Antoin Gibson connects personal history with visions of collapse and the afterlife on The Rise and Fall of Eternity.
The Belfast-born, London-based artist wrote, produced and mastered its five chapters, shifting from introspective rap to dark electronic pop and a folk-inspired closing ballad.
Released through Gibson’s independent creative structure, Circum-Sŏnus links its musical narrative to visual symbolism. A special-edition 12-inch vinyl adds a photobook and sixth track, Shroud of the Obsidian Veil, offering a darker alternative to the standard EP’s closing chapter.
In this FM PRO 10Q, Gibson discusses the personal history behind the opening track, the discipline of mastering his own work, and why a story about eternity needs two possible endings.
Technical perfection should never come at the expense of visceral impact. – Antoin Gibson
Q1. The Rise and Fall of Eternity unfolds as five interconnected chapters moving from identity to collapse, revelation and the cyclical nature of time. When did you realise these songs belonged inside one larger narrative?
Well, my process of writing starts with an idea that sparks a title and concept that just takes over and driving the need to produce it into music – a Universal language. Unlike a lot of artists, I write my songs in one sitting and in a narrative, starting at the start and concluding the piece at the end.
I don’t approach writing as standalone vignettes; my creative instinct is always architectural and thematic. I looked at the structural and dynamic trajectory across the material. If you listen to the EP in the track listing order, you’ll notice phrasing and conceptual motifs that connect every track. While the genres and composition can appear very different on the surface in terms of sound, each one naturally addressed the unresolved tension of the piece before it.
It was clear from the writing of the first track – where the larger narrative was already established in my mind – that the goal wasn’t just writing tracks and coming to a realisation they connect. My goal was to convert the larger narrative I wanted to portray using music and artworks to turn a conceptual thought into a physical medium.
This wasn’t an arbitrary collection of singles, but a deliberate continuum – charting an assertion of identity, the inevitable friction and systemic breakdown that follows, and the understanding that collapse and renewal operate cyclically. Structuring it into five defined chapters and one an intentionally isolated sixth alternative timeline was the only way to do justice to that scope.
Q2. Introduction to the Unexplained feels like a reset, stepping away from the Diss persona and putting the real person behind the music at the centre. What made that the right opening point for the EP?
Well, I address this transition directly through the wordplay in the opening bars:
“Series A-side , confronting society without so much as an Introduction.
Serious time, tide turning to Come Fronting to society of my Production and Induction.”
It plays phonetically on series aside and A-side. Up to that point, my Diss tracks were standalone A-side statements; this was my first rap release intentionally stepping away from that persona.
The Diss chapter originated after my debut release, FlexAble, went viral across 52 countries with a 20% save rate, only for Spotify’s automated algorithms to flag the sudden traction as suspicious and suppress the account. Out of raw frustration with corporate walls, I wrote and immediately distributed F U Society, originally intending it as a mic-drop conclusion.
Instead, it struck a massive chord. Listeners reached out calling it “fearless” and it verbalized the resentment so many felt toward unaccountable corporate machinery. That response proved there was purpose in continuing, which led directly into Diss Topia, Diss Qualification, and Diss Tribute.
Eventually, I realised I had arrived guns blazing without ever giving the audience the personal context or lived history behind why I was confronting these systemic structures. I had skipped an essential stepping stone.
The Rise and Fall of Eternity explores the paradox of existence, moving outward from individual identity to societal collapse and the cyclical nature of time. Introduction to the Unexplained had to come first because the macro narrative required an honest foundation. By grounding the opening chapter in my own lived experience and vulnerability, it provides the emotional context that gives the rest of the project its weight.
Q3. Pandora’s Paradox stays close to personal coping and reflection before Dystopian Empress opens the story out into something much bigger. How did you make that transition from an individual struggle to a wider vision of humanity in decline?
The transition happens through systems. Pandora’s Paradox focuses on internal containment – the psychological weight of navigating isolation and coping within one’s own mind. But internal distress never exists in a vacuum; it reflects and reacts to external structures. Dystopian Empress confronts the dark reality of the collective landscape upon which we exist, exploring what happens when billions of individual coping mechanisms, traumas, and conflicting perceptions of reality collide. Since the planet isn’t inhabited by a single person, Dystopian Empress represents the cumulative outcome of those fractured experiences scaled across an entire global population.
