Hello, and thank you for being here. For the release of Auguries of Innocence I've found it fitting to look back at ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ journey. Some parts of what you will read below have already appeared on previous journal entries, but the story is told from a slightly different point of view.
I'm a math PhD who failed to get into academia, but still misses research to this day. Since the end of 2017, my main hobby is writing research papers in mathematics (have about 20 articles on academic journals and another one has been recently accepted for publication). However, at this moment of my life, I simply don't have the energies to keep on pursuing it on a regular basis. That's why in 2022 I was looking for a more relaxing activity. Music seemed an obvious choice: I have played on and off piano and keyboards since I was six, and one of my most formative musical experiences was playing in a metal cover band in 2008-2012. This time around, however, I didn't (and still don't) have the time for committing to a live band, so I needed to figure out how I could to finish songs on my own and in my spare time. It made sense to look for a genre that was as close to "DIY guitarless metal with synths" as possible. Something similar to this band called Summoning that I used to listen to back in the day...
I don't remember exactly when I discovered the Dungeon Synth tag, but the music sat at the intersection of what I wanted to attempt on my own and what I could reasonably achieve. As a nice bonus, I loved the escapism that comes with the territory. Moreover, I hoped to reignite the spark of the fantastic adventures of my youth through music about ancient mysteries, a nostalgic past that never was, and stories half-forgotten. All these themes are present in Wanderings and Vistas, my debut, and in The roads of the Old Empire, its sequel.
After Wanderings and Vistas, Bartizan Chill shared a very intriguing challenge: creating an album on the theme of memory, using also the artist's own voice as an instrument. A few days later, inspiration struck: I was going to record and release an album on Alzheimer's disease. But wait, what's fantastical and escapist about such a horrible illness? At first, I tried to tell myself that I was going to refer obliquely to Alzheimer's through fantasy imagery, but that was probably self-delusion. The more I worked on The Last Embers of the Fire, the more I delved deep into the reality of the illness as seen by patients and caregivers. With the exception of Pilgrim, every song on that album was inspired by poems written by people who experienced Alzheimer's first hand or had a loved one who did.
Pilgrim, on the other hand, has a story of its own. Since I'm able to remember, I've always been a sickly child. At the end of the 90s it was discovered I had a cardiopathy, that eventually led to a heart transplant in 2001. The surgery, however, wasn't the end of the story but the beginning of a new one, whose chapters range from exhilarating to daunting, passing through every emotion in between. Pilgrim was born about 15 years ago as a way of expressing some of my feelings, fears and yearnings tied to the wild ride that has been my transplant journey. Listening to it, and especially to the chorus, still gives me the goosebumps and, on some days, almost brings me to tears.
Recording The Last Embers of the Fire took me the first half of 2023, as I was also experimenting with a new workflow based around the two hardware synths I had back then. In summer 2023 I starded working on The roads of the Old Empire and I gathered new tools for my next music projects. First, I discovered a love for pitch-shifted delay and reverb, evident in Golem Dreams and present also in most of my subsequent releases.
Golem Dreams at times feels like the black sheep of my discography. It's mostly generative (but no AI was used in the recording of the EP), whereas people tell me my strenght is my 100% human melodies, and it has a dreamy feel so unlike the rest of my music, that leans more on the heavier side. However, it's a release I needed to do and to share with the world. As I mentioned, it was partly a study on pitch-shifted effects. However, it was also my first release explicitly inspired by literature and, just like the source material, it touches upon a theme dear to my heart. The dedication 'to all non-conforming folk everywhere in the world and their struggle for freedom and self-determination' is not lip service, but it is an issue I meditated on a lot during the making of the EP, and it still stays with me to this day.
After recordng Golem Dreams, I found also a way for finally getting a satisfactory "guitarless metal" feel. With such addition to my toolbox, I knew instantly what I wanted to use it for: another album on illness, this time focused on my health joourney. Sumarið Þegar Hjartað Söng, Icelandic for The Summer When the Heart Sang, burned inside me throughout August until I was able to complete it in early September. (Yes, ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ has Iceland as one of the sources of inspiration. I've talked about it in this 2023 interview).
After Sumarið Þegar Hjartað Söng and The roads of the Old Empire, I embarked on further music explorations. My 2024 started with the release of Arrhytmias, a droney album on illness and healing, is the second project fully inspired by my health journey. A few years after my heart transplant, I had to face yet another challenge... and this album tries to put some of it in music. Like The Last Embers of the Fire and Sumarið Þegar Hjartað Söng, it has a strong sense of direction, moving from a dark place to a brighter, even if not always 100% positive, end.
