Closing In is the oldest song on the album. I recorded Closing In 1.0 in 1992. The spoken intro and the orchestral intro were recorded soon after, and mixed together in the spring of 1993. Version 1.0 appeared on Cat Compilation II. The orchestral intro of version 1.0 appeared in the opening screens of the 3DO game "BALLZ". Steve and I recorded version 2.0 in 01/97 and 02/97.

Closing In was the first and, in some ways, the grandest example of the new kind of music I had been wanting to do. Many years of pent-up ideas and desire to express were poured into it. As a result, it is a bit childish. I decided I didn't care, and put it on the record anyway, because although somewhat juvenile, it is glorious. Also, I have to remember that a lot of the people who will hear the song will be a lot younger than I am, and may find it more relevant than I do now. I'm sure that if I had had this song available to me when I was 17, I would have been happier.

The character singing this song is just before the point of accepting and reveling in his downfall. The character and the song are somewhat at odds. He's still afraid of it, trying to outrun it, but the sound of the song calls to him, offering him the glory of his own impending downfall and insanity.

This track shows the great joy of owning Sound Forge 4.0: The dissolving-in-his-own-angst vocal processing at the ends of lines 1 and 3 of each verse were accomplished by tossing the vocal tracks over to the computer, using Sound Forge to mess them up, and then running them back out onto tape. Steve is playing some of the guitar parts here, and some are samples. The screaming cat sound is probably my favorite sound effect on the album.