Last year, in the first journals focused on my music journey rather than on artists I love, I discussed at length how it was important to me that ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ is a multifaceted project, expressing all parts of my music journey.
Paul Klee, Polyphony. Does this remind you of anything?
I was happy that, at the time, it made sense to release all of my music as ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, and in a sense I still stand by the idea of a coherent music journey. However, something in the last year has changed.
For those who don't know it already, many many years ago I received a heart transplant. The first years after the surgery were rocky, but afterwards I have enjoyed a long time of good health (all relative to the fact that I'm still a heart transplant recipient, and that the record for life expectancy after the transplant is something like 35 years). The end of summer 2024 marked a sharp change in this idyllic scenario. Everything started with an annoying tachycardia, something you might already know about if you follow my music.
In hindsight, the tachycardia was a symptom of something bigger lurking in the shadows. I won't enter into details, but I am writing while on the threshold of a new chapter in my health and my life, with a lot of uncertainty on what the new "normality" will look like.
Unsurprisingly, the ups and downs (especially the downs) of this last year have had a powerful impact on my music. The biggest change was that I have less and less energy, and feel constantly drained. This hasn't stopped me from working on new ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ music, but the lack of energy has slowed me down significantly. This is especially true for a couple of projects I wanted to complete by the end of summer, that instead will take me way longer than I anticipated. However, music is still a safe haven, a place of comfort. How could I concile the lack of energies with the need for creating?
The answer was to let go of the idea of constantly one-upping myself and to accept that focusing on simpler music is a better choice for the time being. Stars Over Lost Havens was born out of me surrendering to this idea, that I then carried over to ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ. Both Tachycardia and, to a lesser extent, Oneiric Divination // Oneiric Punks are deliberately stripped down compared to most of my previous music published as ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ. The same goes for my collaboration with The Towers at Ries.
Working on Stars Over Lost Havens also helped me understanding better that, despite the variety of music that I released as ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, the project has developed an aesthetic of its own. For instance, the hand-drawn naive cover of Stars Over Lost Havens doesn't feel a great fit for ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, but it is appropriate and indeed is a core characteristic of this new project. The same goes for the explicit focus on the story that began with Stars Over Lost Haven. It is true that ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ has a few releases that hint at a greater story (Wanderings and vistas and The roads of the Old Empire, for instance, and also the Oneiric releases). However, with Stars (and subsequent releases, whenever they will come) I tried to be even more explicit and, in time, I plan to weave an actual storyline, rather than only giving hints like I do with ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ' music.
Stars Over Lost Havens shows also that, to me, working on simpler music doesn't mean putting out half-baked or low-effot projects for the sake of it. I've never spent so much time working on the aesthetic elements of a project, actually drawing everything from the album cover to the logo and the Bandcamp page. And it was very satisfying to translate those experiments in a form that was fitting for ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ. The increased focus on the story and on the visual art is an attemps at diversifying the sources of fatigue, to try and handle it a bit better.
Stars Over Lost Haven is just the first official side project you can expect from me. However, the wheels are already in motion for something new, while no day passes without me thinking about my next quests with ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ.
The road ahead is uncertain and most probably filled with monsters. Let's face it together, one step at a time.
ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, July 2025