I recorded and completed this project in 2011. When I was younger, I used to go by the name Prophecy. I liked it because in the dictionary it said that meant one who speaks under divine influence. In 2007, I was deployed to the Persian Gulf, where I spent the next 7.5 months out at sea. One morning while walking the flight deck, I came up with the name for this character I wanted to base my new sound and ideology around. This new character would be called Nicholas Ether, Nicholas being my first name, and Ether because of a book I once read after graduating high school. In the book, it explained that we all have a higher self. Our higher self is like a frequency or a radio signal. When we are in tune with this signal, we are thinking and acting clearly. Our perception is razor sharp. All of our chakras are aligned, and we are operating from a truly pure and innovative place. During our day, distractions, thoughts, and struggles break this link between us and our higher selves. We fall in and out of this radio signal all the time. The ether is said to be the highest layer of our atmosphere, the upper region beyond the clouds. Nicholas Ether is my higher self, who is always in tune with himself and unseen forces which permeate the world we live in. I have always believed that there was a such thing as aliens or UFOs. The truth of these matters is only now finally coming to light, but I have been talking about the probability of UFOs and extraterrestrials for years. I have always been a fan of science fiction stories. To me, it is only fiction for a moment before it becomes reality. We are definitely living in the future now. You can say that the type of music, the type of hip hop I like to create is sci fi hip hop. The context behind this project is as follows. In the future, there is a group of space travelers by the name of The Space People. This group lives and operates on a large, modern flying apparatus. The group is a very eclectic and progressive bunch, consisting of architects and producers and artists who travel through space, looking for and recruiting those who they wish to learn from and pass on their secrets to in order to continue to progress and evolve. The Space People are very emphatic and telepathic and have had their eyes on a certain individual on earth by the name of Nicholas Ether. They can sense and feel his aura and thoughts from thousands of light years away and have been eager to recruit him. One night, while Nicholas is walking home, our space craft shoots out a beacon of light which lifts him into our mission control of our ship, where we fly away. At first Nicholas is horrified by the experience and what he sees but quickly begins to realize that we are not going to hurt him in any way. In fact, he is welcomed by his fellow brothers and sisters on board. We each begin to explain to him who we are, what we represent, and why we have chosen him to join us. They go on to explain that there is a whole group of people called the mystical population who believe and practice the ways of the space people and that it was their mission to spread that knowledge throughout the world but especially to the people of earth before their planet was destroyed by their own hands. I wanted the music to be what you would hear on board one of the space people's ships at 3 am in the middle of deep space, orbiting an unknown planet for the first time. This would be the first project meant to give the listener the background and context behind Nicholas Ether and The Space People. Every album after this would simply be a sort of further adventures of. All the beats were made using the Ensoniq ASR10, the MPC 2000XL, various other keyboards, and lots of records. I want my sound to represent the sampling methods of the past mixed with music for tomorrow. When I returned from deployment, I had all this equipment I was able to acquire to make beats with that was just sitting in my room, waiting for me to learn how to use and operate. This was the very first fully self-produced album that I had ever recorded. At one point in time, I very much wanted to mc and so I have a whole completed album of the mystical population with words but for now, I would like to present all the beats to the listeners of the word. Thank you for listening and supporting this channel! Please subscribe if you would like to hear more! Follow me on Instagram @soulseekerbeats and @nicholasether

The Mystical Population

1. Star Disciples

2. Chopped Samples and Crop Circles

3. Controlling Transmission

4. Calls To Space

5. Laser Sound Dreams - Produced by Stealth

6. Mass Hallucinations

7. Waves

8. Inner voices

9. Intermission

10. Mixed Up with The Stars

11. Strange Haunting Music

12. The Mystical Population

13. Astral Substance

14. Have You Heard of the Mystical Population?

All tracks written, produced, and mixed by Nicholas Ether for Soul Seeker Records 2011. All Scratches by DJ Bones McCoy