A live recording captured during the Sound Experience art exhibition at Run Pony Run Studios in McAllen, TX. Special thanks to Zachary of Run Pony Run for opening the space and nurturing a community where art and music can flourish. This album is a quiet reminder of the unexpected beauty that arises when disparate elements come together, a small testament to the delicate balance of chaos and harmony.

Where the essence of inner spaces intertwines with the cozy ambience of a coffee shop, this 42-minute live album features fresh, improvised material, artfully arranged into enigmatic sections that invite exploration of the depths of sound and sensation. Recorded on my Tascam, the coffee shop’s subtle ambience adds an immersive charm to this unique experience.

As a special addition, I've included a bonus collaborative track with a dear friend of mine, further enriching this collection.

Thank you, Kris and the Kreative Grounds team, for the opportunity to perform and record this live album at the shop. I am truly grateful for the chance to showcase some mellow improvised tunes.

Invincible Summer weaves a tapestry of sound waves & art, with each piece that invites introspection. Discover an invincible summer our own making.



“Damien Duque aka. City Of Dawn delivers his next ambient record, Invincible Summer, adding to the recent trend of ambient titles fashioned after philosophical quotations. The reference in this case is Albert Camus, who penned the aphorism - "in the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer" - in his lesser-spotted memento Return To Tipasa. It's clear that existentialism is a school that resonates with Duque most relevantly; the Texan artist is known for his atmospheric works dealing in themes of embattled anxiety, overcoming, self-reflection, and autism advocacy. Evoking a space of tranquility reachable only via the hard wins of deep inner work, City Of Dawn's texturized, fluting, bell-laden incantations are a striking match to the crux of Camus' philosophy: that even in the hardest of times, there always exists an inner realm of strength and resilience.” - Juno Records

想象自己在空置，广阔的电影院走廊，购物中心或高速公路。 在那里，你似乎进入了一个改变的现实，好像生活的形状被遗弃了：然而，恐惧的感觉笼罩着，平静的寂静在同一时间，当你看到试图退出的空间或找到基本的中心背景，为什么我们不允许在这些空间或有必要居住它时，你会留下记忆。 Liminal来自拉丁词limen，意思是阈值或过渡性。 一个有限的空间是在"什么是"和"下一个"之间。"这是一个过渡的地方，一个等待的时间。 然而，由于结构原则上不能被传统的类别所把握，我们离充分把握问题更远了，更少考虑上下文的含义，离为适当的结构概念处理稳定的造币更远了。 即使有限性可以在治疗环境中表现出来，我们也应该注意经历有限性阶段。 我们应该爱我们无法理解的东西，因为我们处于出生和死亡之间。

Haiku Poem:

空间展开
当思想空荡荡地徘徊
在我们沉睡的灵魂的记忆广场


你是被你的身体所束缚,还是你能超越它?

This album concept explores the rendition sound phenomenon of liminal spaces that encompass physical, mental, or metaphorical states that anticipate their function as transitional or perhaps a threshold-the footprint between one destination and to the next. From movie theaters, hallways, airports, hotels, malls, or houses. The aesthetics involved through liminal spaces have given perturbed yet uncanny, nostalgic premonition, meaning that while dwelling on the spaces, it emanates a vague sense that something might happen or some obscure perception might occur from the origin views throughout the destination even if you feel you might have been in a situation before. It appears that liminal space relies more on the notion of kenopsia, the feeling of emptiness produced by a space usually bustling with activity but is currently vacant and still seems to create an otherworldly and forlorn atmosphere. Even though kenopsia may be thought of as a transitional period and the perturbed emotions while inhabiting the liminal spaces, the absence of activity does not necessarily make a space liminal. Every individual experience various liminal space during all life phases of static patterns through dynamic interface patterns, for example, Loss of a loved one, a divorce, a new career path, a dramatic health change, et cetera.

As we navigate in the state of liminal, either mentally or physically, what it perhaps means to feel perturbed by those feelings while in liminality is how we perceive and interact with them. Our conscious intends the world. Our consciousness congregates meaning and constructs an inane & convenient conclusion to understand what kind of obscuration or still hindrance is coming for us when we arrive at the ending point. We beings in consciousness are that it is consistently generating concepts, ideas, or memories of the intermediate subject or object. Consciousness is ultimately referential. It is pushing the object from everything else in your visual perceptional field. We perceive immediate facts before us with our prior knowledge. According to philosopher Martin Heidegger, Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as the sky... They leave for the sun and moon during their journey... They do not turn night into day nor day into a harassed unrest. Imagine yourself being in a vacant, vast movie theater hallway, shopping center, or highway...where it seems you enter into an altered reality as if living shapes left deserted: and the sense of dread enshrouded.

However, the calm stillness is present at the same time. Memories cast as you discern the spaces attempting for an exit or find the fundamental central context as to why there is no activity or wonder if we are even allowed to necessarily inhabit these spaces. It goes against our natural category since we formatted it in a way that instinctually tells us that during the evening hours, our body calls to sleep when nighttime and likewise rises during the daylight hours. Our category defines the natural order, which perhaps is an act that pits us against the unnatural and the artificial. Another distinguished form of liminality is an emotional phenomenon as an invitation to give over to something during the stage and trust that whatever will be held during the liminality stage supports navigating the uncertainty. Human beings itself has a being-in-space of their own, and the spatiality is the result of the being bodily nature. It will not attain at your presence whatever you requested to invite it in, even without being aware you are in the stages as to the degree to which we are comfortable or uncomfortable has to do with how we decide what is happening. We can determine to elude or flow with it by experience, act, reflect, and acknowledge it, approximately a silent communion within ourselves. It's essential to have these liminal stages for our transformation and evolution where we can transform into a newly-fashioned environment with fascinating realms that can lead to new ways of thinking, effective decisions, unexpected outcomes, and potentialities for forming alternative structures.

In addition, it also explores the intrinsic value of themselves as beings could potentially approach the space as a place that could not at first even name or point out before. Furthermore, these nameless & vague spaces could grow and move around in liminality until its appellation is known and can be called on with love, dwelled in, converging and
planting roots there and loving others there. The soil in which chance had sown the human plant was of no importance against this nothingness, which human values grow. What was once taken for granted as a nothingness in itself when caressed and thoroughly thought out, became an identifiable substantive something.

Liminal space is compel known what's peculiar and the notion of uncanniness to this phenomenon itself. It disguises the concealment that might perchance be refuse as the phenomenon that always gets seen in a certain way which makes up a potential state, and every case is disclosed for what Heidegger calls "Dasein" (being); the understanding of being. To find these spaces liminal or otherwise by something that isn't natural, as largely no activity or presence that is inhabiting the space. It's a contradiction as to what things are supposed to imply, either philosophical or psychological. We must be mindful of going through these liminality stages. We should love what we cannot understand as we are in a space between birth and death. As much as we want to attach and keep things from changing, impermanence is inevitable in life. But, to acknowledge and accept life's uncertainties rather than suppress and deny hardships is to accept the imperfections and learn to see your interconnectedness with others, and practice acceptance of the present moment exactly as it is.

This album is a dynamic blend of organic and electronic sounds that delve into the unknown, unknown experiences of human nature and it's hidden tangle of emotion, symbolic of the vast spectrum of emotions of those living with autism. Experimentation using Muse EEG headband to generate neurofeedback into sonic landscapes, alternative guitar tuning and field recordings. Listeners will experience the idiosyncratic soundscapes, often even eerie classical interludes.