Open your heart to the Night is based on my youthful fascination with Greek mythology and the night sky. I loved to blend both themes into a nuanced and genre-defying album. I hope to revisit similar concepts somewhere in the future.
Páska was born as a meditation on the song titles, that come from a prayer of the Catholic Easter Vigil mass. I hope the message of restoration can resonate with a broader audience, without any distinctions or discriminations. Working out how to convey such themes in music was an interesting challenge, and I'm very proud of how the EP turned out.
Oneiric Quest is my "straightest" Dungeon Synth album, inspired by Keys to Oneiria and Hidden Passage. It turns out Dungeon Synth inspires me to create music with a strong sense of narration, and in this release it's very evident. I hope the story resonates with the listeners as well. One lovely detail about this release is that one fan left a review connecting the setting of Oneiric Quest to the Old Empire. I've neither confirmed nor denied it, but I find it wonderful when listeners create their own stories and narratives based on the music.
In November 2023, when I was finishing The Roads of the Old Empire and was recording some of the projects mentioned above, in Italy there was a tragic murder of a young woman that shook the consciences of millions of people. Day after day, I grew more and more restless about this event, until I finally reached out to Alessandro (Bruna, Desolazione Rurale, I've written about his music in one of my Dungeon Synth journals) and shared my urge to do something against gender-based violence and in support for the survivors. Thanks to his dedication and to Barrow Hoard Records joining the project, we've been able to set up a compilation and a fundraiser for a hospitality center for survivors of domestic and gender based violence based in Pisa, Tuscany. Don't Cry Over My Ashes went live a few months ago and the fundraising was successful, thanks to all the amazing artists who contributed to the project.
While setting up Don't Cry Over My Ashes and releasing Arrhytmias, I was hatching another somewhat ambitious plan: creating a cover album of Dungeon Synth and non-Dungeon Synth songs I love.
The idea was inspired both by my experience in a cover metal band back when I was a university student (how much time passed since those days!), and probably also by a couple of Ithildin's releases, that revisited prog masterpieces in the style of Dungeon Synth.
I started my cover project very early in the year, and it was a great call: transcribing the songs was definitely a challenge! To just name one example, Kuin kylmät tuhkat was played on a kantele that, I believe, was ear-tuned: the relative pitches of the strings were perfect, but the root note didn't sit on the piano keyboard, so I needed to account for that difference while working out its melodies.
I'm exceedingly proud of Polyphony, and I envision it as a showcase not only of my music (after all, my range is broader than what I show on that release), but also of some of the projects I love and that, in my subjective opinion, deserve more attention. (It won't come as a surprise that many artists featured in Polyphony are also discussed in my 'Artists I love' journals).
A few weeks after Polyphony was released, the time was right for sharing a collaboration that was in the making for almost a year.
This split (a somewhat common kind of release for the Dungeon Synth community: an album by two or more artists, with the running time divided more or less evenly among them) with Gray Friar owes its existence to a discussion on a tape-sim VST, that led me to share with Gray Friar previews of Páska and Arrhythmias. His support and enthusiasm for those projects led us to the decision of collaborating on a release. Finding common themes was an interesting challenge, and Gray Friar's knowledge of Medieval history came in handy, as he was the one to suggest the theme of Confessions. I love how we interpreted it through the lenses of what's dear to our heart: the history of christianity for Gray Friar, and modern literature for me. It was a great joy and privilege to have worked together on such a project.
And we've finally caught up to the present. Auguries of Innocence was born unexpectedly one day at the sea. I was strolling my second daughter, and the sand all around reminded me of the first four verses of William Blake's poem:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
I am not much of a beach person, but that day I was inspired to see the world around me with new eyes. Starting, obviously, from grains of sand! And the first ideas for the project were, fittingly, written in the sand.
I originally planned to work on Auguries of Innocence in 2025, as I'm very self-conscious of the sheer amount of releases I have planned for 2024 (there's more to come before the end of the year!). However, a series of personal events led me to tackle this project way earlier than expected. In addition, during composition the project grew in unforeseen ways, and I've gladly broadened its scope to encompass other verses of the poem.
At the moment, it's my most experimental release, as it features harmonies I never used before in the first and last track, and odd time signatures in most of the other tracks (this fascination with odd time signatures is not new for me: even Wanderings and Vistas has a song mainly in 7/4). Everything sums up to a release that's very varied in tone, while still offering a coherent meditative journey. Feel free to check it out and let me know if it inspires you to see the extraordinary in the mundane.
If you're still here, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It was a joy to share with you my music journey. If something intrigued you, you can find here codes for all my releases.
Thank you for reading or listening! I hope some of what I wrote moved you to discover new music - or even to look back at your own creations with new eyes.
ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, September 2024