Last time, Cal Mercer climbed Tikaboo Peak for another quiet night of watching, and at half past two the lights down in the valley started to move.
This is chapter two of A Light Away From Home, a story told in six songs and six sets of graphic-novel panels. The mountain is real. Everything that happens in the story is made up.
Tonight the base wakes up. From 26 miles away, Cal watches trucks crawl between hangars and a huge door roll open, and he tries to make sense of the tiny shapes moving in the light. The trouble is that at that distance, even through a very long lens, people are just grainy specks that shimmer in the heat haze. He can’t be sure of anything he sees, and that turns out to be the worst part.
“Hangar Lights” is the coldest song in the series so far. A steady, machine-like pulse runs under a slow, heavy trip-hop beat, with ticking synths, glitchy percussion, radio static and a theremin creeping in around the edges. There are only a few whispered and falsetto lines. The tension keeps building, and near the end a distorted guitar solo finally tears through it before a hangar door booms shut.
He gets his eye to the camera and holds his breath.
Down on the base, it’s clear that nobody is going to bed tonight.
Through the lens, he thinks he sees people in white suits in the doorway. Or maybe it’s just glare.
We can see what Cal can’t.
He turns the focus ring again and again, but the shapes never get any clearer.
Out on the ridge roads, the white patrol trucks are on the move too.
Then a long vehicle comes across the apron, carrying something big under a cover.
It disappears inside, and Cal sits back on the cold rock. Whatever it is, he knows he’ll never find out from here.
For the first time in years, he doesn’t write the usual word in his notebook.
Listen on Suno:
https://suno.com/song/6455b049-1928-4b03-b327-333bab759be6
Cal has a choice to make, and it means leaving the mountain. Chapter three, “The Perimeter”, arrives on Wednesday 21 October at 8pm UK time. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss it.
More Kaiser Maschine on Suno: https://suno.com/@kaisermaschine
Kaiser Maschine on Bandcamp: https://kaisermaschine.bandcamp.com
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