Solefald
In Harmonia Universali

Last night I had an absurd nightmare. But really absurd, one of those where you wake up gasping and say to yourself, "what the heck did I just dream??". Yeah, something like that. It reminded me of something, oh yes, a text by Wilhelm Leibniz that talked about Universal Harmony, it kept echoing in my head. Highs and lows, good and bad things completing each other. If evil didn't exist, good wouldn't exist, and that's why there's wickedness in the world.

One. At the beginning of the dream (actually the nightmare) I certainly couldn't imagine what would happen next, everything was so calm and serene. Then I see two shady figures appear in front of me, one white and thin, the other black and sturdy. The first starts screaming in a high-pitched voice, the second one accompanies him with a baritone that growls on the floor, dragging. I begin to run away from them, I run, I run panting. But who's with them? The legendary Francesco I!! Yes, the one with the motto "Nutrisco Et Extingo". I feed the good fire and extinguish the wicked. But a force pushes me to the ground. It crushes me, like a doom riff from Reverend Bizzarre when they're particularly depressed. The grip is released, one starts playing the piano, and here comes another weird guy with a saxophone in hand, playing some notes passionately. The two from before continue to chase me, I still feel crushed, I stop running, I start dragging myself.

Two. How beautiful, I see the light, I feel better. A breath of fresh air. It seems like I see AC/DC, no what, it's still those two. They pursue me moving in a spiral, the pianist from before starts playing the organ. The black seems to gag, the white meanwhile invokes some evil spirit. They stop running, start walking hand in hand and smiling at me, they look like Dolce&Gabbana.

Three. Everything turns black, the atmosphere around me smells of liquid sulfur. Now it's the black invoking, but the tone hasn't changed, maybe he still has those gag reflexes. The white, on the other hand, is still in a good mood. The guy with the organ hasn't stopped playing for a second, it seems he's going insane. The two have brought along the choir of the Baroque Church, it seems, they all start chasing me. At some point the choir stops, joins hands, starts to intone some strange prayer. Again that mysterious force! It pushes me to the ground.

Four. I get up and start running again, almost by instinct. It's a good thing: a pack of cannibal Satanists chases me to eat me. They reach me and hang me, the white solemnly pronounces my sentence. Yet I manage to miraculously escape, provoking general anger. Those cannibals cast a curse on me. I run and a swarm of wild splinters chases me, coming at supersonic speed from all directions! I feel trapped, I start screaming, and there they fall all around me. The organ gives way to the piano. The white reaches me and, calmly, congratulates me on managing to save myself. I stop, throw myself to the ground, but can't hold back the tears. I'm trapped here, in this world. I raise my hands to the sky, utter a cry of hope and despair, in vain. The white betrays me: he calls the cannibals again and I fall into an abyss without light and without peace.

Five. It's Carnival. I've arrived in a village, it looks like the festival of the fools. And look, the leader here is the white one, with his cronies (the church choir). First he starts rapping me a prayer in Latin better than Eminem would, then he raises his eyes and invokes. Darkness returns. The strange guy from before, the one with the sax, returns to delight me, it seems he's playing jazz at a funeral, while meanwhile the black starts praying softly, a prayer for the departed. Sadness grows, becomes anger, desperation, madness. It feels like Satan is cursing me, with a sax background to boot. Everything starts swirling around me like I smoked a joint. Everything reverberates, help, I hit myself, dark forces attack me from all sides! The gag reflex has had strange effects on the black: he throws himself to the ground suffering, starts bleeding everywhere, asks me for help. But surprise! The white arrives, saves him and they start dancing a waltz.

Six. What a nice donkey you are. This time I feel like I'm inside a video game, I see someone who looks like the bad copy of Petrucci, he starts abusing the guitar. Super Mario Bros arrives with face-painting, gives him a nice pat on the back and starts wild headbanging.

Seven. This time I'm in a hospital, doctors are doing strange experiments with embryos, somewhere there's a black metal concert, maybe in the resuscitation room. I run down a long corridor, it's surrounded by mirrors on the right and left, with two faces: on the right the black, on the left the white. The black curses me, the white tells me to run, then they start insulting each other. What the heck is going on! A nurse with a test tube in her hand pops out, tells the white to shut up, he extends his arms and starts singing slowly: "Buy my sperm, buy my sperm!". "Buy my sperm! I'll give you a discount, with a free surrogate uterus." Please buy it, there's even the organist legitimizing the request. The black has a schizophrenic crisis, the white keeps singing, but in the end gets angry and scolds the nurse. You damn hypocrite, you support the implant of embryos and then don't want my sperm?? Look, it's top quality, DOC certified.

Eight. This time the organist and the guy with the sax have made an agreement, they take me and tie me up, damn them. The white kneels, recites a love poem in French, with the same tone of voice with which my uncle Girolamo would invoke a zombie. The black imitates the singer of My Dying Bride, he too recites something in French, but I can't tell if it's a poem or a will.

Nine. Everything calms down. I feel like I'm in a forest, I seem to hear the water of a stream nearby, some fairies give me massages. What peace, what tranquility! No way, here they are again. This time it's apocalypse. They take me and throw me from one side to the other, crush me with boulders, and the white starts invoking the liberation of destiny! Help!

Ten. Hitler mutters in his sleep. I hear him, he's saying something. No, he killed the sax guy! There he is, still strumming it to death, I see him fall bleeding while still blowing into his instrument. The black tortures me, he still has the gag reflexes that put him in a bad mood. Then he goes to the white and together they start kicking the poor half-dead saxophonist. The nightmare has reached its peak, I no longer understand anything, until peace returns, like before! But this time no fairies…

I recover from the trance almost suddenly, all sweaty.
Man, what a nightmare! But why did I have it? Because of the pepper salad? No way. Actually, to be honest, when I had it I wasn't even sleeping, I was listening to "In Harmonia Universali", the fourth album of the Solefald duo. What a strange album. Lyrics in English, French, German, Latin and Norwegian. Impossible to try to understand it. Impossible even to think of attributing a logical thread to it: this is a ridiculous album, and it must remain so, otherwise it wouldn't be so brilliant. The human unconscious, forcibly taken, as it is, and translated into a seven-note code of Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si.
If this isn't superior compositional level, the pope is a boss of the 'ndrangheta. Otherwise how could I have written such a silly review, do you think? I swear, it's exactly what I saw while listening to it, and I hadn't done marijuana or the like. Give it a listen, then let me know how it went. I'll go back to listening… I'm curious to see what will happen to me this time.