In depth coverage of the concept behind "The Origins of Matter and Life" suite [part 2]

It's been a long time since my last post about the concept behind "The Origins of Matter and Life" but I had some great amount of work to do and we've also been on tour so I hope you could excuse me for this delay :) - Perseo

Last time I analyzed "On Matter and Mind" and "High", this time I will explain "The Cosmic Architect" and "Tree of Life", leaving the last two tracks, "Crossing the Line" and "Albert II" to a next post, the third and last post of this trilogy.

Carl Sagan, astronomer
(Nov 9, 1934 – Dec 20, 1996)

"The Cosmic Architect" starts with Albert flowing through the earth/eye and seeing some very strange things. He sees some light that's actually the light from the Big Bang and some patterns and schemes, on the cosmic landscape surrounding him, from which he seems to recognize an "artist's signature", or the evidence that someone is spontaneously building the place he's in. He does not, at this point, know who is "the artist", yet, for some reason, he knows that he's living the moment of supreme creation, the moment in which someone is creating the Universe. It is a very young universe so there is only energy at the moment, but energy soon starts to crystallize into matter (as the laws of physics tell us) and pale shades of a new reality begin to take place.

Contact (novel)

The patterns Albert is seeing are encoded in the structure of the world: the world is created by a pure mathematical abstraction, a matrix, a transcendental sequence, that gives the world its foundations. The world is a giant fractal where iteration over iteration everything come to reality. A fractal is a pure abstraction or, in the real world, a "thought" or a "nothing". It exists only inside the brain of someone who is thinking that thought and not in the everyday reality. The consequence of this is that if the universe Albert is seeing comes out from a pure abstraction, then it comes out of nothing, then it is real only inside the mind of the "thinker" or, in other words, the Cosmic Architect. Finally, for some reason, Albert comes to know that the entire process of creating a Universe from thought is an inevitable and unconscious process, so the cosmic architect himself is not aware that he's creating: he is just thinking and he does not imagine, in the wildest of his dreams, that he's actually creating a Universe.

Out of curiosity: there are expressions, in the lyrics of this song, that I took inspiration from, again, Carl Sagan, especially from his novel "Contact". "The artist's signature", the fact that maybe, going deep into mathematics, we can find something like a "perfect circle of unities in a field of noughts" that clearly shows us that there is free will behind the creation of our world, are ideas coming from the final chapter of this novel. I suggest to you all to read this book and also to watch the movie that's been made out of it: you will pass some wonderful hours with them.

The tree of life as pictured
in the Celestial Harmonies' booklet

"Tree of Life" represents the next step in creating a Universe: populate the world with life. So, in this song, the theme is "how life is born". Albert finds himself suddenly flying in the sky. He looks all around but he can't see anything. He only feels the wind that's blowing. He tries to explore the world but even if he flies higher in the sky, above the clouds, he finds nothing. Down, just the sea. After so much exploring this empty world where there is only sky and water, he decides to take some rest on the suface of the ocean. He then feels a force pushing everything into the sea, deep into the abyss, and at the same time he sees a sphere, suspended in the sky and slowly cracking. He sees a seed (the seed of life) falling into the abyss from the crack on this sphere, carried by this great force and after the seed has fallen, a great light enlightens the water and the abyss itself. From this light emerges a tree, the tree of life, putting its roots in the earth and giving birth to every specimen on the planet: birds, fishes, reptiles, mammals...even to humans.

For now, that's all, folks. Keep tuned to this blog and/or to Lunocode's official website or Lunocode's official facebook fan page so you can stay updated about the band and the next posts!

Thank you, hope you enjoyed the reading :)
Perseo

To be continued...

Life on tour

Being on tour is a very strange thing to do. You wake up early in the morning, you take all your things, packed, into a van and you head for a city you didn't even know it existed. You arrive there, you find your tourbus - your home for the next one or two weeks - and then you find people watching at you, listening to you, laughing with you. People you don't know but that you share some amazing moments with. And then you pack again all of your instruments and go to sleep in your niche while the tourbus takes you to the next unknown city where you find again great people interested in what you're doing on stage.
There are some very tough moments, when you have to unpack your instruments and build the stage togheter with the guys of the other bands you're tavelling with and with the crew, there are some very incredible moments, when you finish playing the first song and people start applauding at you, for example, but there are some very quite and silent moments, especially at night, when you find yourself finally alone and you can reflect and let your thoughts fly free. Then you think thoughts about people of a distant city being not so different from the ones of your city as you thought before this trip started. Then you think thoughts about the world being simply a rainbow of colors: if you take a plane, fly toward a distant sky and then land, you find a totally different culture, a completely different language, different manners and moods...but if you take a tourbus and while the driver takes you to the next city you take your time and watch the landscapes and the villages and the cities and even traffic signals or neon signs or better if you take your time to listen to the idioms of the people you're visiting...then you realize that there is no difference from you and other people, no matter how many kilometers separate you from them.

