Αἱ βραχῑ́ους ἄκραι

Hai brakhī́ous ákrai

(The Shorter Peaks)

an anthology by Aaron Freed ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/discography.html⟩

download/stream this album

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Translations
3. Tracks
   1. Disc 1
      1. Aaron Freed & Craig Hardgrove – “Swirls / 𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥 (Steinway Model D)”
      2. Aaron Freed, Talashar, & wowbobwow – “Flippant”
      3. Aaron Freed – “Pfhor Trilogy”
      4. Aaron Freed – “Fīnīs fīnālis”
      5. Aaron Freed – “Disco Apocalypse in 𝟓
         𝟒 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)”
      6. Aaron Freed – “Blood on the Sequencer”
      7. Aaron Freed – “Cauda toxica”
      8. Aaron Freed – «Συνθήκη μετά Θεοῦ (Θέων ἀνω ἐκείνου βουνοῦ)»
   2. Disc 2
      1. Aaron Freed – “The Pipeline, Filling In Time”
      2. Aaron Freed – «Λιτανείᾱ κατά φόβου»
      3. Aaron Freed – “Supper’s Ready (excerpt) / Love”
      4. Aaron Freed – “Digitī”
      5. Aaron Freed – ｢저그 러쉬｣
      6. Aaron Freed – “Discursūs super prīmīs decem Titī Liviī”
      7. Aaron Freed – “Quod fit, frāter?”
      8. Aaron Freed & Craig Hardgrove – “Swirls / 𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥 (Fender Rhodes)”
      9. Aaron Freed – “Fīnis fīnālis (isolated arps)”
      10. Aaron Freed & wowbobwow – “What About Bob?”
4. Sources
5. Credits
6. Rights notice
7. Why, though?
8. Related Links
9. Endnotes

Introduction

Αἱ βραχῑ́ους ἄκραι is Attic Greek for The Shorter Peaks⁽¹⁾ (romanized: Hai brakhī́ous ákrai). It’s a companion to Τέτταρες πλευραί, ὕμνοι, καιροί, καί ἄνεμοι (Attic Greek: Four Sides, Songs, Seasons, & Winds, romanized: Téttares pleuraí, hýmnoi, kairoí, kaí ánemoi), an anthology of four twenty-minute pieces from 2024 to 2026 that I compiled last month. This collection spans a significantly longer time, from 2014 to 2026, and its eighteen tracks range from four and a half to fourteen minutes in length, for a mean of 8:48 per track. This is roughly typical of my output (Τέτταρες πλευραί was a deliberate sampling of outliers).

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Translations

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Disc 1

1. Aaron Freed & Craig Hardgrove – “Swirls / 𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥 (Steinway Model D)” (6:52) [DR14]

   From the album: Eternal X 1.3 OST

   Used on level: “Terra in firmāmentō (The Land in the Sky)”

   1. Craig Hardgrove & Aaron Freed – “Swirls (Steinway Model D)” (0:00–2:32) [DR14]

      Based on a song by: Alexander Seropian

   2. Aaron Freed – “𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥 (Steinway Model D)” (2:32–6:52) [DR14]

2. Aaron Freed, Talashar, & wowbobwow – “Flippant” (12:55) (DR14)

   From the album: Eternal X 1.3 OST

   Used on level: “Once More Unto the Breach…”

   Based on a song by: Alexander Seropian

   1. Talashar ft. Aaron Freed – “Flippant” (0:00–3:12) [DR14]

   2. Aaron Freed – “Flippant (psychedelic)” (3:12–6:16) [DR15]

   3. wowbobwow ft. Aaron Freed – “Flippant (disco)” (6:16–10:29) [DR12]

   4. wowbobwow ft. Aaron Freed – “Flippant (ambient)” (10:29–12:55) [DR15]

3. Aaron Freed – “Pfhor Trilogy” (12:46) [DR14]

   From the album: Eternal X 1.3 OST

   Used on level: “Unity of Opposites”

