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1. GENERATION SUITE - - ABOVE THE CLOUDS
The album begins by picking up the phrase from the finale and closes the circle.
The meaning of the phrase is only grasped by listening to the album “in a loop,” connecting the last track to the first, suggesting the cyclical nature of the events narrated.
This first track is meant to be a sort of purification ritual, a “preface/preparation” for the detachment from the Great One by both elements and man. Above the clouds, from the very first notes, the cosmic breath seems to invade the listener, placing them in an “other” dimension, urging them to breathe deeply and relax to correctly tune into the frequency of the surrounding ambient vibrations.
Beyond and “above” the sky, beyond the atmosphere and the horizon of the human, a narrating voice intervenes at the end of the track; it seems to possess an otherworldly vision and come from a metaphysical dimension.
It speaks from that dimension “above” and “beyond” sensory perception, from that place-non-place, an immaterial and timeless oasis, where there is no human voice.
This area is not inhabited by humans: it is the “LAND of no one” to which the album title refers.
This non-human perspective provides a contemplative view of the eternal return of the identical: nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, while the constant - but only apparent - transformation is nothing but a formal order change, a construction that changes shape using eternally the same Elements.
2. GENERATION SUITE - - AER (120bpm)
Without AIR, there would be no life; everything comes from AIR.
While everything seems to proceed in slow motion, suddenly AIR invades the atmosphere.
AIR; everything comes from here... the great philosopher Anaximenes - whose verses are taken up here - around the 6th century BC had introduced to Greek thought the theory of the derivation from AIR of all four fundamental Elements.
According to Anaximenes, everything descends from the sky, the sacred residence of the deities, through processes of rarefaction and condensation of AIR.
The AIR permeating the earthly atmosphere, intangible in its pure state, when combined with WATER, indeed passes from its gaseous state to the liquid one and thus through the process of liquefaction it rains on the EARTH.
Thanks to cold, AIR passes from the liquid state in which it was initially transformed to the solid state of ice; from this last condition, thanks to the heat of FIRE it returns to vapor and through sublimation regains its gaseous state, evaporating and returning to the sky.
Then AIR is revealed as that very infinite cosmic breath that was sensed beyond the clouds.
. 3. GENERATION SUITE – – EVOLUTION
The Great Mother, this enormous placenta hosting the becoming of life in its full harmony, the EARTH in whose womb all differences are born and develop, all the smallest and largest realities that cyclically evolve on Her, while on It reigns an apparent staticity, just generated by the swirling breath of cosmic Chaos is EARTH of no man.
In this EARTH of no one, new forms of life are generated and evolved, populating a desolated EARTH.
4. GENERATION SUITE - - EARTH,, MOTHER EARTH
While the harmonic melody of the celestial Spheres still resonates in the cosmos, as soon as humans begin to populate the EARTH, a never-ending war begins, which fertilizes, in fraternal blood, their very own Mother.
5. ON THE EARTH - - IN NO MAN'S LAND
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Man, a peculiar entity among other animals, from the solitude of his fleeting and ephemeral presence contemplates his temporary condition in the face of eternity, and with hands still bloody, reflects on the meaning of his existence.
From the Other Side, the Great One seems to answer him, providing a key to understanding the eternal return of the same.
The event horizon is set in a LAND of no one, where everything is transient while being indispensable for universal harmony.
6. ON THE EARTH - - ALWAYS HAPPENS WHEN IT RAINS
WATER, an amniotic element that quenches, generates, and gives life, which flows freely choosing its own paths on the EARTH, causes assumptions and strange conjectures about the synchronisms of human events with celestial rhythms when triggering storms that feed man with false opinions, deluding him into thinking he is the master of the universe.
The song's text is inspired by the suggestions of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), according to whom the Four Elements derive from the "production of material images" or the “materialization of images” within the unique Mind of the universe.
Bachelard viewed the interaction of the elements from the standpoint of what each element aspired to.
"The joy of EARTH is richness and hindrance," he said.
"The pleasure of WATER is softness and rest; The pleasure of burning FIRE is desire and love; The joy of AIR is the freedom of movement".
7. ON THE EARTH - - APHRODITE'S JUNCTION
This track presents a mirror vision to that of Earth, Mother Earth, where Hatred dominated.
Love, Aphrodite's knot, binds and holds together all the Elements, giving them harmony and vital force.
If it is true that without Elements there would be no life, without Love everything would disintegrate or remain immutable and sterile.
Aphrodite's knot is the cosmic embrace that pervades the universe.
Aristotle himself deemed it appropriate to assign a fifth element alongside the four canonical elements, the fifth essence or ether, to explain the perfect symbiosis of the four elements in the sky that envelops everything and where everything is perfect compared to the EARTH where imperfection reigns.
This element is Love.
8. ON THE EARTH – – WAVES
In the text, Ulysses' wanderings in the Medi TERRanean sea are a metaphor showing the drifting typical of human life.
