The system
Care. Control. A choice.
In this hospital, a soothing voice might offer protection—or a reason to surrender. Finding a way through means learning what lies behind the reassurance.
Black Caz / Concept album & screen world
6 HOURS
BEFORE
I WAKE
A patient opens their eyes in St Jude’s. With six hours between them and waking, the hospital becomes a gateway to a world where time has no edges.
06 : 00A life suspended between
one moment and the next.
one moment and the next.
Music / Story / World
Some worlds begin
with a sound.
Black Caz’s concept album carries a life through music. Its themes find new expression in a series: a world where the familiar becomes strange, and a patient must find their way back.
The series / St Jude’s
A place between
places.
St Jude’s could be a place of healing. It could also be a gateway to heaven or hell. As the patient moves through it, familiar faces take on unfamiliar roles.
Time without edges
A lifetime in six hours.
Past, present and possible futures meet. A corridor can give way to memory; a moment can contain a life. There is no single beginning or end.
The voice of the world
What we carry.
Black Caz’s music carries experiences of Chicago and London, alongside Black love, family, loss and resilience. These perspectives give the world its spirit—and bring something human into every room.
St Jude’s Purgatory Hospital
The body lies still.
The journey has begun.
Beneath the procedures and fluorescent lights, St Jude’s has a system of its own: receiving, recording and moving souls through the hospital.
The docking morgue
Here, what looks like a body bag is a transportation vessel. Docked and prepared for its journey, it carries a life and its memories into St Jude’s.
Inside the system
Everything
has a route.
Vessels move from the Docking Morgue through the Transfer Corridor, passing towards departments and destinations the patient cannot yet understand.
A hospital runs on procedures. At St Jude’s, the question is who—or what—those procedures serve.
A world in development / St Jude’s
Every place
has a purpose.
Some places are part of the hospital’s machinery. Others take shape around the person passing through, so no two journeys need follow the same map.
Explore St Jude’s
Eight places. Different paths.
Each place has its own role in the hospital—and its own relationship to the life passing through it.
Docking Morgue
The receiving point. Here, transportation vessels carry memories and unresolved life into the hospital’s system.
Transfer Corridor
The artery connecting departments, where vessels are routed through St Jude’s.
Warden’s Office
An office for the unseen authority that oversees the hospital’s thresholds and routes.
Dove Wing
A space for innocence, childhood memory and the self that existed before the world hardened it.
Griot / Intercom Core
The source of the hospital’s voice: part announcement, part storyteller, part witness.
Daggers of Ice
A frozen landscape where numbness and the need to protect oneself take architectural form.
Forbidden Fruit
A place where knowledge tempts—and truth may arrive before the patient is ready to carry it.
M.A.D. House
The Mind Awake Department offers the comfort of a perfect refuge. But is comfort always freedom?
A presence within St Jude’s
Deacon.
Calm authority.
Dark humour.
Deacon knows the language of St Jude’s. With a sharp eye and a dry sense of humour, he helps make sense of its procedures—without promising that everything will make sense at once.
“Welcome to St Jude’s. I’m Deacon. Don’t worry—nobody here knows where they’re going either.”
A voice from St Jude’s · dialogue in development
Visual development
Many ways
to see a world.
A glimpse of the images shaping 6 Hours Before I Wake: lives and memories, unfamiliar encounters, and different visual treatments of St Jude’s.
Select an image to see it at full size.
Music is the foundation
The memories
have a voice.
Black Caz’s experience of cancer in 2019 gives the project its personal starting point. The songs carry loves, losses and unfinished hopes into its larger world.
From the music
Fire Vs Ice
A featured piece connected to the world of 6 Hours Before I Wake.
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Watch on YouTube ↗
The inhabitants
Who holds
the keys?
Some offer guidance. Others are waiting for an opportunity. Appearances don’t always reveal who—or what—you are meeting.
The Warden +
In one world he is a janitor. In another he is the Warden, guardian of St Jude’s unseen realm. His keys open doors that others cannot—and his place in the patient’s journey remains uncertain.
Guardians & Snatchers +
Guardians help protect the path back. Snatchers work to stop the patient waking, sometimes approaching with a promise of comfort rather than an obvious threat.
The Griot +
Rooted in the tradition of the storyteller, the Griot speaks through St Jude’s intercom. Ordinary announcements can carry warnings, memory and meaning beneath the surface.
Concept album · Series and visual world in development
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