Damon Eddington was a Manhattan composer employed by Synsound who used a captive Xenomorph's cries in his Symphony of Hate. He appeared in the Aliens: Music of the Spears comic and Yvonne Navarro's novel adaptation. Dissatisfied with commercially popular music, he arranged for the creature he named Mozart to be raised beneath Presley Hall and recorded its encounters with animals and kidnapped people. His dependence on royal jelly and obsession with completing the work culminated in his attack on bioengineer Darcy Vance and his own death when Mozart escaped its enclosure.
Biography
Childhood And Early Music
Damon grew up with little encouragement from his parents, who tolerated his music only when he listened through headphones. His grandmother Sheridan offered a more welcoming home in her small Bronx apartment, where he spent three Christmas holidays. She accepted his interests and encouraged him to listen through speakers rather than hide the music from her. He last saw her when he was twelve, and she died the following March. Decades later, he remembered those visits as an unusual period of happiness in his childhood.
As a teenager, Damon worked in Manhattan restaurants to buy guitars and listening equipment. He washed dishes, cleaned stoves, and carried out other poorly paid work while developing friendships with fellow musicians at school. He became devoted to classical composition and wanted to bring older musical forms to an audience increasingly drawn to electronic effects and android performers. His concentration on music also damaged his personal relationships, including a brief relationship in his early twenties that he later regretted neglecting.
Ken Petrillo And Synsound
During his final year of college, Damon performed with guitarist Ken Petrillo, whose skill allowed him to play Damon's demanding compositions. Damon wrote the music and managed their bookings alongside his remaining musicology courses. The pair shared a rent-controlled apartment in Spanish Harlem and progressed from parties and weddings to nightclub engagements in Manhattan and New Jersey. Their growing reputation attracted interest from radio stations and eventually brought an offer from Synsound.
Synsound wanted Damon without Ken, whose drug use made him unacceptable to the company. After initially resisting the proposal, Damon accepted and moved out three weeks after the first call. He expected his new loft off West Thirty-eighth Street to be a temporary stop on the way to success, but remained there for roughly fifteen years. He found no guitarist who could replace Ken and increasingly performed his own pieces, living in poor conditions despite access to the company's professional recording equipment. His concerts drew small audiences, and few listeners appreciated the sound montages in which he combined his own acoustic compositions with recordings of older classical works. Synsound continued to support him, but that backing did not bring him the popularity enjoyed by its android rock acts.
The Symphony Of Hate
Damon resented Synsound's commercial priorities and the audiences who preferred grotesque android bands to his serious music. At a press conference he denounced the company and announced a Symphony of Hate directed at it and the public. He searched prisons, psychiatric facilities, execution chambers, and detoxification centers for recordings of human anger. Footage from the Xenomorph infestation of Earth convinced him that the creatures' cries could supply a sound none of those sources could match.
Damon approached vice president Jarlath Keene for a living Xenomorph, rejecting the poor fidelity of the wartime recordings and the possibility of synthesizing the sound. Keene took the proposal to company president Yoriku, and Synsound arranged to obtain a Xenomorph egg. Yoriku's operative Ahiro led a raid on MedTech's collection to steal it. Damon expected the company to supply the creature as a recording resource, but the project required a secure enclosure, specialist staff, and a host in which the organism could develop.
The Apiary And Ken's Death
Synsound constructed the Apiary beneath Presley Hall, equipping it with an enclosure and recording facilities. Bioengineers Michael Brangwen and Darcy Vance joined the project, and Damon discovered that Brangwen admired his compositions. A cloned host was rejected because of its cost, leaving the staff to seek a human volunteer. Ahiro brought Ken, whose dependence on royal jelly had drawn him into the Church of the Queen Mother.
Recognizing his former partner, Damon questioned whether Ken understood what he was agreeing to do. Ken believed that giving himself to the organism would unite him with the music he associated with his drug-induced experiences. Damon remained troubled but did not stop Ahiro from restraining Ken before the Facehugger attacked. He waited through the implantation and recorded the birth of the Chestburster that killed his friend. The developing creature became the subject of the work he had persuaded Synsound to support.
Royal Jelly Addiction
Damon recovered a vial of royal jelly that fell from Ken's clothing and took it away with him. Ken's descriptions of unheard music increasingly preoccupied him as he struggled to sleep and continued working on the composition. He persuaded himself that he had the discipline to experiment without suffering Ken's decline. After drinking the vial, he became dependent on the drug and increasingly connected its altered perceptions with his musical ambitions.
The vial's presence had been arranged by Yoriku, who had Ahiro plant it where Damon would find it. The company president anticipated both Damon's curiosity and the commercial possibilities of the project, while Keene pursued his own interests within it. Damon treated his growing dependence as part of his creative process rather than recognize how readily it could be used against him. His wish to control the recordings continued to grow even as the company supplied the people, equipment, and drugs that made the project possible.
Recording Mozart
Damon named the growing Xenomorph Mozart and began recording its feeding and defensive reactions. Small animals died too quickly to provide the extended cries he wanted, and larger livestock produced little improvement. A wild gaur bull wounded Mozart and elicited the first useful scream, encouraging Damon to demand more dangerous prey. The feeding trials became increasingly elaborate attempts to prolong a fight rather than simply nourish the captive.
