Website Down; Don't Panic

Our website, www.thisplagueofdreaming.net, is currently going through an existential crisis and is no longer sure it exists. We can't say how long it will take to bring it around this time, but in the meantime This Plague of Dreaming is still a fully operational netlabel, and we will have a new album ready for you sometime in the next 18 hours (give or take).

To be clear: we still exist, all the music is still available, and, well, we're on it.

UPDATE: We're back online and all is well.

Brief and Unilluminating Update

In the early morning of the 22nd, after being delayed by heavy weather, the air-clipper Man-Cub reached the last logged position of the missing airship Jane Guy. There was no sign of the lost ship or its crew, nor any clear indication of what may have happened to them. Some scraps of metal were found on the ground nearby, but they were determined not to have come from the Guy. Weather reports from the time of the disappearance do not indicate any hazardous or unusual conditions, and discrete inquiries among the local residents have turned up nothing (though many of the people interviewed appeared red-eyed and haggard, and some complained of sleep disturbances, a frequent marker of PDI operations in the vicinity).

The last transmission from the Jane Guy has also been declassified, though it is not at all clear what we are meant to glean from it. I reproduce it here in its entirety (minus call signs and other radio arcana):

when shall the laurel and the vocal string resume their honours when shall we behold the tuneful tongue the promethean hand aspire to ancient praise alas how faint how slow the dawn of beauty and of truth breaks the reluc

Analysis quickly revealed that the text is taken from the opening of the Second Book of The Pleasures of Imagination, by 18th century poet Mark Akenside. The message was delivered in clean code with a steady and unhurried hand on the key, but was cut short mid-line and mid-word. Whether the poem was intended to convey specific information which they dared not transmit openly, even encrypted, or whether the Guy's radio operator was just being inscrutable (a propensity which I have been led to believe is endemic to the vocation), we do not yet know. Akenside's poetry is not unknown to our technicians, though it has not been found to be particularly active under laboratory conditions. Further experimentation and field testing is, no doubt, indicated.

Once again, if you have any information concerning the whereabouts or fate of the airship Jane Guy, I ask that you contact the Institute without delay. I will continue to post updates as they become available.

=PD

Breaking News

Four days ago, the Institute lost radio contact with the airship Jane Guy in the midst of a coded transmission. After repeated attempts to restore contact failed, the Dept. of Exploration dispatched the air-clipper Man-Cub to the Guy's last logged location (not without a certain smug air of step-aside-we'll-handle-this, if I may say so). It may just be a down transmitter. But if it's not, the Dept. assures us that crew of the Man-Cub is trained to handle "these kinds of situations." Updates will be made available as soon as they are declassified.

If you have any information pertaining to the whereabouts or fate of the Jane Guy, please contact the Plaguedream Institute immediately. Your prompt action may prevent disaster.

- - - - -

In other news, the members of To Repel Ghosts have been on unofficial (and unauthorized, dammit) leave since the completion of their recent album Partisan Songs. I apologize to any and all correspondents who have been awaiting responses to their queries while TRG are away. I have been trying to get them to forward me their login information so that I can take care of administrative tasks like approving MySpace Friend requests, but in the meantime I respectfully ask for your patience.

I suppose I can't blame them for cutting loose once in a while - they're unnaturally wed to their research, and I'm sure it takes its toll - but a little bit of notice (or a contact address, or something) would have been appreciated.

=PD

website update

My candle's burning low, but at last the website update is complete.

(Check out our new artist pages at www.thisplagueofdreaming.net.)

It's late, and the tech staff have long since retired to their dormitories, leaving me to finish the update alone, after hours. From my window in the PlagueDream Media Center I can see across the moonlit compound to the bunkhouse, where blue TV flickers light up The Threshold People's window. I Bury the Living? The Killer Shrews? They're probably asleep in front of it by now, the movie rewinding and repeating endlessly on their hulking old VCR and influencing their dreams.

The shades are down on the secretive To Repel Ghosts, but every now and again they light up with a bright spray of sparks, and I can hear the ancient oscillators warble and howl. (TRG find the privacy of their room more conducive to their arcane pursuits than the main laboratory, and they keep ungodly hours.)

Somewhere out there, perhaps, Sypha Nadon gazes with intricate apprehension at this same gibbous moon. His relentless and harrowing explorations, though of vital importance to us all, offer him little comfort in the small hours of the night. For some, sleep is not a refuge.

My work for the night is done, and my candle gutters in its own wax. I am about ready to expire, myself, so I'm off to my bunk.

Dream well, plaguedreamers, and don't get caught.

=PD