Comments:--"Very Vangellis. Tremendous and atmospheric :)" (Nino Harmonic)--"Definitely sets up a cinematic mood and the build up is perfectly timed." (John Tabacco)--"Very cinematic. Really creates a mood!" (Neal Fox)--"Beautiful, epic and expansive. Music for heroes." (MC Cyclops)--"Be in a quiet space and listen - it describes the first sunrise, the beginning." (Maria-113)--"This piece is a traveling piece, it takes you with it,and you don't know where for a long time, and then it gets there, and it's not loud but it's good. Then it keeps going, and you know the trip is not over." (User 244931788)A Comment from the Composer:If, upon the chiming of the cuckoo clock, the cuckoo itself came forth and made its obligatory sound, and at that moment we were to say, “Look! See what you have become—turn and look at that from which you have emerged!”, we might find the proud cuckoo to be—Actually, let me take this from another"coign of vantage":SKYDIVING IN TIME came out of a new working method for me. I put down 75 separate tracks very rapidly, then went back to develop the 20 that I liked best. This ultimately led to the 8 pieces that comprise the album now.Perhaps the turbulent political atmosphere during the time I was writing the album has had an influence, perhaps not. The current political fad of 2017 in which free speech is something to be"shut down" is completely understandable--those who cannot themselves think or communicate effectively rightly perceive such ability in others to be a deadly weapon, and must attempt to vomit it from their body politic.  And so it has been in the world of Music—while pretending the opposite to be true."Progress" in art is an amusing affectation by those of limited analytic ability. They somehow feel that having arrived later makes them smarter. But no matter how high a stack of Cliffs Notes one has surveilled regarding history, the concept of “progress” in art rings false.“Progress” is a term designed to elicit funding now for a promised product. It thus puts Music into the realm of finance and loans.In its State-approved form, it must of course operate at a deficit.In 1981 I began a doctoral program in Music Composition, but found, to my credit, that I did NOT fit in with such a world as the smoky halls of academia had become. Given the institutions lauded by the elites of the establishment—the NEA, the foundations, the grants, the connoisseurs en masse—the functional question for me was: “do I really want to be a government agent?” In this way, even by merely hinting at such a question, I obviously did not belong.The failure of most music criticism to locate anything other than its own prejudices is ably noted in Nicolas Slonimsky's"Lexicon of Musical Invective". There are those who are not able to see the world, but only their reactions to it. Such go to University and expect this trait to become a marketable skill. They hope to become a"critic" or “academic”, and proudly serve the State, helping to mold Music to better serve the purposes of the State, for good or bad or evil. The State-bonded critic finds a composer who will cooperate, the composer-critic composite (symbiosis) is presented to the audience-critic-state composite, and various awards are given by the State to itself on behalf of the composer.The critic holds forth with an article or “review” which attempts to be its own work of art. The reader of the review is attracted, ordinarily, by the idea of carnage. The styles and techniques which the critic avers to apprehend are denoted at length, not to position the music reviewed within the culture, but to establish the critic as knowledgeable. This review will then end off with resounding language regarding the importance to History of the critic.In my time, it was Charles Wuorinen, Ralph Shapee, that I was supposed to adore and emulate, and they were impressive indeed. I have had the opportunity to hear many various and sundry composers speak and I was impressed by their amazing certainty and sophistication. Certainly there was a whole world to be won, cultivated by such a philosophic plow as the manner to which I was expected to attain and manifest!But my error was this: did I really want to be a government agent?The names"Steve Reich" and"Philip Glass" were spat with such hatred by my professors and their avid clones that it's now painfully obvious how my career in the musical Marxist tour could only end.One evening I was suddenly told, after two years of study with my professor, that I would"never be a composer”. By his definition, I am glad this is true.I left school, went into rock, new wave, punk, no-wave, noise, performance art, minimalism, mathematical, process, aleatoric, hip hop and trance, etc., etc., amazed at what was In the World. Up all hours, trying to piece together this whole Citizen Kane array of artistic bric-a-brac that I have found because I went and looked. There are a lot of great composers out there, in the big wide world of living people, that have not yet been summarily (if unknown to them or anyone else) executed by those who have debased and perverted the once-valuable notion of academia. It’s amazing how many times people have said, smugly, “It’s been done”. But they keep on saying it!As for the ultimate fate of Music itself, it is indeed a marvel how a seed may pass, intact, through the digestive tract of an animal to grow some miles away from its point of origin.DR