A free EP to say thanks to anyone who has ever listened to my music, and hopefully get some new listeners too. If you like what you hear, please check out my album Memory:
tomdurbin.bandcamp.com/album/memory
I learned more making KV55 EP than I have any of my previous projects and it was certainly the most fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
KV55 EP
I. Wadi. On the bank of the Nile, in the hostile Red Land once known as Deshret, lies Wādī al Mulūk, the Valley of the Kings, where the great dynasties of Egypt’s New Kingdom laid down their royals to rest. Built to endure for all time, the 63 tombs have perpetuated the legacy of the ancient Egyptians, their stories told through stone and immortalised flesh.
II. Amduat. The walls of tomb KV34 depict the earliest known version of the funerary text known as Amduat - ‘That Which Is In The Afterworld’. Every night when the sun falls below the horizon, the sun god Re travels through the twelve hours of darkness in the world of the dead and defeats the serpent Apep, before returning triumphant and rejuvenated with the morning sunrise.
III. KV55. The single individual in tomb KV55 was found interred in a desecrated coffin on which the face and name of the inhabitant had been intentionally removed, thus damning their soul forever. While its preservation is very poor, evidence points to this being the body of the infamous 18th Dynasty king Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who decreed that his people should abandon their vast number of deities to worship Aten, the one, true god... and himself.
IV. Tiye. KV35 became the final resting place of a number of royal bodies transferred here from other tombs. Those discovered here included the great Amenhotep III, father of Akhenaten, and a woman believed to be Queen Tiye, his Great Royal Wife. Popularly known as The Elder Lady, her mummy is remarkably preserved, frozen in eternal life.
V. 1923. It was on February 16 of the year 1923 that the renowned Howard Carter opened up the burial chamber of tomb KV62 and saw ‘wondrous things’. Lifting the lid off the sarcophagus, he came face to face with history’s most famous king, the young Tutankhamun, son of Akhenaten who, thirty-three centuries before, followed Re into the Afterworld.
released September 24, 2014
All tracks written and produced by Tom Durbin.
For those of you interested, this EP was created in Logic, primarily using Logic's ES2 synth, the XILS-lab PolyKB II and Camel Audio's Alchemy synth. Certain other bits were made in Sibelius.
Voices on tracks 2 and 3 created using the free text-to-speech service at
www.text2speech.org
Text on track 3 from the Great Hymn to the Aten, original translation by Miriam Lichtheim.
Photo: The preserved remains of Queen Tiye, found in tomb KV35, Valley of the Kings, Egypt (image in the public domain). Design by Tom Durbin.