The history of Vision Solitude is mostly comprised of sporadic ideas that quickly fizzled out. For a long time, I ignored the importance of this project, judging that every occurrence was a mistake and should have been incorporated in other projects. While this is mostly true, I finally took the time to write about all of the different bits and pieces, leading to a greater picture and revealing that this project should not have been overlooked.

-Years of Sorrow (Summer 2006)

Prior to Vision Solitude even being an idea, and before Triskalyon came around to open up the opportunity to start such a side-project, I was throwing every song composition that was not deemed Throne of Mortality-material into a folder titled “Projection Mina“. One of these songs was “Years of Sorrow”; a melodic death metal piece with a clean intro, composed in the summer of 2006. I continued playing the intro from this song, developing it into its own new song, which I perhaps planned to eventually record as an acoustic guitar piece.

In late July of 2006, I moved from Edison, New Jersey, back to Montreal where I was born. At first I lived in my grandmother’s basement and this is where the idea of Triskalyon finally came about. Through this collective, I decided that I could create side-projects and different bands, separating the different sounds and ideas behind the compositions. Each side-project would be named “Vision” something. This was influenced by Les Legions Noires, which named all of its side-projects “Project” something.

This idea came in late September of 2006 and it wasn’t long before I started recording songs with a mindset to release many demos of the new side-projects. Although the evolved acoustic intro of “Years of Sorrow” would have seemed more logical to record first, as it was the oldest in the new batch of songs that I was working on, it was Vision Sufferance with which I started. I recorded the first Vision Sufferance song on October 1, 2006 and a second one on October 2, 2006. At that time, I was release-happy and couldn’t wait to have the first Vision’s demo out. So I immediately released it on the evening of October 2, 2006. At the time, they were the only two songs that I had a clear vision of where I wanted the project to go so I didn’t even consider adding more songs to it.

-Solitude Au Loin (Fall 2006)

On Tuesday, October 3, 2006, Vision Solitude officially came together. At the time, I was working at Bistro Van Houtte, a cafe in the Palais des Congres building in downtown Montreal. I remember that I was excited about Vision Sufferance’s demo coming out the night before and was already looking to find a name for a second side-project. Many Les Legions Noires projects existed only long enough to release a demo and then moved on to a new idea. So I was following those guidelines. Chances are that I was already planning to record the evolved acoustic intro of “Years of Sorrow” for this second side-project. The theme of this new project was going to be dark acoustic folk. I remember thinking that in the metal world, people often confused the “folk” genre with “folkloric”, hence a lot of those terrible “folk black metal” bands (like Finntroll) were not “folk” (as in folk rock from the 1960’s, which itself derived from folk lore story-telling songs) but were instead “folkloric black metal” inspired by fairytales. This project was going to put the real “folk” back into dark ambient, using acoustic guitars and hippie-style strumming. This was probably also influenced by the 1980’s Kamouraska acoustic guitar that my uncle Pierre Bourdon had given me that month.

Bistro Van Houtte was always playing Quebecer pop music, chosen by the employees from a selection of compact discs locked in a cabinet with the stereo. On the afternoon of October 3, 2006, I heard Daniel Belanger’s song “Dans un Spoutnik”; it was either included on a Various Artists compilation (as it was a pop hit single) or someone may have chosen to play his 2001 album “Rêver Mieux”. It was an acoustic song and featured the lyrics “Six milliard de solitude”. It fitted perfectly with the idea of the new project that I had in mind and I immediately decided that this would be the name for it; “Vision Solitude”. I recall mentioning to a nearby employee “That’s the name of my new band! Solitude; Vision Solitude.”

That night, I went back to my grandmother’s place and planned to record the new song on my day off the next day. The new song was appropriately titled “Solitude au loin”. My recording equipment was very limited. When I had returned to to Montreal, I had only brought the minimum amount of stuff with me. That was a bag of clothes, my Boss Metal Zone pedal and one guitar, Kelly. My grandmother already had a computer so I had left mine at my parent’s house with a plan for them to bring me more stuff when they visited for Christmas. But I downloaded some programs and had almost the same setup as on my own computer; Cakewalk Sonar with a direct line-in to the computer through my Boss Metal Zone pedal. I also went to Steve’s Music store to buy a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch Monster cable. With that simple setup, I had no way to record acoustically, it had to be a plugged in electric guitar; this was forcing me to use the opposite equipment of what the project was intended to be. So the first Vision Solitude demo was reduced to a demo of a demo; something that I planned to re-demo properly in the future using an acoustic guitar.

This eponymous release was put out through Triskalyon’s new record label, Mortification Records, on the night of October 4, 2006. One of the aspects of the record label was that we would release every demo digitally but with artwork fitting a cassette tape case. So we encouraged people to print it out and dub it on tapes. This was an idea that Der. Walsch and I came up with when designing Vision Sufferance’s demo artwork a couple of days prior. He did the same thing when he designed Vision Solitude’s demo artwork.

