Anecdata’s new album Vita Brevis, Part 1 is out now, and the curiously titled sequel Vita Brevis, Part 2 is on its way!
Part 1 will be out August 22 and Part 2 later (either in late September or October). Together they tell (well, vaguely hint at) the story of a young woman sent on a journey through time after a New Years Eve party at Stonehenge goes horribly wrong.
Anecdata is the sole work of one nerdy guy holed up in his West Auckland bedroom. Everything – from writing to production, mixing and mastering – is done completely independently. Whether that’s by choice, he’s not sure. Probably not.
Vita Brevis, Part 1 features the industrial grind of Oumuamua, whose soft piano intro soon gives way to Killing Joke-style guitars and brash Gary Numan synths.
There’s also the Duran Duran and Human League-esque new wave of Timelapse and Timevault, six-minute post-rockish Rememberv and escalating drama of the dark and dramatic finale, Chronofiction.
Part 2, recorded alongside Part 1 in the first half of 2025, continues the protagonist Juliet’s unexpected journey into the future, as she tries desperately to figure out what happened and undo it.
Writing and recording of the two records – initially intended as one! – began in January 2025. As work progressed, and the plot solidified, it expanded to two albums – and brought in tunes and musical ideas written as far back as the 1990s.
“This isn’t the first concept album I’ve ever written, but it might be the last that gets recorded and released,” said Dan, the guy mentioned above. Well, he didn’t actually say it but wrote it down as if he did, because press releases usually include a quote from the artist.
As befits a pretentious double album, each part begins with an instrumental and ends with the best song – not that many people will listen that far, but it wouldn’t be right to put the best songs in the middle. That’s just not how these things are done.
“Chronofiction is based on a song I wrote with a friend in 1997,” Dan said, painfully aware of how old that makes him sound. “It started out as a jam with a friend, turned into a song we recorded on a four-track tape machine with really depressing lyrics.
“For over two decades I’ve tried to make this song work, and it now has more synthesizer solos now than any super-dramatic Depeche Mode-borrowing song should ever have, so whatever, it’s done.”
The Bandcamp versions of the albums – you know, that site which actually pays its suppliers, unlike some others – contain several bonus tracks, in the form of demos and embryonic recordings of the albums’ tunes. It’s a chance to hear how a little acoustic guitar lick recorded on a phone turned into the ’80s synth-heavy Timelapse, a 2013 recording of a MIDI piano was the birth of Timevault, or a 2008 demo recorded in one night had pretty much everything you hear in Existentialert – minus the Rick Wakeman keyboard noodling.
