Ceremony

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

The words of the secret book are sacred symbols that only have their meanings activated when the mind of the practitioner awakens to their truths. Thus, when the words are understood and can be ably be put into practice then their reality can be brought into this world and turned into a transformative and magical experience. The secret book is opened, a verse chosen, and a candle stands lit, symbolizing the desire to receive or pass on illumination (knowledge), upon the altar to signal the start of something magical.

The call of a wild animal in the distance invokes the beginning of Ceremony and announces the start of the ritual that will unfold as the music continues. A low note drone is revealed and acts as a backdrop to the guitar strings playing a dirge to concentrate supernatural forces into the mind of the sorceress so as to electrify their tools which are placed before them on the altar. The wild animal calls out again as if aware of the power the magician is conjuring in their secret ritual chamber.

As the intensity of the practitioner’s attention focuses ever more greatly on the meanings of the words as sacred symbols revealing a deeper truth, the spell begins to work. Ceremony highlights this fact with a cue from an electric guitar with a single note, with string bent, to signify the altering of a natural event with forces capable of changing their course. With this, there’s a quickening of magical power infusing with the sorceress’s props giving them a usefulness beyond acting as an aid for focus and instead becoming tools with which to channel specialized forms of energy in whatever direction according to the owner’s will and whim.

Along with the right ingredients, combined and assembled by her own hands, collected as an offering, the sacred words and carefully selected tools in which to infuse power, the practitioner as a person must be worthy to receive and act as a vessel for doing the Will of the Great Work. Rather than only using the power with which they’ve been entrusted for their own purposes, they must also be willing to allow that Power to work through them, to act as Its agent in the world for good or evil. So that Its Will shall be done and not always his or her own will, for their own purposes.

The low note begins to rise, up a short melodic scale, as the influx of forces into the ritual chamber increase more strongly evoking an ominous tone. Then at last, the magical words are mimicked by being intoned with the guitar solo. Through the guitar melody the sorceress speaks the sacred utterances that only those who have ears can hear and those who have minds alert to the work of spiritual matters in our world can understand. The words, through these crafty tones, repeat the spell and repeat it again until the intensity of the Ceremony is increased and reaches its full fruition by becoming realized in the person of the sorceress. Through her the power which was waiting to be harnessed from the other side has passed into our world by means of this Ceremony. And with her props, by being shrouded in magical power can now act as a tool in the hands of the sorceress. Moreover, the Ceremony was a knock that opened a door to provide her with a gift which she came to receive, prepared in advance and showing how she was worthy.

Now in exhaustion, the sorceress collapses on the altar, faint from the influx of energy from another realm, and from communing with the energy of a higher power. Rest in very much necessary as a time for reflection and to meditate on the lessons learned. This is the time when the practitioner can integrate their experiences through the Ceremony into their very being, since the act of being chosen means also being transformed. For when it comes to power, there are no rights without responsibility. The exhaustion beckons a time for recovery through meditation and the state of meditation leads to sleep wherein dreams can assist the dreamer to explore the use of their newly acquired powers in the environment of the imagination. The dream provides the magician with a unique environment similar to but not the same as when awake, which is why through dreams the sorceress’s powers can come alive and through the imagination life is nothing more than a dream.

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Related Music:

Ceremony

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Engine no. 28

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

A child’s toy, a token of their youth, encapsulates the spirit of what it means to be a kid. Before the duties of becoming an honorable or dysfunctional adult sink into a child’s frame of mind, they can live free and carelessly, since there is little to no liability to the mistakes we make and the time we waste in play. At the outset, our lives can be lived between a wide margin of error with time to recover from our mistakes. But as we have less time to use as we age, that margin of error shrinks and demands that we perform with far less error than we had when we were young.

Our imaginations can run wild and pursue every whim and fancy with wild abandon when we’re kids. No toy is just an object for play but rather a prop in a massive parade or great adventure. As children we are only limited by our imagination, but as adults the imagination is restricted by social norms, the law, and the responsibilities of adulthood. Liabilities become real and all of our actions become measured and cautious.

The essence of what this piece of music, Engine no. 28, has captured is the spirit of fun and fantasy. The speed of the tempo, like a child’s heartbeat, is moving at a quick pace to mimic the pulse of a kid in constant motion. The bass line, low and bouncey, dances like a giant, but friendly teddy bear. The melody has a nursery rhyme quality to it, being simple and repetitive, and easy to remember after just a few iterations. You can even grasp the sensation of turning the big steering wheel of the large tires with twirling bass line arpeggios. Plus, synthesized fire engine noises provide a perfect environment for a fire engine fantasy.

Engine no. 28 is also about that time in all of our lives when we stole pleasure moments for ourselves and invested them in play and imagination. We believed we possessed the power to endow objects with life and did by animating them for our amusement and to impress others. During that time we populated whole cities and fantasized about doing things until the day came when we really could.

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Related Music:

Engine no. 28

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

The Rat Race

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

Time is the measurement of all motion according to a standard. The truth though is that time measures the movement of the Earth around the Sun and this measurement divided into ever smaller increments becomes seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. Age too makes its impact on our lives as time affects the condition of our bodies in addition to our use and maintenance or lack thereof. But nothing can prevent our age from catching up with us no matter how well we treat our bodies, over time age, bad habits, poor eating, genetic predisposition, and hygiene, will break down the body and stop it from functioning.

