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/

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/

Big Cloud

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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 vibrato and minimalist riff at the start of Big Cloud represents the forces of wind, cold, heat, and light that interact above us all day, every day of our lives. This is the backdrop and environmental factors that provide us with a field in which to act and build the structure of our lives. Everything from an individual’s life, a society, a culture, flight, navigation, and all types of construction that make human life bearable occur because we’ve learned to cope with the forces of nature with the creativity of our adaptations and inventions.

The opposing forces of heat and cold interact in the sky generating a motion of air. Frost and moisture fall and rise within the dome of the earth to form clouds, rain, wind, and storm. Above us, these elements and processes operate to add beauty and randomity to the conditions in which we experience the action of our lives. The mix of earth and sky are the environment, the arena under which we live and breath the miracle of elements that make life possible for one and all.

A smooth transition indicates a harmony between man and his environment, an understanding of the laws of nature, and of how to use these laws to anticipate changes in our surroundings, thus making it possible to plot a course of action and to make long-term plans across many generations, for many years in advance. A melodic statement says it all and what it says is man is worthy of living and capable of solving the problems of survival and of being able to face existence on this planet without fear, so that he may triumph with the weapon of his mind. The theme and melody repeat until an ominous note signals a change in the weather and a confrontation between humanity and their environment.

A struggle ensues. The push and pull of factors of man’s survival against the brutal forces of nature uncaringly proceeding with their unfeeling motions of death and new life born of the old. Storm, fast moving winds, wildfires, earthquakes, flood, avalanches and much more all contradict what the human mind can conceive and what he builds with his hands. But nature, in truth, is not against Man. The correct view is that Man must learn the ways of nature of mitigate the damage those processes will inflict on his desire for permanence and immunity from the laws of nature. While these are noble goals to strive for, they will never be realized as the keynote of this universe is time and for time, change. Things change and Man must learn to accept change or nature through the environment will force him to change whether He likes it or not.

When the forces of nature seem to attack and Man’s emotions bid him to protect his creations, he experiences fear and grief from loss. Loss of possessions and the lives of those he loved, prolong these emotional states, but these too are experiences from which he learns to cope with nature of her vicious changes. Apathy is that state where all he can do is watch all of what he built get washed away and flattened by a more powerful force that his ability to design and build what he imagines.

Man is a force of nature in himself and can live despite the liabilities that living exposes him to from birth. The bridge is a sad statement underscoring a comprehension of loss and the element of change that all people must come to terms with as a result of being alive. This section ends with a courageous note and a strong phrase leads into it to point to the hope of rebuilding everything that was lost, but by persistence can be regained yet in a different form. Destruction and rebirth form a cycle of life that becomes new growth by sweeping away the old.

What will survive in the aftermath and live to thrive another day? No one knows for sure, but those who do have a responsibility to prepare for those who will come one day soon in the future to make their own contributions to the survival of our species on this and other planets. Normalcy returns, those who have gone into hiding come out, we gather to examine the damage, and from there we begin to rebuild. The danger has passed and life must go on. We bury the dead, clean up the remains, and settle in for a new beginning. Up in the sky a Big Cloud hovers as a sign of what has just occurred, but it soon becomes distant and dissipates with the heat of the sun and eventually disappears.

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Related Music:

Big Cloud

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/