In the summer of 2010, months after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, crude oil continued to gush
into the Gulf of Mexico ultimately creating the largest marine oil spill in history. Coming from the southern
United States, Stewart Walker and designer Easton West watched as familiar beaches were smothered by oil slicks and deemed not safe for life. Jared Diamond’s Collapse provided valuable historical perspective of how even advanced civilizations can bring about their own extinction.

Techno music has always had its basis in futurism, from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock to Derrick May name-checking Kraftwerk and Parliament. But the future as a concept no longer captivates as it once did during the space race. Technological growth is constant, and yet it has not saved us from ecological or humanitarian disasters.

Son of Cataclysm, in its first series Artifacts of the pre-Apocalypse embraces the premise of the end of the world and sets about cataloguing the warning signs with a historian’s precision. The website Sonofcataclysm.com hosts an ever-growing series of primary sources, photographs and original projects by Easton West.

Musically, Stewart Walker has developed a new palette of processed instruments based on electric guitar, and drums which he continues to intertwine into baroque orchestrations as he began on his original Persona Records label. Only this time composed with more expressionist noise and urgency; spanning Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance.