The Existencils

Existencils is a solo recording project by Nick Often. Live collaborators have included Joe Delano, Brian Denny, Melody Often, and the robot Giacometti. A songwriter and independent producer for over ten years, Often is known for his genre-spanning productions. As a young solo act, he self-released two EPs and an LP in Portland, OR. In 2001, a digital EP came in the form of Famous Ghosts, the result of some broken keyboards, a few recording days, and collaboration with an old friend. Relocating to Baltimore in 2002 via his first relocation (NYC), Often continued playing out and recording.

In 2006, after another relocation, he and some pals in Los Angeles formed The Baby Mammals, an indie rock three piece that recorded an EP and staged a tour up the West Coast before disbanding to pursue other projects.

This is when Nick Often wrote Twenty Second Sensory. Often then spent the second half of 2007 in the years 2101-2104, beginning recording on the album in the year that its story line crescendos. Often has said that recording that far into the future helped him to connect more fully with his material and to ultimately come to terms with his future incarceration, which he learned of while writing about it.

Twenty Second Sensory begins in the summer of 2085 with Often's character indulging in youthful intemperance before being imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Two years into his sentence, his niece is born. A bionoid helped into the world by a host of advanced technologies seamlessly integrated into her chemistry, Adelice spends only ten years of her life as a child would. In 2097, just as the Energy Wars between man and machine are starting to heat up, Adelice's parents are murdered and she is kidnapped to be used as a bridge between human chemistry and digital code. A villainous syndicate of bad men and worse metal has plans to create what will come to be known as The Disease. With synthetic sperm encoded entirely by machine, Adelice is artificially inseminated in an underground lab where she is held against her will for the long months before a traumatizing stillbirth and a miraculous escape. It will be in the year 2101, after two hard years on the street for Adelice and fifteen years of hard time for her uncle, that the two will work together to execute a brilliant scheme; hijacking the CelebriLottery, and in a twenty second sensory experience of indescribable energy and light, fusing all of humanity with an analog antidote to exterminate The Disease and save the human race.

Existencils released an EP called The Steam in 2011 on Ltd Comp Records.

http://ltdcomp.com