The Ghost Sonata

“The Ghost Sonata” is the 1st album released by Devyn Smith in 2012 under his alias ‘Coin locker kid’. The album is named after the play of the same name by August Strindberg.

He describes this album as a “21 track project in 3 acts about a holy trinity and the end and subsequent rebirth of the world through crisis.”

This was the description for the album written by Devyn on the album’s original bandcamp page before it was deleted in 2016:

A holy trinity lives within you, gazing at itself in three mirrors through six different eyes. In a single unified voice, it whispers to you: come deeper. You flex and loosen your muscles; you obey. Outside where the weather reigns, you can feel the cries of crisis pushing you back into a space of emptiness towards which you feel no resistance. When there, you begin to walk. Closer and closer you travel towards yourself, towards the holy trinity. Alongside the timbre of your footsteps, you hear faint strains of music in the air, though intrinsically you know that it surrounds you, cradles you even. These are the sounds of everything you have ever been and everything you will ever be. These are the sounds of longing, the longing for a holistic union of the pieces of your soul. These are the sounds of what will be known to you as… The Ghost Sonata.

Along with that, Devyn also posted a manifesto for the album on his Tumblr:

God is in His heaven; all is right with the world. Today, artists of all forms on a global scale are enjoying a new-found freedom hitherto denied our torchbearers… for not only has the digital revolution of the late 20th and 21st century shaken loose the shackles of communication, but the advent of new technology has only increased the prospect of entering newer, deeper realms of art. Virtually every medium has found itself taken aback and refreshed with the abundance of change, the vast multitude of possibility. As a gift of grace, the world has opened up to art’s limited potential, and bares its juice-filled, swollen fruit for our pleasure.

But is it truly so? My answer, unabashedly, is a resounding NO!

It seems that the avenues of communication and education freed from its binds by the digital revolution has merely served to nullify the artist; globalization has given way to a generation of introversion where the ability to reach untold masses through our own devices has simply let us spread the disease of lull like a mindless parasite! A world of instant sharing has not given way to a plentiful abundance of ideas borne from minds pregnant with inspiration, but has only served to restrain and even kill personal vision with the thrill of being whitewashed and assimilating into an ever-increasing clubhouse of funky fads and tacky trends. The birth of the collective consciousness has proven the death of the individual and the seed of creation. May we weep for her heavy heart, and mourn her tragic death.

From her ashes comes forth a simple message: No more compromising! Where ambition exceeds its own ability, let us fall from tightropes with no safety nets of irony. Where personal vision is realized, let us rejoice in its success. In a world of everything and abundance, there is no more room to focus on the ‘possible’ in its self-professed garbs of uniqueness, just as much fine linen as the emperor’s new clothes. This is not a plea for intellectualism; this is a battle call! Let madmen worldwide will themselves to power and cast judgement on the passion we ourselves have killed: let us return to the raw power of fascination… whether we like it or not!