Studio Report - Obscure Passages
THE YEAR 2000
Obscure Passages - Day 1
Portrait of Beyond has just started creating its third production - Obscure Passages. We expect this to be the beginning of a long and painful sacrifice of effort and energy, but there is nothing we wouldn't willingly endure in order to achieve the destination yet unknown.
These pictures reflect not only the songs on Obscure Passages, but also the feelings of the collective at day one inside the concrete walls of the basement studio.
Day 2 - Digital hell
All seemed to be ready for serious tracking, but then... We were about to experience the chaos and randomness of digital hell. Crashing computers, dropouts and the meaning of the word 'word clock' became crystal clear to us, the disciples of the Digital Punisher - that unearthly beast.
Temptation to escape from the realms of digital hell was very strong, but as mentioned, there really was no escape. We had to struggle against this ultimate evil and turn it from foe to a friend. Eventually, we captured a couple of bits and there we had a digital representation of drummish waveforms that we decided to call the drum track. At least we had a starting point... 
Day 3 - sevens, elevens and the rest
Early in the morning hell froze over and there was inches of snow outside. We held a break and continued after all snow had melted - not that these things had anything to do with each other.
05:50 am - The first episode seems to be near its end now. We maintained our schedule, after all. With our bodies full of caffeine we sit down trembling, staring with unfocused eyes, thinking in our etherealized minds: 'What next?'
December Sessions
Struggling to survive, when the temperature dropped below minus 33 centigrade outside the studio walls, we once again joined our forces and started recording. It was now time to build flesh over the bones that were structured earlier. Guitar tracks, synth and some violin were played.
This time our old foe, the Digital Devil, was fatal to some synth tracks. But our moral took nothing but a minor scratch - if even that. Before the first year of this new millennium was dealt with, we had gathered the body of our five new songs. Missing was only skin and Life, which we would inevitably bring to existence, but not yet.
2001: AN OBSCURE ODYSSEY
September
After a more-than-half-year wandering through earthly occupations, the collective managed to convene to discuss the current global situation and also to navigate further on the ocean of obscure passages.
Refreshed and equipped with relevant source material, three fourths of the present collective worked at the basement studio on the 21st and 22nd of September. As a result of this, the violin tracks were completed and some murmuring of bass was caught inside our mysterious machinery. One particular guitar solo was also the centre of our attention - seldom does one see such obscure mastery of that instrument. This autumnal weekend was historical in one aspect: we wrote down probably the first ever notational document of our music! 
The missing skin is now beginning to have a tangible form. And who knows, maybe the whole process is gaining more and more speed.
Another December
06.02.2002
Speed or not, after the yet incomplete Obscure Passages had seen it's first December, Billions of people had travelled a complete cycle around a yellow star, which in turn had rushed quite a few miles on it's own galactic trajectory. Galaxies had gotten a little further away from each other. Had new unseen material emerged from nothingness between them?
For what we knew and cared, some material had appeared on our recording devices, which was a welcome fact. We continued.
De-ja-vuish moments of chill were experienced when we recorded a beautiful singing voice in the basement studio with outdoor temperatures again reaching lows almost as great as they had the year before. Despite of the ice outside we managed to grab most of the lyrics for our songs. Many days were spent, but not much was left undone.
2002: Conclusion
January
We started recording near the end of 2000. We finished recording near the beginning of 2002. Nearly everything is now on tape (digitized would be such a scary word to use, although a correct one) - in particular, every bit of lyrics is now complete and recorded. We have Bone, Flesh, and most of Life. Our creation now needs only a little yank to become reality. That would be mixing and mastering, which will soon be done.
And so we have endured. The amount of effort and energy has been sunk into the product. Destination is almost here - and almost known - along with little seeds of ideas about the next, completely different, episode in the history of Portrait of Beyond.
March
31.03.2002
The painful process of mixing and mastering Obscure Passages was allocated to the Passover period. However, it was not always clear who was mixing and mastering whom. A strong candidate for our master has been our old acquaintance, the Digital Punisher working in ways ever so mysterious.
This prolonged weekend saw the blowing of Life into the Obscure Passages or, at least, into a reproduction of the Obscure Passages as perceived by us. Once again, amongst our most faithful friends in this final effort were moonlight, coffee and an old Morse key in need of medicine. And now, after this critical episode there remains the job of distributing the newborn information.