The ticktock of time is accentuated in The Rat Race as it impresses the listener with the silent pressure that clocks and schedules provide to working people. Every second is a moment either invested wisely or wasted, never to return, time lost and never regained. Beginning in an appropriate minimalistic style, The Rate Race quickly adds elements that float around the main minimalistic riff. Without a clear tempo, the listener has to rely on the pulse provided by several song elements such as the downbeat on the multitracked guitars and strumming.

Whether we’re overworked, stressed with the kids, or frustrated with other people and our conflicts with them, life is full of friction and can become unbearable by forcing us to adopt the mindset that we’re in a kind of prison of craziness apparently out of our control. The Rat Race tries to represent this chaos of drama by showing this combination of elements in a cloud of sound that goes in different directions and different speeds. Some elements are slow and relaxed, spaced far apart and reappearing at varying intervals of time unpredictably. While other elements are constant, quick moving, and altering their activity in rapid sequences of change.

Change too is a factor that calls our attention to time. Basically, time is the change of objects and people through space, which produces time, and as such The Rat Race demonstrates this with all of its sonic components colliding with one another in chance events occurring in an unplanned manner, you know, just like life. How often does it occur where one of our plans are thwarted or come to fruition in a version we had not foreseen? Change is inevitable and events emerge spontaneously as the motion of time waits for no one.

Another interesting feature of time and change is the development of opportunities. As things remain in motion they sometimes align into a fortuitous series of events that benefit us or those around us. Even unfortunate events oddly enough can sometimes push us into circumstances that are not totally harmful. Even in adversity there is much to be gained, a lesson to be learned, and even if a bad thing happens some good can come of it. Sometimes we can anticipate such moments as when we “feel lucky” or somehow interpret a day as possessing a particularly useful quality where things are working for us and not against us, perhaps, a day filled with good omens or signs leading to a positive result on the order of a “sure thing.”

Every day, these factors of time - the motion and change of objects and people into certain alignments forming opportunities - reveal themselves in unique ways, but only to the observant and sensitive individual. The real world Rat Race is filled with so many obstacles and ways to distract ourselves from achieving fulfillment or happiness that it’s not always possible to change our mode of perception to see what opportunities are developing and being presented before us. If we let the stress of everyday life beat us down until our heads are hung low, we may miss the potential of new possibilities in other directions than we normally travel.

The Rat Race was composed with these concepts and images in mind and as music stresses how we use our time and that our use of time is governed by our freedom of choice. To defeat the real world Rat Race it is up to us to choose a new way of living by pursuing what it is that life has to offer and changing something about ourselves, because after all, the world we see is simply a reflection of ourselves. But if we change ourselves, we can literally change the world we see and live in. Seek a new idea, a new way of thinking, or a new way of being and test what it’s like to live like that. What new things and people have been attracted to or repelled from the “new” you? Interestingly, by changing little parts of ourselves we can remake our image of the world and become born again into a new experience of life and break free of The Rat Race.

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Related Music:

The Rat Race

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Geoforms

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

An impulse to create outlined the space in which a universe was to be built and so it was. Defined and solidified. This was followed by an intent to form things and implant in them a persistence, an enduring state of existence. This universe was then filled with clouds of radioactive dust, a malleable form of energy with which to bring to shape the hallucination of a creative impulse from an image formed in the mind of an intelligent being. A dream was then projected from the mind of a Maker and many other cooperating minds so that by it began the process of creation. For by this dream alone, a desire for images to become mobile, the universe began to take shape.

Geoforms, begins with a syncopated overlaid set of drum tracks that form a brief intro. They will be the backbone for the entire duration of the song. It sets the stage for a sparse melodic drone of mid-range notes that playfully counterpoint with another short line of bass notes, in call and response format. The rhythm guitar holds a splashy chord with shimmering effect that sustains itself throughout the intro until it releases the tension by flowing into the next section of music that rises and pulls you up with it.

The compression of the gravitic pull of this piece represents the built up pressure with which planets started to form. Within one critical moment, an ignition takes place, and thus the core of a planet was lit. Geoforms too ignites with an explosion of energy into the second section of the song and shows how a process slowly forms by building up energy and unleashing it in a magnified release.

The great ball of energy upon which the Earth grew and its enormous pull gave it its eventual size. The pull of other large masses and their interaction with the laws of the forces which govern their motions placed them all, each in their own orbits and positions. The extensive magnetic field of the Sun and the numerous magnetic fields of what would become the other planets all interacting put everything in its place and thus the universe was set.

In Geoforms, this idea comes to life when just a few musical elements center around a simple idea and rhythmic structure that eventually expand and release the energy that was being concentrated in the intro. But like all forms of energy, whether creative or astrophysical, when it reaches a critical mass of compression, the energy must be released and dispersed into the environment, particles blown out of an explosion.