Just about a week later, On October 12, 2006, I wound up quitting my job at Bistro Van Houtte, a sure sign that my creativity was booming, and also my depression. But I wasn’t focusing on Vision Solitude anymore. As far as I was concerned, Vision Sufferance and Vision Solitude were already fulfilled and I needed to find new projects on which to focus. I knew that those two would come back again later, with new ideas, but at that moment they were dormant. Throne of Mortality and Vision Lunar became the principle bands of my focus.

I’m not sure exactly how soon after the release of the Vision Sufferance and Vision Solitude demos that it occurred but I soon found myself regretting my release-happy phase and the entire free-for-all attitude of separating projects based on themes. I felt that the two demos should have been combined. At the time that they were recorded, they seemed like complete opposites with clearly defined boundaries. But as time went on, I was constantly plagued by doubts and the similarity of the three songs that had been recorded. Which band would I continue: Vision Sufferance or Vision Solitude? Couldn’t they be combined as a single dark ambient project featuring all the themes from both projects? But then again Vision Solitude was always planned to be acoustic and Vision Sufferance was electric. This dilemma pestered me for many years, and as new ideas came in for Vision Solitude, they were quickly transferred into other bands.

From November of 2006 to January of 2007, things were mostly quiet for Vision Solitude and I can’t even remember the faintest plan that I had for the band, or if I even considered it still active. But there must have been some thoughts put into it because my uncle Pierre gave me his old Kamouraska acoustic guitar and I fixed it up to play a little bit with it. In late November 2006, I left for New York City to sell Christmas trees with my cousin Frank Bourdon. That was cut short and I moved back to my parent’s house in Edison in early-to-mid-December.

-Not Song (Winter 2007)

It was in February of 2007 that the project came back into the picture. At the time I was working on the “Triskalyon Promo Pack” Various Artists compilation and I was considering a few different concept ideas. The initial plan was to feature a song from each of the bands and visions of Triskalyon. So “Solitude au loin” was definitely going to be included. Then I got the idea of including a second, new and unreleased song from each of the bands; each band would contribute their favourite single and an unreleased song, making this a sort of best-of plus b-sides compilation of Triskalyon artists.

I was still hoping for Vision Solitude to be an acoustic project. But even with all my equipment at the newly-established Mortified Studio in my parents’ house in Edison, I wasn’t able to figure out how to record with my acoustic guitar. So new Vision Solitude songs were once again recorded with an electric guitar. This time around I brought back an old The Slopin Fairy 7 song, “When You’re Not Meant For Love“. This was the second song that I ever wrote, around July or August of 2003. On the evening of February 11, 2007 I recorded two takes of this old song, shortening it’s name to “Not Song” (it had previously been shortened to “When You’re Not” for The Slopin Fairy 7’s album “The Fairy”).

The first take featured some sort of bouncing notes intro, which for the life of me I cannot recall how I accomplished. It was likely done with a spectral sound effect in Cakewalk Sonar. I kept it in the mix because it was so incredibly awesome that I managed to do that without even knowing how. Four years after its inception, the “Not Song” had slowed down considerably and took on an almost drone-y / Arab Strap-esque atmosphere, with some reverb, an effect which I had recently discovered and was using on almost every song. It also spanned nearly eight minutes. Halfway through the song though, it sped up slightly, but returned to its slow speed to gradually end at a crawl. Coincidentally, Arab Strap was a band which Pierre Bourdon introduced.

The second take was more straight-forward. The quality slightly better, less effects, a bit faster and only over five minutes in length. But it did have a bit of a different build up at the end, featuring a different strumming than in any other version recorded.

One of these takes should have been included on the “Triskalyon Promo Pack”. But there was so much drama behind the scenes that resulted in not only this song never being released but also the compilation being shelved and Triskalyon ending altogether. To begin with, “When You’re Not Meant for Love” was an incredibly personal song and the title alone made me self-conscious. Even with it’s new, shortened title, I remained embarrassed to have it released. This played back and forth in my mind as to whether the “Triskalyon Promo Pack” should even include any unreleased b-sides or not, as many other b-sides were rough demos and not “release-worthy” in my mind.

Some members of Triskalyon were not supportive of the new music that I was recording. This only increased my insecurity in releasing the music. By the end of February 2007, both Suhrim and Darklink had left Triskalyon. Even with new members, the circle never regained the momentum it had built up in January and on March 5, 2007, I announced the dissolution of Triskalyon. The “Triskalyon Promo Pack” compilation was shelved and wouldn’t be released until much later in the year, at that time reduced to a simple “best-of” compilation without previously-unreleased material and failing to showcase the complete roster of bands which Triskalyon had represented. The date of release was set back to March of 2007 simply because that was the last time any updates were made to it.

