Disquiet Junto 0628 Alchemical Brothers
As I understand it, separation follows dissolution. The element of dissolution is water, and the process is immersion. In a psychological reading, dissolution may mean the immersion of the psyche in all things that your consciousness has rejected. Afterwards, separation is the process of identifying, sorting, identifying the gold, and discarding the rest.
I used separation like a verb. When I think of what is happening during separation, I think of drying up, airing out the humidity saturating the mix. Passing through the gate from dissolution, I could only think "wet", as in reverb or saturation. I decided to start with everything, a full sound with many elements included all at once, a fully wet mix. As the track plays, I discarded the non-essential, until only two elements are left. The next gate of conjunction deals with the reuniting these separated elements (which might be an insightful follow-up assignment).
For the music itself, I got the sense that alchemy is infused with numerology, and the numbers 3,5,7 seem to hold high importance. I made some Euclidean rhythms using groupings of 3,5,7 for the rhythmic elements, and tried to move by thirds, fifths, and 7ths with the melodic elements. The dominant time signature is 7/4, but some of the elements are 5/4 or 3/4 time so there is a polymeter thing going on back there.
This was fun. I tend to build up in a track rather than tear down so this was enlightening. I learned a lot about alchemy which was a nice side effect.