Myowndreamland (Final Blog)

Simon:

Wind the clock on and Dora has been a docile prisoner, incarcerated in a secure facility for the past 35 years. Happy and emotionally free of her past, she lies upon her death bed and as the doctors work upon her dying body and sees Dominic and the Envoys through the window of her room, on the shoreline outside the prison. They beckon her to follow them and instantly the young Dora is by Dominic’s side, walking into the waves and back to the dream world.

The (as they say) End.

Trying to write about death and what comes next is always problematic as you inevitably fall foul of the credo of the listener. What I can tell you is THIS IS JUST A STORY!

If Dora and I share any common ground it’s that we would both like existence to be non-lingering and free of pain. Beyond that, neither of us give a flying fuck what comes next.

Musically speaking, this track when through several stages of development. It began life as an electronic piece, and then morphed into a quasi-cinematic orgasm of brass and strings (I woke up one morning, listened to the sub Disney debacle of the previous night’s work and instantly hit delete). In the end, I chose Danny, a bit of reversed backing vocals and some traditional bass, drums and keys to round out the musical narrative.

Never underestimate the power of a Yamaha CP80 and a Wurlitzer 200 to get you to where you truly want to be. If they’re good enough for Peter Gabriel, Supertramp and Ray Charles, they’re good enough for me.

Robert:

I like stories. I would also like one day to have a quasi-cinematic orgasm. It sounds cool.

Tim:

The original version of Myowndreamland was slightly different to the final version. It was something I felt we had to get right, especially after the weight of the story Dora and the listener have gone through to reach this point, so I discussed a few different ideas with Simon and inadvertently got the entire album delayed by a few months as he re-wrote some sections. Sorry about that, folks. But I think the ending we arrived at was the ideal happy ending for Dora... if you can call slowly dying in a mental institution before being carried away into the sunset by your long-gone brother and a trio of spooks a happy ending.