Titan Agronomist Project (TAP) is an instrumental, progressive, sci-fi project from filmmaker (Howl of the Underdogs, The Dragons of Jim Green) and bassist (This is Not an Elephant, Tanertill), Randy M. Salo. The project is based on the life and work of his grandfather, Jim Green. The project combines Salo’s bass stylings with his love for instrumental prog and film scores. Volume 1 features solo guitar performances from some of Munich’s finest six-string slingers including Andreas Krebs, Konst Fischer, Marcel Thenée and Jakub “JD” Dwornicki.

The album will be released exclusively on Bandcamp in digital format.

The album includes liner notes with photos of Jim during the era Volume 1 is set, a Dragons of Jim Green poster file, a TAP Volume 1 wallpaper, two bonus tracks, plus a three-part podcast featuring a discussion with Randy about his granddad and the scope of the Titan Agronomist Project.

The story which the project is based on can be explored in more detail in the feature documentary, The Dragons of Jim Green. Where that film sought to find out the scientific truth behind Jim Green’s claims of an ancient civilization that destroyed itself, the Titan Agronomist Project sets Jim inside of his own story and seeks to retell the stories he told his grandson in a grand, cinematic fashion. Watch Dragons now: youtu.be/oobL6MTjoJg


TRACK DESCRIPTIONS

1. A Universe of Layers
In the first volume of a multi-part project, we begin our story in the vastness of space. Across the galaxy, in multiple dimensions of time and space, a war is raging. A mysterious woman whose body floats between dimensions bears witness to the chaos and searches for a child she can use as a vessel to prevent the undoing of humankind from a pattern of rising and falling species, evolving from primitive to post-technological beings as they battle for limited resources and power.

2. 1923: Cornfield Crash
1923 Gettysberg, PA, USA. 2 year old Jim Green’s family drives down a country road towards an intersection in a cornfield. The morning sunshine warming his face. A car speeding in the other direction doesn’t see Jim’s family and collides with them at the intersection, throwing the child from his families open-top touring car into the cornfield. The police officers arriving on the scene leave him for dead as they see a piece of cornstalk has penetrated his forehead. But when they return to collect him, they find toddler Jim happy and cooing. A healed-over scar was all that remained of his injury. This injury unlocks a telepathic channel in Jim's pineal gland that will allow him to communicate with and receive images from a mysterious woman living in another dimension of space and time.

3. A Portal is Opened
Young Jim, now 12 years old, has intermittent and haunting visions of a coming war. Powerful beings use devastating power to destroy one another. Fires burn, seas rise, clouds rise. The battles raging on are not just the result of humans. Jim also sees glimses of reptilian creatures, small and large, armoured and ruthless in their destruction. Innocent beings of all forms run for cover, as the skies darken. A massive blast, followed by a shifting of the earth tears the land asunder. Ash blankets the planet, suffocating all life.

4. Maia, Daughter of the Great Atl-Atl of the West
Jim, lying in his bed in the modest tool shed behind his fathers farmhouse sees the vision of a woman. At first he is frightened by the vision of her. She doesn’t speak audibly but he hears her voice in his mind. He asks questions and she answers. Like what is the universe made of? It’s like an onion, with layers of reality on which different lifeforms live. She herself is on another plane of reality and if she would fully enter his she would age rapidly. She warns him that humans are on a path of self-destruction. That civilizations that came before humans have met similar fates. Destroying themselves over their conquest and greed. She tells Jim that he will one day discover the remains of these past civilizations. Proof that humans are headed for the same fate.

5. Up and At ‘Em, Boy!
Jim, now a teenager, shirks his chores to build an old Ham radio, explore books from Einstein, H.G. Wells and Toynbee. His thirst for knowledge is unquenchable and the more he learns the more questions he poses to Maia — the mysterious visitor that often appears unannounced as he lays in his straw bed. As a young man, he starts to feel startled and embarrassed when she appears to him. Particularly, while he is daydreaming of the neighbor-girl who has caught his attention as of late…

6. PLG: Love, Despite Knowing the End Will Come
Teenaged Jim falls in love with his neighbor Phyllis and playfully fights his older brother to win her over. For a moment, Jim forgets his strange visions and is only focused on a future with Phyllis. Phyllis agrees to go with Jim to a local barnyard shindig, where Jim’s bluegrass band, The Smokey Mountain Boys, is playing. When he’s not playing, Jim steals every minute he can to be with Phyllis. Suddenly, a frightening storm picks up outside and the townsfolk run to get home before the downpour. Jim covers Phyllis with his jacket, grabs his banjo and the two dash back to her farm in the rain.

7. 1942: From High School to the High Seas
War rages in Europe and the Pacific and Jim enlists in the US Marines. Jim’s family have suffered in wars. His own uncle was locked up in a southern jail after being captured by the rebels in the Civil War. Off to basic training in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Jim enters a new world of manhood as the drill sergeants whip the young men into shape for service. One false step and a recruit will be forced to stand the entire day in a pit filled with sand fleas in the unforgiving low-country heat of the Palmetto State. When Jim completes his training, he writes to Phyllis that he has been ordered to the Pacific Front and the Battle of Guadalcanal. Although he fears that he may never see her again, he convinces her that they will one day move to start a family in South Carolina, where she can grow tomatoes all year long (not true). As Jim’s battleship cuts the waves of the Pacific Ocean and an air raid siren rises over the swells on the beaches of Guadalcanal, he wonders if this could be the war that his mysterious visitor had warned him of?

To be continued…