Imagination will often carry us
to worlds that never were.
But without it we go nowhere.
Carl Sagan

There is no "Us" or "Them". There is a simple colour gradation that goes from you to the people you have in front of you. A word gradually transforms and turns into another word, another sound with the same meaning.
Borders and customs are human artefacts. They don't exist in nature, they don't even exist in the real world. It's just pure madness to categorize, give different names and characters to countries. The World is the World, a uniqueness of culture, languages and traditions that only belongs to the human being in its entirety.
This is the greatest teaching that being on tour has left me.

Thank you TDV, JTR Sickert, Francesco, Katja, Christian, Mario and you all, folks! Hope to see you again, soon.

p.s. I would like to state that this note is dedicated to everyone on the tourbus. To Snovonne too, even if I did not have enough time to know them. And to every person who came at the shows. And to the Universe itself :)

Perseo

In depth coverage of the concept behind "The Origins of Matter and Life" suite [part 1]

Hi my friend, here is very cold outside, snow is all around and I am in my home while outside the wind blows hard and carries more snow on the countryside.
There's nothing to do but staying at home and then I decided to write this post, an in depth coverage of the concept behind "The Origins of Matter and Life" suite, contained in Lunocode's "Celestial Harmonies" album.

Just out of curiosity, this is the nice landscape outside my door in a particularly calm moment today:

Winter landscape outside my door

As i promised some time ago, then, let's go with the suite!

The Origins of Matter and Life tells the story of the creation of the Universe and tells also the story of a character, Albert II, that is actually the protagonist of the entire tale.
The suite is built up by six different movements that are six songs: "On Matter and Mind", "High", "The Cosmic Architect", "Tree of Life", "Crossing the Line" and "Albert II".

On Matter and Mind is an instrumental overtoure that introduces the listener to the suite by letting him listen to the main themes of every subsequent movement. We chose "On Matter and Mind" as a title because we wanted to refer to those old famous scientific papers.

V2 rocket that carried Albert II into space (wikipedia)

High is the first true song. It opens with our character awaking in a strange place, a place he doesn't recognize. He only feels that it is cold and outside everything is black except for a strange sun, a blue sun. At this point we understand for sure that something very strange is happening: how can a sun be blue and why our character is "talking" to this blue sun? Long story short, our character's name is Albert II and he is a monkey, a Rhesus Monkey, in particular, who was launched by Americans, in 1949 (June 14), into space on board of a V2 rocket (see photo on the right). This is his story, romanticized.

So, being a monkey and being used to consider each luminous globe a "sun", he thinks that what he have in front of him is a sun, because it's luminous and it's round. He then tries to get help from this sun by talking to him and imploring him, as he is used doing so on earth, in his language.

He just doesn't know that he is inside a space capsule and the blue globe, that lies calm and still in front of him, is actually the Earth.
Albert feels confused and afraid, he feels a deep sense of panic while everything becomes weightless and he understands that he can't control anymore his movements like he was used to. Even if he doesn't know, he is experiencing weightlessness in space: the reason for him being thrown into space inside the capsule.
He feels a sense of panic and fear and then, maybe for the effects of weightlessness or maybe for some other reason, he sees the "blue sun" transforming into a pulsating light that's getting closer to him.
Now he is really terrified and, plus, he starts to see strange images and hear a rhythmic sound coming out of his chest while he sees his eyes breaking into shards and floating all around him.
After this, he sees the blue globe turning into an eye staring at him and he finally feels himself flowing through this eye. His journey has started.

Notes: at the end of the song you can hear the phrase "by the rule of one-hundred and thirty seven" and you might wonder what's the meaning of this 137-thing. Well, this is a reference to Wolfgang Pauli's obsession for that number (it seems to show up in many physic equations).
Another curiosity is the sentence "and becomes an eye scanning darkly through the eons". This is another "tribute" to one of my favourite sci-fi authors, Philip K. Dick. I like very much his novel "A Scanner Darkly".

To be continued...

Celestial Harmonies available on iTunes

Hi my friends, Perseo speaking here.
I checked iTunes and found that "Celestial Harmonies" is now available. There are previews for each song of the album (90sec each song) and I would be very glad if you check it out and let us know what you think.
I really hope you all enjoy our music and support us!

Let the journey begin and please pay attention to the lyrics, in particular to "The Origins of Matter and Life". They means a lot to me and to us. I know lyrics could be a little difficult to understand, but I think that deciphering and making your own idea is just an interesting and very fullfilling experience!

Please check this blog out in the next days, I will put online an explanation to the lyrics and some comments about the concept.

I really would like people to comment on these posts and talk with me and with us about the themes covered in the lyrics, I always dig for new ideas and knowing new people who can give me different perspectives from the ones that I have.

Here is the cover and the iTunes link from which you can buy the mp3, and don't forget that if you want to buy a CD version all you have to do is write an e-mail to lunocode@gmail.com or perseo.mazzoni@gmail.com. For the CD version Paypal payments are accepted and you get a nice free gadget :)

I hope to receive some feedback. For now...listen to Celestial Harmonies and enjoy!

direct link: CELESTIAL HARMONIES ON iTUNES