   Cowritten by: Alexander Seropian

   1. Aaron Freed – “New Pacific” (0:00–3:34) [DR13]

   2. Aaron Freed – “New Pacific (reprise)” (3:34–8:13) [DR14]

   3. Aaron Freed – “Rapture” (8:13–12:46) [DR14]

4. Aaron Freed – “Fīnīs fīnālis” (7:00) [DR13]

   From the albums:

   • Mūsica ex tempore malōrum
   • Rubicon X OST

   Used on level: “Rozinante XI”

   1. Aaron Freed – «Πτῆσις ἐν διάστηματι» (0:00–2:40) [DR10]

   2. Aaron Freed – «Ναυτικόν πολῑτείᾱς» (2:40–4:34) [DR13]

   3. Aaron Freed – «Κρίσιμη μάχη» (4:34–7:00) [DR12]

5. Aaron Freed – “Disco Apocalypse in 𝟓
   𝟒 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)” (12:27) [DR15]

   From the album: Compositions 2023–2024

   1. Aaron Freed – “Side A” (0:00–6:00) [DR15]

   2. Aaron Freed – “Side B” (6:00–12:27) [DR16]

6. Aaron Freed – “Blood on the Sequencer” (8:19) [DR13]

   From the albums:

   • Mūsica ex tempore malōrum
   • Rubicon X OST

   Used on level: “Cow Pushing”

   Hats off to: Eight Nineteen

7. Aaron Freed – “Cauda toxica” (10:20) [DR15]

   From the albums:

   • Compositions 2023–2024
   • Tempus Irae Redux OST

   Used on level: “Il grande silenzio”

8. Aaron Freed – «Συνθήκη μετά Θεοῦ (Θέων ἀνω ἐκείνου βουνοῦ)» (8:40) [DR15]

   From the albums:

   • Τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων
   • Rubicon X OST

   Used on level: “Molten Dihydrogen Oxide”

   1. Aaron Freed – «Ἀμείβειν τὼ ἐμπειρίᾱ» (0:00–6:00) [DR16]

   2. Aaron Freed – «Κτίζειν Οὐτοπίᾱν» (6:00–8:40) [DR14]

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Disc 2

1. Aaron Freed – “The Pipeline, Filling In Time” (13:00) [DR15]

   From the album: Κατηγορική ἀπολογίᾱ

   1. Aaron Freed – “The Pipeline, Filling In Time (jazz)” (0:00–6:18) [DR13]

   2. Aaron Freed – “The Pipeline, Filling In Time (metal)” (6:18–13:00) [DR18]

2. Aaron Freed – «Λιτανείᾱ κατά φόβου» (6:20) [DR13]

   From the album: Τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων

3. Aaron Freed – “Supper’s Ready (excerpt) / Love” (9:20) [DR14]

   From the album: Demos 2014

   1. Aaron Freed – “Supper’s Ready (excerpt)” (0:00–3:34) [DR13]

      Original song: Genesis (Foxtrot, 1972)

      Songwriting: Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, & Mike Rutherford

   2. Aaron Freed – “Love” (3:34–9:20) [DR14]

4. Aaron Freed – “Digitī” (6:10) [DR15]

   From the albums:

   • Κατηγορική ἀπολογίᾱ
   • Rubicon X OST

   Used on level: “Sea of Slime”

5. Aaron Freed – ｢저그 러쉬｣ (5:12) [DR15]

   From the albums:

   • Compositions 2023–2024
   • Rubicon X OST

   Used on level: “Attack of the Wheenies”

6. Aaron Freed – “Discursūs super prīmīs decem Titī Liviī” (4:30) [DR15]

   From the album: Τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων

7. Aaron Freed – “Quod fit, frāter?” (7:36) [DR13]

   From the album: Τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων

   1. Aaron Freed – «Τίς συμβαίνει, ἀδελφέ?» (0:00–4:40) [DR13]

   2. Aaron Freed – «Κῡ́ριε ἐλέησον μοι (Ἡ οἰ̃κολογία)» (4:40–7:36) [DR13]

8. Aaron Freed & Craig Hardgrove – “Swirls / 𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥 (Fender Rhodes)” (6:52) [DR16]

   From the album: Eternal X 1.3 OST

   Used on level: “Volitãns in lacūnā (Floating in the Void)”