Over millions of years, all of the planets cooled and became rocky or gaseous balls circling the Sun at differing rates of orbit. A day on Earth was defined as a rotation of the Earth on its axis, with a year referring to a completion of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The illusion for us is of the Sun rising and falling, when in actuality all that occurs is that the Earth turns, while the Sun remains motionless.

Originally, as one mass of radioactive energy, the Earth formed a crust over a ball of molten rock, mostly composed of iron. Gigantic plates of rock, the continents, move about the surface of the planet and perform minute movements by grinding against each other to form mountains, shores, and rifts causing an endless arrangement in landscapes I call Geoforms. The movement of these tectonic plates are what make and re-make the look of our world over time. The slow and persistent motion of these plates build oceans, generate earthquakes, erode coasts, and sink entire continents.

Geoforms captures this element of slow and persistent tectonic motion with a smooth melody in the second section as it contrasts against the jaggedness of rock from the guitar strumming, which gives the illusion of a staggered mountainous region rising out of a plain. The low notes in the main theme speak as if they were a great command proclaiming the eternity of life and existence, back of everything we see, feel, and hear. Moreover, the tones of the melody have a courageous, almost triumphant quality that illustrate a motive power underlying the process of forming and remaking the Earth for eons.

On Earth, evolution would follow its own unique planetary blueprint in geology and biology, environment and life forms. Not only would the environment cool and harden, but it would also become the landscape we now know, inhabited by plants, animals, and more importantly, water. But whether here on Earth, or on other planets, Geoforms really tells the story of all planets and the way they develop according to the blueprint by which they were designed - in chance formations governed by universal laws coded into the fabric of the cosmos.

The third section of Geoforms reveals this fact about Earth and in sound shows us several scenes of oasis. One is a refreshing area of land irrigated by water diverted from a nearby river to help fertilize fields and their crops, another is a gorgeous waterfall filling a large pool at its base where the myriad life forms can gather to drink, frolic, or bathe, and lastly, a vast ocean spreading out into a seeming infinity where there is no end to the horizon. Fish, plant, and man all benefit from the bounty that is provided by the Earth as it evolved from a creative impulse to build a dream and to give it form.

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Related Music:

Geoforms

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Ask Yourself

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

Ask Yourself begins with a choir of angels, a whirlwind of strumming and electronic breezes to evoke an ethereal vibe. It unravels and dissipates into the opening lyrics of the song with statements pointing back to the beginning of life in our universe, perhaps even the origin of all existence. While not an overtly religious piece of music it is spiritual and addresses a sincere curiosity about serious questions. It also expresses a viewpoint that hints at possible answers to these concerns.

“Where do we come from?

Where are we going?

So many questions and nobody knowing.”

These lines represent the basis of the lyrical motif underlying all of the thoughts and poetic phrases expressed in Ask Yourself. Everything else revolves around and refers to these fundamental frustrations with standard or even traditional responses to these philosophical questions. Along with so many questions we all face too many answers. For any serious minded individual, truth is unified and not a multiplicity of fragments forced together from different sources to create a cohesive picture of what may or may not be truth.

So how do we resolve the conflict between our questions and the answers we’re given or find through our own searching? Experience is the teacher and it is crucial we develop the sensitivity to be open to the way experience can help us learn. The results of our actions provide clues by giving us feedback. Life is a laboratory where we are conducting the experiment of our lives. Answers are revealed when the right questions are asked.

“It’s all about you and that’s all there is.”

Who else can teach us to see what is before us? Who else is there when we’re confronted with the reality of our lives and the themes that occur repeatedly? No one else but ourselves. Alone, we witness the evolution of circumstances that develop out of a combination of our decisions and actions. The impact of our choices and deeds produces the experience that we consider our lives. Everything responds to the quality of our character, which is formed from the kind of people we are really.

We broadcast who we are with the energy of our being and the most sensitive of people can detect who we are easily, but for others they are deceived by our false fronts and many masks of personality. The soul, if such a things exists, is a mirror into which we can practice viewing our reflection in private. Our experience of life is a reflection of who we are really. To learn and eventually know the truth, we must also be truthful with ourselves. The universe is a mirror and we reflect in it what’s in our soul. Just Ask Yourself.

“You are what it is. The light is within,

Underneath your skin. You are a star.”

As souls, we maintain eternality. A star is the only symbol of near eternality in our universe and yet a brief study of the life of stars in this universe reveals that even they can die. Eternality as an idea is different from immortality in that it refers to the fact of being eternal or unending, instead of immortality which is merely the condition of not experiencing death or without death. There are only three things in our universe which we conceive of as possessing eternality and they are the universe itself, souls, and God. Everything else that is alive or that exists in this universe can be imagined to somehow or in some way be able to achieve the state of immortality, but this is folly.

“Just ask yourself.”

Anything affected by change in time must of necessity age and therefore experiences decay and dissolution. Even the universe itself may one day come to an end, thus souls and God remain as the only things we can think of that might have eternality as one of their fundamental characteristics. We are what constitutes life, by animating, directing, and initiating our purposes through living, but while we are involved in this experience, we are also free, unaffected and far removed from the consequences of aging and death. We go on and some of us even come back.

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Related Music:

Ask Yourself

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/