Motivated by a future trip to
Bates College where correspondence of
Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman are housed, poet Jenn Morea had the idea of looking for music related to Carson's works to accompany her in this experience. Morea discovered Candy Claws' debut album
In the Dream of the Sea Life, which was inspired by Carson's book
The Sea Around Us. She initiated correspondence with Ryan Hover, and two months later, they decided to collaborate on the next Candy Claws album for which Morea would provide lyrics in form of poems. Hover shared with her the main idea for the album: "The story would take place during the
Mesozoic Era and there would be 12 songs total with 4 songs representing each of the 3 time periods:
Triassic,
Jurassic and
Cretaceous". The album is accompanied by fragments of a document titled “Blood Ark”, supposedly discovered by
Hans-Dieter Sues in 1980 alongside the fossil of a
Zephyrosaurus. The document depicts the adventures of Ceres the White Seal (performed by Karen McCormick) and Calypso the Girl (performed by Hank Bertholf) as they journey through the
Deep Time (represented by Ryan Hover.) Morea listened to ten rough mixes the band sent to her, she also studied visual representations of the era, recreations of dinosaur sounds, documentaries, and also read the band's previous albums lyrics to create continuity among their works. After Morea finished the lyrics, she allowed the band to choose which would be the chorus for each song. In order to emphasize Morea and Candy Claws collaboration, each track contains two titles: the first one represents the lyrics and the second one, in parentheses, the music. New York City composer Bryan Senti provided orchestral arrangements on several tracks, completely built from a
Philip Glass sample library. ==Critical reception==