BABEL: CONFUSION OF TONGUES
Confusion. Order becomes architecture.
BABEL Release Date: 09.30.2019 - CONFUSION OF TONGUES Release Date: 09.30.2020
Babel: Confusion of Tongues expands the cosmology introduced in Solar Mansions and subjects it to strain.
Released in two phases across one year, the album appears at first as Babel, a 2xLP containing nine tracks. But for those who acquired the Deluxe Edition, a larger structure slowly revealed itself. Three additional records arrived one at a time, each mailed at three month intervals. These were not outtakes. They were not B sides. They were part of the original design. Together they completed a twelve track composition known as Babel: Confusion of Tongues.
Babel and Confusion of Tongues form a single unified system. Not a double album. Not an expansion. A design.
At the center of that design is a twelve section wheel structured around the Zodiac and the color spectrum. The first track, Cadence, begins in the Aries red position. From there the sequence unfolds counter clockwise. Each side of vinyl is color coded. Each center label and sleeve corresponds to a place on the wheel. The three Confusion of Tongues records complete the pattern.
Where Solar Mansions dwelt within celestial order, Babel encodes it. The heavens are no longer contemplated. They are diagrammed. The cosmos becomes blueprint. The blueprint becomes tower.
Language fractures under the weight of its own construction. The title Confusion of Tongues does not describe mere miscommunication. It names structural collapse. When system replaces humility, revelation becomes ambition.
The physical form reinforces this escalation. Custom gatefolds and a wooden slipcase house the complete work, transforming the album into an object of architecture rather than a collection of songs.
Within The Arcana, Babel occupies Column Two of Octave Two, the position of revelation intensified. In Octave One, Column Two revealed cosmic order through wonder. In Octave Two, revelation becomes construction. The pattern is no longer observed. It is engineered.
In The Lexicon, this position corresponds to The Star. Here the symbol fractures. The Star multiplies into The Chaos Star, its ordered light splintered into competing directions. From that fragmentation rises The Tower, the structure built to contain and express the system itself.
The heavens are no longer contemplated. They are diagrammed. The cosmos becomes blueprint. The blueprint becomes tower.
In The Mirror, Babel is paired with album thirteen. Where Babel constructs system outwardly, the mirror turns structure inward. Babel builds the tower and album thirteen must govern the man who refuses to build one. The first impulse seeks to encode the world. Its reflection seeks to master the self within it.
And the tower begins to tremble.
The Deluxe Edition of Babel: Confusion of Tongues was produced in an edition of 33 copies, available exclusively through A Thousand Arms Music. The set was designed to house the complete physical form of the work, uniting Babel and Confusion of Tongues within a single constructed object.
At its center was Babel pressed on 180 gram gold vinyl in gatefold packaging alongside a compact disc edition of the album. The records were accompanied by the expanded 3LP gatefold of Confusion of Tongues, whose interior diagrams and symbolic structures reveal the full twelve section wheel underlying the album. This gatefold contains much of the iconography and visual language that would later become essential to the decoding of the RANGES system, particularly the symbolic framework that emerges after 33. Within The Arcana, it stands as one of the earliest physical documents of the architecture that governs the second half of the cycle.
Both the Babel and Confusion of Tongues records were housed inside a handmade wooden slipcase with a screen printed cover, transforming the album into a single architectural artifact rather than a collection of separate releases.
The edition also included a series of accompanying objects tied to the world surrounding the record. A hand printed Babel slipmat, hand thrown ceramic shot glass, and a bag of Decadence coffee roasted in Bozeman, Montana by Ghost Town Coffee extended the experience into the physical environment of the listener. A RANGES wall flag featuring the Tower of Babel, an Octogram shirt, and a selection of Ranges stickers carried the album’s visual language outward into the surrounding space.
Included within the set was a bronze Æterno Gemini coin, linking the release to the developing symbolic system that would later expand into The Cultus.
Released on September 30, 2019, the Deluxe Edition stands as the complete physical artifact of Babel: Confusion of Tongues, preserving both the music and the structural diagrams that underpin its design.
BABEL: CONFUSION OF TONGUES DELUXE EDITION
BABEL: CONFUSION OF TONGUES ARTWORK
To further expand the album’s color-based structure, eight limited-edition shirt designs were created. Each corresponding to a section of the wheel. These shirts were made available only during the pre-order window and remained exclusive until the album’s full release on 09/30/2020 through A Thousand Arms (US).
Each design was more than merch.
It was a symbolic extension of the system.
