team and I spent working on The Singularity, it had existed first in our imaginations, then as audio on hard drives, lyrics scratched on scraps of paper, words in a graphic novel script, lines etched across paper, and digital artwork glowing on screens. At last, in the spring of 2024, the project leapt into the world.
The album was released digitally across all streaming platforms from my label Sparks & Shadows in May, 2024 after the release of four singles. Throughout the spring, I was delighted to see the response to our singles, “Type III (feat. Rufus Wainwright),” “Incinerator (feat. Serj Tankian),” “The End of Tomorrow (feat. Slash and Brendan McCreary),” and “Escape from the Machines (feat. Slash and Joe Satriani).” I really did not know what to expect from fans, and I was shocked to see how quickly people found the record, and that it seemed to resonate with them. Major rock and metal news sites ran stories about its launch, and every artist involved shared it on their social media platforms. I was initially concerned that it was folly to release an eleven-minute single with “The End of Tomorrow,” but listeners seemed undaunted by its epic runtime.
When I set out to write this album, I dreamed about seeing it on major streaming platforms’ rock and metal playlists. Each new single made that dream a reality. Seeing my Singularity image ranked alongside luminaries of the genres and exciting new bands supported by major labels filled me with a deep sense of gratitude and validation.
As the singles rolled out my team and I finished preparing the project’s various physical iterations. The Singularity album was released physically on vinyl and CD formats, from Sparks & Shadows in partnership with Mutant. The graphic novel was published by renowned imprint Image Comics, home of many of my beloved comics including Spawn and The Walking Dead.
Boxes arrived at my house from which I received first vinyl pressings, CD packages, and graphic novels. For the first time, I was able to hold The Singularity in my hand. Only then did the magnitude of this project really hit me.
Opening the vinyl packaging, I pulled each disc from the sleeve and held it. I felt the old, long– ago thrill of an actual record in my hands. The scent, the feel took me back to my teenage years perusing dusty record stores for soundtracks and rock albums. Each of the three discs were forged in the story’s iconic main character colors: blue, red, and yellow, enhancing the album’s connection to the narrative.
Similarly, I was struck by the weight of the 150-page graphic novel in my hand when I opened the first box of books. The smell of the ink as I flipped through the shimmery, radiant pages transported me back to comic book shops of my youth.
I smiled picking up the CD, as I wedged it on my shelf between faded copies of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I & II, Queen’s A Night at the Opera, Oingo Boingo’s Dead Man’s Party and other albums that inspired it.
At long last, late spring of 2024, The Singularity was out in the world. After five years of toil, it was surreal to realize that hundreds of thousands of people were now listening. The songs ceased to be wholly mine, and now belonged to everyone experiencing them. I was, and remain, grateful for every listener. The graphic novel too was a reality and in the hands of readers.
I had always envisioned this project as a catalyst for creative expression. But I also thought of it as a chance to perform loud music in front of an audience again. As production on the album and graphic novel wound down, I could shift my focus towards translating The Singularity into its final form – the live concert experience.
—Bear
