I always intended that "Dad was a Jovian bird" would be called "Dad was an alien bird". It was a phrase I had in mind for years that I knew one day I would use as a song title. But all goes to darkness and then... "if it's from Mars, it's Martian. What if it's from Jupiter?" "OK, Google". "Jovian" is such a beautiful word and it sounds like "jovem" in Portuguese which means "young".
My father wasn't a young bird when he died but he was definitely different from his friends I knew as a child. Dad never really lost his inner child, although I don’t think that he realised. There was always something unusual about him. He was funny. He was silly. He was TOO good.
I never asked him if he wanted to be a father. I don't think he'd be able to answer. I don’t think children should want to emulate their parents, and I never wanted to be like my Dad. Now I realise that I am a lot like him.
It took me years to understand dad was never really ready for life on this planet. I'm afraid that is in my genes to struggle to live a ‘nice’ life and I should resign myself to never find peace of mind or material stability
What would a Jovian bird look like? I fail miserably when I try to understand what Jupiter is like, what it would be like to be there, if I could survive to fully enjoy my stay. Well, like my Dad's existence, my own existence, and tons of other things, I'm too small to grasp all that, so I must unwind and move on.
"Dad..." was started and finished in 2016. Dad died in 2006.

I don't usually have a concept when I sit down to work on a new song. Sometimes I don't even know I'll end up working on a new song.
I did have a concept, though, when I sat down to create "All goes to darkness...". I'd listened to something, some African music maybe, or something that borrowed from African music and it all revolved around C (the chord). I wanted to make something like that but I’m sure "all goes..." is very different from its inspiration.
I'd gathered many samples and they had nothing in common. I kept them in a folder, "just in case" and then I decided I was gonna use all of them on this song. It was gonna be like a parade of samples, different sounds that had nothing in common but the fact they were sounds I found beautiful and would like them to be on my music. Without them, "all goes..." would be a bit like canvas without the right paint, or an unfinished painting.
I remember that I had some piano thing sitting around that I didn't know how to use, it can be heard throughout the whole song in the background.
Some of the samples are very subtle and some have clear definition. I guess that my attempt to creating something that sounds African didn't quite work, but the percussion is there and so is the African-like tune (unless you think it doesn't sound African at all and I am nuts). Fair enough.
Like many of my compositions I wanted the song to sound like it was dying, which meant going for old tape eroded texture, an exercise on how to ruin files until you have the ideal 'wrong' sound.
"All goes to darkness and then..." was probably started and finished in 2015, and shelved... until now.

"All goes to darkness and then..." and "Dad..." have nothing in common or... maybe one day something will come to me and It'll be magical when I notice they were like father and son.

Actually they do have one thing in common. Get in touch with me to tell me what you think it is.