Ahiro stole a black panther from the Bronx Zoo, but its attacks also failed to sustain the performance Damon expected. Mozart recovered rapidly from the injuries it received and killed the animal, leaving Damon frustrated by the short recording. He demanded an opponent capable of resisting longer, and Ahiro proposed using humans. The change moved the project beyond the sacrifice of a willing cultist and the slaughter of animals into the kidnapping of people who had no choice about entering the enclosure.
The Human Sacrifices
Ahiro supplied five captive men for the recordings and armed them with Electrostun rifles whose useful range was only a few feet. The enclosure was modified with passages into which a person could retreat but a grown Xenomorph could not easily follow. The men entered separately, with time between the encounters to make Mozart hungry again. Damon recorded their attempts to resist the creature and accepted the deaths as material for the composition.
Four captives came from the streets, while the fifth was a MedTech employee abducted from a car near the World Trade Center. When that man attempted to identify himself, Ahiro intervened and prevented Brangwen from using gas to stop the encounter. All five died, and their fights gave Damon most of the sounds he wanted for the main body of the symphony. He then sought a different ending: a recording of loss that would depend on Mozart's apparent attachment to Darcy.
The Attack On Darcy Vance
Darcy Vance believed that Mozart recognized her and responded to her care, sometimes placing its claws against the glass where she held her hand. Damon decided to exploit that apparent bond for his final recording. After taking jelly, he disconnected a small keyboard and struck her from behind, then placed her in the feeder cage. He expected her death to produce a reaction beyond the anger he had recorded during the earlier fights.
Darcy used a stun rifle to hold Mozart back, but Damon disabled the weapon with Ahiro's remote control. She escaped into a tunnel and eventually reached a manual hatch, suffering a deep wound to her ankle as the creature pursued her. At the console, Damon pushed the sound system to its limits, overloading the circuit breakers and cutting power to his recording equipment. He had ignored Brangwen's explanation of the electrical controls and could not quickly restore the system.
Death In The Apiary
Desperate to preserve the final recording, Damon took Brangwen's portable syndisc recorder and attached a microphone. He believed Mozart would be occupied with Darcy in the tunnels, giving him time to leave the equipment near the enclosure's entrance. He raised the feeder cage and approached the opening, but the Xenomorph returned before he could withdraw safely. Damon scrambled outside and repeatedly operated the lowering control, briefly stopping the barrier in his panic.
Mozart caught the glass before it locked into the floor, and the safety mechanism reversed its movement. The creature emerged, lifted Damon, and fatally tore into his torso. His final concern was whether the portable equipment had captured his own scream. Mozart subsequently escaped into Presley Hall, attacked the band and audience, and was destroyed by MedTech's security force, which had traced the stolen egg with the captive tracker Old Blue. Brangwen found Damon's body in the Apiary and later rescued Darcy from the hatch.
The Rage Symphony
Michael Brangwen completed Damon's recordings and renamed the composition the Rage Symphony. It was performed at Gorasmi Recital House three months after the massacre, with Darcy attending on crutches and Synsound's executives among the audience. Damon's death cry supplied the finale he had not lived to complete. The recital attracted a sparse audience, while Yoriku planned to turn the dead composer's story into a profitable publicity campaign.
Two blocks away, Synsound restaged the Presley Hall killings with replacement band androids, artificial audience victims, and an android Xenomorph. The production used the real Mozart's death scream, captured by the hall's stage microphones during its destruction. The company's treatment of the massacre converted the violence surrounding Damon's project into another commercial spectacle. His own composition and the sensational reconstruction drew on different recordings from the same night.
Behind The Scenes
Damon first appeared in Aliens: Music of the Spears, Dark Horse's four-issue series published from January to April 1994. Chet Williamson wrote the story, Tim Hamilton supplied the pencils, Timothy Bradstreet inked it, Matt Webb provided colors, and Clem Robins lettered it. The comic established the captive Mozart, the increasingly violent recordings, Damon's assault on Darcy, and the fatal failure of the containment barrier.
Yvonne Navarro expanded the story for Bantam Spectra's October 1996 novel. Her version added Damon's childhood with Grandmother Sheridan, his college performances with Ken, his long period of poverty under contract, and the company politics behind his addiction. It dated the preparations to late 2123 and the hatching to the beginning of 2124, while the comic left its post-infestation Christmas setting less precisely dated. Those additional biographical details belonged to the novel's account of the composer.
Conclusion
Damon Eddington sought a new form of serious music by recording a living Xenomorph, but accepted increasingly violent sacrifices to obtain it. His partnership with Synsound brought him Mozart and professional support while exposing him to deliberate manipulation and royal-jelly dependence. The project cost Ken and five unwilling captives their lives, nearly killed Darcy, and ended with Damon killed by the creature he had tried to control. Brangwen completed the symphony after his death.
Appearances
- Aliens: Music of the Spears #1-4 (Dark Horse, 1994).
- Aliens: Music of the Spears by Yvonne Navarro (Bantam Spectra, 1996).
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore
