And so, as we began to conceive of what the sound and music of “Christmas On Mars” would be, we found ourselves like some long searching astronomers discovering a new galaxy. In the beginning, it was simply refreshing not to always be thinking about singing. But there was also a great experimental freedom that, I believe, if we had not been able to work in, would have been, as curious humans always looking for new thrills, very frustrating… You have to remember we had not yet completed Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots … and we didn’t even know that it would be called "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" …we were still searching for some new cohesive trip …but interspersed throughout the Yoshimi sessions, we would jump into the music intended for Christmas On Mars, and, almost always, the abstractness and anarchy (in both the recording and the composition) would rejuvenate and inspire us. We recorded Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon initially for Christmas On Mars (Pavonis Mons is a spot on Mars). The scene, which was never shot, was hazily imagined to be a pleasant hallucination where Steven’s character is looking out of a window and, since it’s always dark outside, he dreams of watching a sunset with some hot air balloon coming in for a landing on the surface of Mars. Well, the flavor and dumb triumphantness of the track didn’t seem to fit. We tried, but it seemed too upbeat and pop for Christmas on Mars …but having it be part of the Yoshimi song collection seemed perfect. More than a few times, we were surprised by the unexpected freedom this sphere of creation gave us, which carried on even throughout the making of At War With The Mystics.

As the movie slowly came together, so did Steven’s confidence in creating denser more emotional musical pieces … some stream of consciousness that only a musician of his caliber has access to … like a creative trance that allowed him to sleepwalk into oblivion and send a messenger (the music) back from this holy-land dimension beyond. His arrangements and melodies purely expressed an underlying optimism beneath an avalanche of despair. They (the compositions) were powerful and otherworldly and had an eastern European bleak glitter about them. I don’t know why, but upon hearing them, in my mind I imagined a 1940s Russian composer whose only daughter is autistic and he tries to communicate to her the beauty of life through his music… but sadly his music is too tragic and causes her to commit suicide.. Anyway…(just my imagination going off on a trip) …the music changed the richness and meanings of what the film could express. And so, early on, what was, maybe, a clumsy amateurish scene was now, with this new darker complex shading of sound, texture and melody, somehow made more unsettling, yet more comforting, more humanistic… and made us more true. That is, after all what the phrase Christmas on Mars is saying… that we know for certain that life is bleak and dark… it is awkward and clumsy… and void of all meaning. Therefore, it is up to us to make it beautiful and graceful. It is up to us to see it’s magic and wonder.. And so, in the truest sense of understanding what is sublime… we know that we can, regardless of our plight, create our own meaning, and create our own joy and happiness… this is the Christmas we speak of...

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