There was a long hiatus in Stomock recording while the two halves of the Stomock lived busy lives separated by broad physical distances. In 1996, for instance, we were separated by 6,436.8 miles, give or take a tenth of a mile.

In the meantime, the Internet developed to the point where we could mail files back and forth. That's how we recorded Gut Work in 2000 (more on that later) and the second version of Ferdukia.

We spent more time on Ferdukia, I believe, than on anything before or since. It wasn't the back-and-forth that caused us to spend more time; we just worked on it very hard. And I think it shows. We threw out the songs that didn't fit our sorta-storyline and wrote new ones. We made an effort to make the songs hold together so the thing sounds like an album rather than a collection of songs made by two guys with wildly variant musical skill sets operating at a distance.

I'm proud of it, as you can tell. So I'll start with one of the new songs, When Cheng Met Eng. The original "siamese twins" analogize nicely with Ferdukia's hero/villains... not that one should take us all that seriously on any front. I wrote this one & played guitar. Bryan added bass, backing vocals and the solo.