But there was a major plan for Vision Solitude that occurred before Triskalyon ended. The “Not Song” brought new life into the project and I got the idea to work on a full-length album. I was a big fan of Jonathan Swift’s novel “Gulliver’s Travels”, having read it as a kid, and having since always found a mystique to the film versions, seldom aired on television in Canada. The book’s full title was “Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World, In Four Parts, By Lemuel Gulliver, First A Surgeon, And Then A Captain Of Several Ships”. It was on February 27, 2007 that I came up with the idea to name the upcoming Vision Solitude album “Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The Mind”.

For multiple reasons, most of which have been forgotten with time, this album title was passed off to Vision Sufferance. Perhaps I already thought that Vision Solitude was a dead project and couldn’t redeem itself from the unappreciated demo in 2006 (which I personally found superior in quality to Vision Sufferance’s). So I once again left Vision Solitude alone and worked on the Vision Sufferance album for the next two years. Vision Sufferance’s “Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The Mind” was completed in June 2009 and released after a year of delay on June 18, 2010.

-Lantern’s Awake (Fall 2008)

On September 9, 2008, I recorded a new song without any affinity to a specific band or project. The new song had three segments: an Asian-sounding intro (which was a sort of re-working of the intro from the unreleased Vision Lunar song “Lunar XIII” which had been composed roughly a year prior), and two folk-style strumming parts with reverb.

At the time that I was recording this new song, I was under the impression that I was composing indie rock, something in the lines of Green Territory, Douglas Fir and Crosstide. I decided to name this new song “Lantern’s Awake“, finally using the title which I had come up with earlier in the year.

“Lantern’s Awake” was a title that I originally came up with some time in early 2008 while I still lived in Ville Marie, at 2108 Bleury Street. I had no idea how it would be used; either as a song title or an album title. But I also had no new material requiring a title at the time, so it was kept for a later use.

I realized that this new song sounded like a mix between Vision Éternel (the reverb and the general sound of the production) and Vision Solitude (the folk-like strumming). In the end, this song wound up being labeled a Vision Solitude song.

So I spent the next few months debating if I had what it took to start a new indie rock band. I even considered reviving Vision Solitude as an indie rock band. Finally, on December 22, 2008, I came up with the album title that I would use if such a band would ever happen: “Nebraska Motion”. But this idea fizzled out in early 2009 and I gave up the idea to play indie rock completely. I still liked the title “Lantern’s Awake” quite a bit and wound up reusing it for a drone metal/post-metal band of the same name two years later.

-Solitude ’09 (Summer 2009)

Ironically, just as Soufferance (the new name for Vision Sufferance) finished the album originally planned for Vision Solitude, “Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The Mind”, in June of 2009 (it was later released in June of 2010), I decided to bring back Vision Solitude. It seemed to confirm that Vision Solitude existed only in the shadow of Vision Sufferance.

This time, I wanted to turn Vision Solitude into a post-rock band. On July 2, 2009 (the date could be wrong but it was certainly around this time) I recorded a single song, “Solitude ’09”. But I quickly realized that it sounded far too similar to my other band, Vision Éternel. There were clear differences though. Up until that time, Vision Éternel strictly used (and almost exclusively) picking-styled guitar playing, whereas Vision Solitude had always been a folk-styled strumming. “Solitude ’09” was a strumming song, but the layers of reverb used on the recording made it sound exactly like the other Vision Éternel songs of that era, as I was composing and recording “Abondance De Périls“.

Initially, I kept the new song labeled as a Vision Solitude song, buried in a folder where I wouldn’t have to look at it again for quite some time. But when I rediscovered the song years later, it was promptly moved to Vision Éternel’s folder, where it fits much more comfortably. I finally released the song as part of Vision Éternel’s discography boxed set “An Anthology of Past Misfortunes” in 2018 (in preparation since 2016). It appears on the cassette tape compilation “Lost Misfortunes: A Selection Of Demos And Rarities (Part One)” and was renamed “Thoughts As Lessening”.

-Acoustic (Winter 2010)

A recent discovery indicates that I attempted once again to record and possibly revive Vision Solitude in early 2010. First, an “acoustic” labeled song was recorded on February 27, 2010. It was played on my electric Renegade guitar Mina, in AA tunning, plugged in. Right around that time, I was also learning to play some doom and post-metal stuff for what would later become Lanterns Awake. That was the reason that I had my guitar in that tuning.

About a month later, on March 22, 2010 I recorded two new demo songs using my acoustic Kamouraska guitar Jenna. It was recorded using a cheap microphone plugged into my 4-Track recorder (which was also used a week or two later for Lanterns Awake’s doom metal recordings). This setup picked up every interference noise around.

It has unfortunately been impossible for me to remember the exact purpose of these recordings. But these could have been demos for Éphémère, in which I played from February to May of 2010. We had a few acoustic ideas in the works, and as Vision Solitude was no longer active, these songs do not technically belong under that band name. It’s only in hindsight that I would properly classify them as Vision Solitude-like songs. On the other hand, I didn’t actually record the guitar parts of Rievocando Quella Notte until April 28, 2010, and that was the first song that I really worked on. So these may have been acoustic demo ideas for Lanterns Awake.