   1. Craig Hardgrove & Aaron Freed – “Swirls (Fender Rhodes)” (0:00–2:32) [DR15]

      Based on a song by: Alexander Seropian

   2. Aaron Freed – “𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥 (Fender Rhodes)” (2:32–6:52) [DR15]

9. Aaron Freed – “Fīnīs fīnālis (isolated arps)” (6:00) [DR11]

   From the album: Mūsica ex tempore malōrum

   1. Aaron Freed – «Πτῆσις ἐν διάστηματι» (0:00–1:43) [DR10]

   2. Aaron Freed – «Ναυτικόν πολῑτείᾱς» (1:43–3:37) [DR10]

   3. Aaron Freed – «Κρίσιμη μάχη» (3:37–6:00) [DR11]

10. Aaron Freed & wowbobwow – “What About Bob?” (14:00) [DR14]

    From the album: Eternal X 1.3 OST

    Based on a song by: Alexander Seropian

    1. wowbobwow ft. Aaron Freed – “What About Bob?” (0:00–5:41) [DR14]

       Used on level: “Eādem, sed aliter (Likewise, but Differently)”

    2. Aaron Freed – “What About Bob?” (5:41–14:00) [DR15]

       Used on level: “Babylon X”

       Hats off to: Eight Nineteen

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Sources

These tracks are collected from the following albums:

• Demos 2014 (2-03)
• Eternal X 1.3 soundtrack (1-01, 1-02, 1-03, 2-08, 2-10)
• Compositions 2023-2024 (1-05, 1-07, 2-05)
• Mūsica ex tempore malōrum (1-04, 1-06, 2-09)
• Κατηγορική ἀπολογίᾱ (2-01, 2-04)
• Τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων (1-08, 2-02, 2-06, 2-07)

More information can be found at my website: https://aaronfreed.github.io/discography.html

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Credits

Primary composers

• Aaron Freed: all except 2–03a
• Alexander Seropian: 1–02, 1–03, 2–10
• Austin Anderson: 1–02a
• Craig Hardgrove: 1–01a, 2–08a
• wowbobwow: 1–02c, 1–02d, 2–10a
• Marvin Gaye, Nobuo Uematsu: 2–07b
• Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford: 2–03a

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Inspirations & brief interpolations

1-01b, 2-08b:

• Martin O’Donnell & Michael Salvatori, “Covenant Dance”
• Black Sabbath, “Fairies Wear Boots”
• Metallica, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
• unknown, “Diēs Īrae”

1-04, 2-09:

• Vangelis, Blade Runner soundtrack

1-05a:

• unknown, “Diēs Īrae”
• Genesis, “Supper’s Ready”

1-07:

• Ron Grainer & Delia Derbyshire, “Doctor Who”
• Genesis, “The Carpet Crawlers”
• Berlin, “Take My Breath Away”
• Britney Spears, “Toxic”
• Daft Punk, “Get Lucky”

1-08a:

• Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”

1-08b:

• 椎名 林檎 (Ringo Sheena), 「葬列」 (“Funeral Procession”)

2-04:

• Chinchilla, “Fingers”

2-07:

• Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”

2-08:

• Marvin Gaye, “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”
• 植松 伸夫 (Nobuo Uematsu), 「Ｆ．Ｆ．ＶＩＩメインテーマ」 (“Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII”)

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Rights Notice

You may freely distribute this collection in unmodified form, so long as it includes this document.

Under no circumstances may my music be used to train large language models or generative “artifical intelligence”. I will construe attempts to do so as violations of my:

• control over adaptations or derivatives of my work (as defined under United States copyright law);
• moral rights to attribution and to preservation of my works’ integrity (in Europe and elsewhere),

and I will deal with violations using every legal avenue available to me.

Please ask (https://aaronfreed.github.io/aboutme.html) if you wish to use these pieces for your own creative projects. I will grant most noncommercial uses, but I want to know who’s using my music and why.

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Why, though?

Why did you duplicate so many tracks from Selected Works, 2023-2024, and Iānuāriō Aprīlem MMXXV?