The text written and recited is instead an authentic hymn to life.
In the album's context, the element “WATER” is presented in its dramatic duality: on one side the waves resemble small - albeit detached - caresses reminding man of his aquatic nature, while on the other - simultaneously - they underscore the detachment from the maternal element, alternating between belonging and separation of the individual.
9. ON THE EARTH - - BREATHING
The cosmic breath calls humans one by one for reunification; despite the deception of sensory perceptions making them feel alive, men realize with suffering and despair that their ephemeral destiny is, in the end, to abandon their material state.
In the limitations of their individuality, no one can claim to be prepared for reunification with the Great One.
Then awareness is accompanied by nostalgic memories of the good times spent on EARTH.
While all around, nothing but despair remains.
10. ON THE EARTH - - GLARE AND SHINE
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FIRE is the element of passion, of warmth.
It can give great pleasure but also great suffering.
It is a purifying element but can also be a harbinger of war and destruction.
The non-sense of the track's text, delirious and rhapsodic, like the final solo entrusted, aims to recall the thousand tongues of FIRE reaching toward the sky and burning everything in a constant crescendo that brings everything back to its true origin.
11. ON THE EARTH - - KING OF NOTHING
Materiality, futile appearance destined to vanish with “earthly” life, hands over the crown of King of Nothing to every individual.
Life, in its joy and its sufferings, is a gift, of which the individual feels absolutely - yet mistakenly - master.
And so, faced with the disappearance of every other individual, faced with the death of those cells of a body that only apparently lives detached from the great One, the last man, in the throes of a delusion of grandeur, self-coronates as king of that very Nothing that has taken all his companions and now devours and destroys him from within.
The track aims to be a metaphor for the condition of displacement, lack, deprivation, and absolute despair experienced by the thousands of migrants crossing the sea of others' indifference.
12. RE- - UNION SUITE - - 5th ELEMENT
“Omnia vincit amor”, love conquers all.
In Aristotle's physics, Ether is the fifth building element of the universe, the “Fifth Essence,” indeed, which adds to the four Elements of Empedocles' physics (EARTH, WATER, AIR, FIRE).
The Quintessence is revealed as an incorruptible principle of vitality and movement, through which souls, floating intangible as the AIR thinning, dissolve to prepare for reunification and recomposition.
According to ancient and medieval science, the ether, also spelled æther or ether, also called quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere.
The concept of ether has been used in various theories to explain different natural phenomena, such as the travel of light and gravity.
Again, everything is accomplished - and will continue to be accomplished - in an eternal movement and in the cyclical return.
Man, in his more metaphysical dimension which is the soul, his peculiar essence, detaches from materiality and rises, guided by the Music of the Spheres, into the Quintessence.
Dematerializing, the body changes shape and returns to being part of the materiality of the elements, in the cyclicity of eternal rebirth.
13. RE- - UNION SUITE - - BREATHING REPRISE
Life is an illusory change of state; it begins with separation but destinies every Individual to return to the Great One.
Gradually, the AEREal breath, the vitality of FIRE, the floating of WATER, the earthly horizons seem to join, preparing for return and reunification.
14. RE- - UNION SUITE - - TIGHTER THE THRESHOLD, BROAD IS THE WAY
This track is an ideal recomposition and reassembly of some elements taken from the main themes of the album, a sort of “witnessing the spectacle of one's entire life passing” before vanishing dissolving into All.
15. RE- - UNION SUITE – – RE-UNION
In this final passage, the elements speak through the voices of the world.
Everyone contributed with a phrase, a thought that speaks of life.
In the end, an “eternally ascending” Shepard scale reconnects the elements to the One from which they derive; the last phrase breaks off and ideally completes itself by starting to listen to the beginning of the album again, ideally tying the eternal ring of Being to start anew in a new cycle.
CONCLUSION
The fundamental concept around which all the themes of the album revolve is dualism.
Not coincidentally, the album had a two-headed gestation, being conceived by two authors. Life / Death, Love / Hate, Attraction / Repulsion, War / Peace, Eternity / Finiteness.
The belonging of all beings inhabiting this earthly universe to the astral Elements that compose them - and yet transcend them - has originated everything.
The Elements are narrated individually and in the reciprocity of their harmonic completeness, in the distinction of their peculiar individuality and union in the All.
A search for the meaning of individuality in the conscious awareness of coming and having to return, at the end of the earthly cycle, to be part of the Great One.
The material aspect conditions and causes suffering for the detachment from which everything was generated, while the only reassurance comes from the awareness that in eternity everyone is and will forever be part of a single great substance from which, even if partially and temporarily distinguishing itself, will never completely detach.
Like cells of a great body, every individuality is fundamental and irreplaceable, like a single note in the Harmony of the Spheres.
Tracklist
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