Neon Babylon

[related: Mahler Box]

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Early musical suite attributed to the reclusive composer and cyberpoet mailer_daemon. Written exclusively in Latin and German, the piece's lyrics focus largely on a grab bag of Illuminati-related subjects, including the Silurian Hypothesis, Saturn's Hexagon, and the significance of Alpha Draconis. Written for a mixed ensemble strings, percussion, choir, harpsichord and analog synthesizers, Neon Babylon's scattershot performance directions require performers to wear various constructed masks. The harpsichordist, a particular target of the composer's ire, is asked to perform while wearing a large and heavy minotaur mask with no eyeslits or breathing hole. The only known performance of the work took place in REDACTED by the Eastern European experimental music ensemble Shepherds of Apocrypha/Illuminati Quartet in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The opening movement of the suite, entitled March of the Archons is notable for the inclusion of a Mahler Box, an arcane and clunky wooden contraption invented by the 19th-century composer Gustav Mahler. The ever dramatic Mahler called for the box to be struck by three mighty hammer blows, or Hammerschläge, signifying the knocking hand of fate. mailer_daemon, instead, called for the box to be painted black, covered with chalk, inscribed with a hexagonal insignia, and beaten by a man in a gas mask until utterly destroyed.

Also dating from this period is A Lake Cimmerian, a piece for solo harpsichord calling for the performer to don a cumbersome and sightless minotaur mask.