“Never Again” never had an intended inclusion as a track. Its genesis dates back to my first experimentation with a then unfamiliar-to-me digital audio workstation (DAW) called FL Studio. It started out as just a piano ostinato with some bass synthesizers layered in on a graduated basis, as I learned how to record, how to manipulate, and just basically how to navigate the software.
Occasionally, I would revisit it and pick at it like a scab.
It wasn’t until I’d been working on “Two Strips” that the idea gelled to use the Palestinian folk melody that appears in that song, in this one. And the can of worms opened.
It had been a long time since I had orchestrated anything, and I’m sure my orchestration teachers would roll over in their graves (the dead ones, anyway) with the result. But it was a lot of fun to revisit something for which I’d once had a tremendous passion.
“Never Again” is a dirge, a funeral march of sorts, the folk melody providing a rough canon over the piano and bass synth ostinatos. Six minutes long, it’s almost a completely instrumental piece, save for a few lines at the end…enough to get the point across. It’s a question as to why we let things happen over and over again: “Will you help me understand why never again keeps happening?”