Fringe Fridays: Violet Sedan Chair Album Found

Comma Error has all your Fringe news here, in our Fringe Friday news roundup!

In a previous post, we explained how J.J. Abram's love of hiding easter eggs in his tv shows has spilled over into the real world with Fringe: actual vinyl records hiding in record stores nationwide, under the fictional band name Violet Sedan Chair. The album, titled Seven Suns, is the real-world counterpart of a favourite of Dr. Walter Bishop's in the tv show. The records are supposedly crammed with secret messages about the show... if only they can be found.

Seven Suns: Found!
Well, it didn't take long - within the last week, the first 4 records were found by Fringe fans at two separate Easy Street Records locations in Seattle, WA. They've both uploaded pics and actual mp3s of the songs - you can visit LetItPlayOut's Flickr stream to view the rest of the album artwork, and check out K1k1chan's Tumblr to listen to the tracks. So what information has so far been found contained within the album's artwork and song lyrics? Read on to find out.

• Does that album artwork look familiar? Look at it upside-down and compare it to this promo shot of Olivia in the sense-dep tank.
  
  
• The band's record label is "13th Tone Records"; a search of the name on Trademarkia reveals that the name was trademarked on April 14th, 2009 - that's 6 days before the fake Wired.com music article referencing Violet Sedan Chair was posted. Furthermore, western harmony has 12 tones (do re mi fa sol la si do & their sharps/flats), which is presumably where the name comes from (though the Mayans revered the number 13...).
  
• The "seventh son" is a common concept in folklore: the seventh son of a seventh son was often possessed of special powers or abilities... could this be a reference to Peter and the reason why he can operate the First Peoples' Machine?
  
• On first listen, many of the song lyrics contain all sorts of allusions to various characters and things in the show; "She's Doing Fine" seems to be about Olivia, while "500 Years" may be about the Observers. Meanwhile, "Last Man In Space" seems to be about Peter.
  
• The song "Slow Vibration" seems to be about the tunneling device from Season 1.
  
• "Violet Sedan Chair" is an anagram for "Olive can read this"
  
• Greenmana, the 11th song on the track (referenced in the Wired.com article as containing a subliminal message when played backwards) is in fact missing.
  
• Furthermore, "greenmana" is an anagram for "enneagram," which may be a reference to the Fourth Way Enneagram; check out the Wikipedia article for more information. Using the Fourth Way Enneagram, it looks as though, theoretically, there are some numbers hidden within the title of the 10th album track, "Re Fa Mi Si Sol La"; there are some theories on this across the web, but nothing concrete so far.
  
• There are white tulips (a reference from the second season) on either side of the album cover.

Finally, each actual record is supposedly unique in regards to its spoilers; so far they all appear to be identical, but the current fan theory is that there may be some sort of combination cipher or something that requires a number of the albums to be put together. Only time will tell if they actually have unique easter eggs!

Fringe Fridays
Now, regular listeners know that here at Comma Error, we're huge fans of Fringe. So the news that Fox was moving the show to Friday nights at 9 was something of a shock - the Fri/9:00 timeslot has long been regarded as Fox's television graveyard, where they put shows that have sagging ratings. In fact, they made the same timeslot change to another sci-fi cult favourite, Joss Whedon's Firefly (which is, ironically, the title of the first Friday episode), before pulling the plug on it shortly after.

Thankfully, it seems that may not be the case this time. Fox apparently cares enough about the success of Fringe that they're pushing awareness of "Fringe Fridays" - including running an outdoor advertising campaign to hype the new timeslot(check out the billboard image).


Fox's social media folks also created an "Olivia-Peter romance" music video mashup featuring a song by the band Klaxons and tossed it up on Youtube (click the link to view).

Finally, the move has apparently allowed the show's writers to get even more creative and/or gory. Via tvline.com:

J.J. didn’t want to spoil what’s to come during the back half of this season by detailing any of the especially “out there” fare. Instead, he vaguely spoke of “visual things” that “if I had done in a film, the PG-13 rating would have been taken from us.”

Fox, however — as touted in the promos — apparently looks forward to its Fridays being freaky. “They have been amazingly and gloriously lenient in what were able to do,” Abrams reports. “It feels like unbridled, unhinged Fringe.”

This gives us lots to look forward to over the rest of the season. So there's your Fringe Friday news roundup, just in time for the first episode of 2011! Catch it tonight at 9PM EST.