I wanted to re-anthologize that period of my output for several reasons, among them:

1. Those two releases were collectively four hours long – roughly the same length as this and Τέτταρες πλευραί, which collectively cover a much longer span of material.
2. I compiled Selected Works, 2023-2024 over eighteen months ago and Iānuāriō Aprīlem MMXXV over a year ago. Parts of the former now bring up unpleasant memories (no, I won’t elaborate further). Re-anthologizing that period gives me a collection I can listen to from start to finish with no such issues.
3. It pleases me that, because Τέτταρες πλευραί is an anthology of my four longest works, new listeners now may start with a shorter anthology of my longer tracks or a longer anthology of my shorter tracks.
4. I regretted some of my omissions from Selected Works, 2023-2024. (Granted, one of them fell outside the eponymous timespan.) Anthologizing those tracks alongside my work from the past year would’ve felt incongruous – while this set also takes a non-chronological approach, it at least front-loads most of its older material and backloads most of its newer material, and it’s a less jarring approach than jumping exclusively between 2014 material, 2022–2023 material, and 2025–2026 material would’ve been.

Why isn’t this a chronological anthology?

Again, several reasons:

1. Define “chronological”. The versions of “Swirls” here are some of my older work. “𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥” is one of the newest tracks here. Should the two versions of “Swirls / 𓈖𓐍𓅱𓏏𓀁 𓈖𓏏 𓉡𓁥” go near the start, go near the end, or be split up? A non-chronological approach sidesteps this question entirely.
2. A chronological approach would’ve required multiple versions of some songs to appear in direct succession. I find that far less interesting than putting them near the start and end of a set.

3. I value physical media, so I usually tailor my releases to fit on either one or two audio CDs, and while my music will probably never be released on vinyl, I try to arrange songs on my albums so that they could be released on vinyl with no significant cuts or alterations to track order. I enjoy old vinyl records’ pacing and try to duplicate that with my digital output as much as I can. This set is no exception:

   Side A (19:47): 1.1 & 1.2

   Side B (19:46): 1.3 & 1.4

   Side C (20:46): 1.5 & 1.6

   Side D (19:00): 1.7 & 1.8

   Side E (19:20): 2.1 & 2.2

   Side F (20:42): 2.3, 2.4, & 2.5

   Side G (18:58): 2.6, 2.7, & 2.8

   Side H (20:00): 2.9 & 2.10

   Vinyl starts losing fidelity when sides creep too far above twenty minutes in length, and keeping side lengths similar ensures greater consistency in sound quality across the whole album. The above sides have a mean length of 19:47⅜, a median length of 19:46½, a range of 1:48 (roughly 9.10% of either average), a standard deviation of roughly 38¾ seconds (roughly 3.25% of either average), and no outliers.

   I probably could’ve arranged these tracks chronologically in a way that would fit on physical media, but:

   1. I’d likely have had to make significant alterations to the material to do so, and I wouldn’t have considered that an especially honest presentation.

   2. The odds that I wouldn’t have had to make such alterations were mathematically small enough that I didn’t even consider it worth investigating whether it was possible.

   (I shudder to think what I’ll do if I ever write a thirty-minute piece. Forty-minute pieces are easy to handle: just bake in a convenient split point, like the one Jethro Tull wrote into Thick as a Brick. But thirty minutes? Clearly, the best solution is to write another ten. …I’m not even sure I’m being facetious here.)

4. “Supper’s Ready (excerpt) / Love” would be the first piece chronologically. If I didn’t love it, it wouldn’t be here, but it’s an insufficiently attention-grabbing intro – it’s just a solo piano performance, and while I’m a competent pianist, I’m hardly Yuja Wang or Rick Wakeman; I’m more like Tom Lehrer (RIP) without the sense of humor. (Lehrer often quoted a review saying that he “plays the piano acceptably”.)

Why are so few of your original songs’ titles in English?

I struggle to come up with original titles, so I often just translate the name of a piece’s biggest inspiration to another language. Moreover, most of my English titles are meaningless:

• “Blood on the Sequencer” and “The Pipeline, Filling In Time” were literally the only phrases I could think of when I saved them, and I never thought of better names for either. (The latter comes from the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine”, but that doesn’t clarify anything about my song because it doesn’t really bear any stylistic resemblance to its eponym.)
• “Disco Apocalypse in 𝟓
  𝟒 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)” is just a riff on Genesis’ “Apocalypse in 𝟗
  𝟖 (co-starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)” (whose intro it quotes directly) and several disco song titles (e.g., The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno”, David Shire’s “Night on Disco Mountain”).

The sole exception to the “my English titles are meaningless” rule is, perhaps unsurprisingly, “Love”.

But why are so many of my titles that aren’t directly stolen borrowed from other works in foreign languages? I often find them more fitting for a given context than English:

1. I may be employing either thematic resonance or some form of irony:
   1. Hathor was an Egyptian goddess. I titled a piece bearing her name in Middle Egyptian.
   2. The ancient Greek Cynics were the antithesis of their name’s modern definition, so I translated a famous Oscar Wilde quote (“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”) to Attic Greek («Τίς ἐστί Κυνικός? Ἀνήρ ὅς γιγνώσκει τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων»).
2. I may be expressing an ambiguity that’s inexpressible in English:
   1. Aequilibrium harmoniae is Latin for both The Balance of Harmony and The Harmony of Balance.
   2. Mūsica ex tempore malōrum is Latin for both Music from a Time of Disasters and Music from After the Opportunity of the Disasters.
   3. Κατηγορική ἀπολογίᾱ is Greek for Categorical Apology, Accusatory Apologia, and several other meanings, to the extent of arguably being untranslatably ambiguous; also, κατηγορίᾱ and ἀπολογίᾱ are antonyms.
3. I may have aesthetic or artistic reasons:
   1. Ancient languages often trigger emotions in us that English doesn’t and quite possibly can’t.
   2. I may simply prefer how the title sounds in a foreign language.

—Aaron Freed
—Tallahassee, FL
—July 2, 2026 (revised September 16, 2026)

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Related Links

• My website
  • My discography
    • sister anthology
      • Τέτταρες πλευραί, ὕμνοι, καιροί, καί ἄνεμοι (2024-08-08 to 2026-06-05 / 1:19:58)
    • game soundtracks
      • Rubicon X OST (2026-08-09 / 7:32:26)
      • Τὼ μαράθω (WIP / 4:18:43)
    • recent / upcoming albums
      • See You Starside (2022-12-05 to 2023-01-21 / 1:18:17)
      • Compositions 2023-2024 (2022-12-29 to 2025-01-06 / 2:35:27)
      • Mūsica ex tempore malōrum (2024-08-29 to 2025-01-30 / 2:37:55)
      • Κατηγορική ἀπολογίᾱ (2023-03-16 to 2025-04-25 / 2:07:50)
      • Τὸν ὦνον πάντων καί τὴν ἀξίᾱν οὐδένων (2025-06-23 to present, WIP)
    • previous anthologies
      • Selected Works, 2023-2024 (2022-12-29 to 2025-01-05 / 2:34:08)
      • Iānuāriō Aprīlem MMXXV (2025-01-10 to 2025-04-25 / 1:18:25)
  • My ludography & selected bibliography
    • On Moonlight: a film analysis, autobiography, & holistic societal critique
    • Aequilībrium harmoniae: a mathematical analysis of scales, modes, & the circle of fifths
    • Honor lūdī: Baseball’s immeasurable impact on the modern world

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  Endnotes

  #

  Note

  1.

  In the sense of duration, not height (though βραχύς can mean either; it is a cognate of Latin brevis and thus our own brevity, breve, and brief, and it is also linguistically related to the English word brachiosaur by way of βραχίων, meaning the shorter one and referring to the upper arm. Ἄκρον and ἄκρα, meanwhile, are linguistically related to acrostic, acropolis, acronym, acrobat, acrophobia, and Akron). Other valid translations of this phrase include Αἱ βραχῑ́ονες ἄκραι, Τά βραχῑ́ω ἄκρα, and Τά βραχῑ́ονα ἄκρα.

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