That shift is mirrored directly in the production: intimate, focused arrangements open out into wider, more mechanical, imperial sonic architecture. The personal struggle becomes an echo of institutional and systemic decay. A rather strange and terrifying thing about this track is that I produced it well before summer; then the world was hit with widespread wildfires, earthquakes, and floods. That reality reinforced my decision to release the record on October 9. This was never a summer concept, it reflects and resonates with our current global climate far more intensely than I could have anticipated while creating it.
Q4. Mirrors Behind the Smoke removes the protection of illusion and leaves the listener confronting a fractured reality. What did you want that track to reveal that the earlier chapters deliberately keep hidden?
Earlier in the record, there’s an impulse to intellectualise the pain and construct mythologies, aesthetic shields, and distance around the experience. Mirrors Behind the Smoke; an intentional inversion of the idiom “smoke and mirrors”, deals with the direct aftermath of the events in Dystopian Empress. It captures the moment where external reality strikes with such devastating force that the haze of deception protecting the mind is no longer sustainable for survival.
It forces an unfiltered confrontation with reality without aesthetic distortion. The track reveals that the most exhausting battle isn’t necessarily against outside adversaries or broken institutions, but against the sheer fatigue of sustaining a constructed persona in an environment designed to wear you down. It is the moment the glass clears, and the unvarnished truth is exposed.
Q5. FM PRO TECH Q: You wrote, produced and mastered the project yourself. How did you manage the transition between songwriter, producer and mastering engineer while keeping the EP emotionally coherent rather than over-refining it?
It requires conscious compartmentalization of my workflow. During writing, I rely entirely on melodic intuition, piano motifs, and raw rhythm without analytical interference. I am naturally a very analytical and technical person, but also deeply emotionally driven. Even when writing from pure instinct, an underlying systemic framework is always running in the background. That dual wiring allows me to channel raw emotional passion while naturally embedding the conceptual links that unite individual songs into a larger narrative arc.
In the production phase, the focus shifts to architectural space – shaping dynamics, balancing complex layering, and selecting tones that reinforce that story. The sonic environment is constructed with precise intention to match the emotional core. This is why my signature intro, “Circum-Sŏnus surrounds…,” is never a static, stamped producer tag; it is redesigned for every release, textured to weave seamlessly into the specific emotional and sonic world of that track.
Mastering is where discipline matters most, because you know every micro-detail of the project. To avoid sterile over-refinement, I deliberately treat dynamic contrast and sonic friction as essential storytelling elements. If an element feels raw or exposed, I ask whether it carries emotional weight before attempting to smooth it out. Technical perfection should never come at the expense of visceral impact.
Q6. Fortune Favours the Timeless presents Death as something almost merciful, while Shroud of the Obsidian Veil offers a far darker alternative timeline. Why was it important for the project to contain two possible endings rather than one definitive conclusion?
Because giving it one definitive ending would contradict the entire idea. Nobody knows what happens to consciousness after death, yet humanity has spent its existence imagining possibilities for it. Fortune Favours the Timeless and Shroud of the Obsidian Veil represent two extremes of that uncertainty, and both are possibilities that human beings are capable of believing, fearing or finding comfort in.
Fortune allows Death to become merciful. The individual reaches the end, consciousness disappears into a peaceful nothingness, and the EP loops back to track one — not as the same person returning, but as another human beginning their own journey through life, existence and death. The individual ends, but the cycle continues.
Shroud asks what happens if even that release is denied. Consciousness remains trapped within its own ending, and instead of returning to the beginning, track six becomes its own eternal loop: Doom is Time and Time is Eternity.
I didn’t want to tell the listener which one is true because I can’t. Nobody can. That’s partly why the contrasting sync catalogue selections interested me so much: both endings found a home in briefs seeking very different emotional worlds. Those two extremes already exist within the stories and imagery our culture creates around death. The project isn’t choosing between them; it’s confronting the fact that both can be imagined, but neither can ever be known while we’re alive.
Q7. The visual language, symbolism and mythology are clearly part of the project rather than decoration around it. How early did you begin developing the imagery alongside the music, and how much did one influence the other?
When I write a song, the entire world arrives simultaneously. While I’m writing and deciding what the piece is going to sound like, the imagery, colours, and conceptual scenes are already developing in my mind. The musical composition technically comes first, but the visual canvas is already being painted in real time and so when it comes to the physical artwork, it’s simply a matter of setting up and manifesting what was already fully realized in my head.
The imagery relies heavily on the friction between fragile elegance and harsh architecture. On the cover, you see an angel which is traditionally viewed as an immortal, heavenly, and beautiful being but with a wing brutally clipped off, confined inside a stark, brutalist room. In Fortune Favours the Timeless, that motif continues: an elegant dress and classical styling set against a cold, unforgiving concrete corridor.
That visual language is deliberate. It reflects the core paradox of the record: the contrast between beauty and brutality, and how life, mortality, and the relentless cycle of time are fundamentally an inescapable combination of both.
Q8. The limited-edition vinyl expands the project into six tracks, bespoke labels and a corresponding photobook. What did the physical format allow you to communicate about the lore that a digital release could not?
Shroud of the Obsidian Veil represents the fall—the averted gaze from an unknown, terrifying afterlife. It exists as an alternative timeline to Fortune Favours the Timeless. This dark ethereal dirge explores the possibility that the ascent never completes. Beneath an ever-growing Obsidian Cloud, a soul abandoned by True Death remains trapped between transition and eternity, forced to watch others receive the peace that was denied to them.
The track serves as a hidden counterpart to the standard conclusion, confronting a reality most choose to ignore. It introduces True Death as distinct from physical demise. Performed from the perspective of an entity whose physical body has died while True Death has stripped away their soul—the capacity for hope, love, and connection—their raw consciousness is left behind. It presents an eternity of observing and processing the torment of existence, with no ability to interact or alleviate the suffering.
Restricting this track exclusively to the physical vinyl is entirely deliberate. This alternative afterlife is the outcome humanity spends lifetimes attempting to avert through faith, ritual, and spirituality. Yet most of us experience moments of profound despair where we are forced to look directly into that abyss. Digital streaming offers the standard five-track journey—mirroring the accepted, linear belief systems of our lifetime. The vinyl, by contrast, physically houses those hidden, forbidden glimpses.
Though unsettling, it remains an essential part of the mythology. Turning away from an outcome doesn’t make it any less real. The companion photobook binds this visual lore directly to the audio: while Fortune Favours the Timeless resolves by looping back to track one as a new soul begins life’s journey, Shroud of the Obsidian Veil exists as an eternal, inescapable loop contained entirely within itself.
Q9. Fortune Favours the Timeless and Shroud of the Obsidian Veil secured sync placements before release. What do those early sync opportunities tell you about the cinematic qualities of the music and the kinds of visual worlds it can inhabit?
The fact that both tracks were picked up for sync licensing through briefs that sat at polar opposite ends of the emotional spectrum reinforces why both pieces are essential to the project’s timeline. They aren’t just narrative counterparts on paper; they project entirely distinct atmospheric worlds that visual directors and music supervisors recognized immediately.
Fortune Favours the Timeless carries an expansive, elevated, and ultimately cathartic energy—it naturally gravitates toward narratives of transcendence, dramatic resolution, or bittersweet release. In direct contrast, Shroud of the Obsidian Veil holds a heavy, claustrophobic gravity. I chose it for a brief that demanded psychological tension, darkness, and an inescapable sense of dread.
Securing those placements before the public release confirmed that the cinematic architecture across both tracks translates instantly to moving image. It proves that whether a visual world requires an ascent into peaceful eternity or a descent into the obsidian void, the sonic world-building is visceral enough to anchor the scene.
Q10. FM PRO TECH Q: With Circum-Sŏnus, you are bringing music, production, visual direction, physical product and release strategy under one independent structure. Which parts of that ecosystem are most valuable to keep in-house, and where do outside collaborators still become essential?
Everything tied to the creative DNA—the songwriting, sound design, dynamic mixing, mastering, and high-level visual world-building—must stay entirely in-house. Circum-Sŏnus exists so the artistic vision never has to pass through an external corporate filter or be shaped by outside committee compromises. Producing and mastering my own records isn’t just about control; it ensures that the technical execution remains completely obedient to the emotional narrative I conceived at the piano.
Where outside collaboration becomes essential is in precision manufacturing, physical execution, and targeted amplification. I don’t need or want to run a physical pressing plant; partnering with innovators like ElasticStage allows bespoke physical artifacts—like this 6-track vinyl and companion photobook—to be manufactured with audiophile-level fidelity on demand.
The division is simple: keep 100% of the creative integrity, technical execution, and conceptual ownership under internal lock and key, then partner strategically with specialized platforms to handle the physical manufacturing and get the finished art into the world.
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