Flying away and 0049-SUP, her support Robot

0049-A was finally able to build supersonic wings from scraps. She wanted to see the planet from above. Maybe attempt to escape. We Got the Go is the single describing this flight attempt. On one of the landings she loses an arm upon impact with a rock. That does not diminish the feeling of freedom only supersonic wings can give you.

When she comes back to her charging station, at sunset, 0049-SUP is there waiting for her. Her support robot will put back together her right forearm. After years of service, and despite being a lower generation neural chip, 0049-SUP still has feelings and falls for the very same Android he is caring for. The last song of the EP - Falling for Androids - describes this final chapter of the story arc.

These two songs wrap up the 4 songs EP - Android Youth. It has been an amazing journey and experience to go back to the studio many years after Matilda. and 45isdistance and something I don’t want to ever give up. The next work will be an EP as i love the 4 songs format. The work for the sounds, mood and story has already started… hope to meet you soon for another auditory journey.

Hasta pronto!

All the artwork was done with Adobe Substance 3D Stager, one of my favorite creative tools and one I had the luck to work on for a several years.

Second single and a closer look at Ractive-0049

Time to spend some time on character development no? We Got The Go is the second single and happy song! After lingering in the nostalgic vibe of Android Youth and before the release of Desert Aurora at the end of the month, We Got The Go is a 148 BPM happy happy boom boom glimpse of hope into the future. Do you know how hard it is to write and play a 148 BPM song without making it feel like a 74 BPM song? Let’s focus on the character! Exactly like in Terminator2 there is always a second power supply circuit, and the one our Android is enjoying is nuclear! Why Ractive-0049? How old is she? What is she doing there in the remote desert area of the galaxy? The concept of Ractive comes from Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age concept referring to human-driven elite interactive entertainment. Here the human aspect has totally being replaced by a generation 5 AI chip. On top of its processing power the Ractive character has been implanted a series of life experiences that make her incredibly stable and reliable. She still craves the type of emotions she thinks she experienced, but would not do anything outside the script to reach that emotional state. She is trapped in her own implanted wisdom if you want, the only thing who could free her up would be a higher level of awareness about the creation process of Ractives. But she is there alone. The 0049 type can function for a few centuries and conduct extremely taxing jobs, all they need is the time to regenerate their ceramic tissue once in a while. Today she walked 35 miles on the desert and found a flower. You can look at her in augmented reality form here.

Screen Shot 2021-04-29 at 9.22.10 AM.png

Android Youth EP Announced and Release of First Single

SubLuminal - Cover - Banner - Website.png

It has been about 20 years from my first album [algae by Matilda.] and a few years from [45isdistance] last show… in this time without releasing my brain has been collecting sounds, drum loops, moods, feelings.. and during my sabbatical in November I found myself rebuilding the sound palette from scratch. My decades old pedal effects board got lost in a move and I decided to go back to the core sound, the pure valve saturation. As (mostly) a guitarist my starting point could not have been anything else than the sound of the guitar. I believe the sounds drive what melody and mood will come out of your creative flow. I spend a disproportionate amount of time on them. So I bought on Reverb a 1963 Fender Twin and took at it with my soldering iron. I had a spare Twin in case things went south. But they didn’t and I’m proud to say that every guitar song of the EP comes out of the same magic cone, used with several different guitars but keeping that magic feeling of warm sustain and fat timbre. Ok, enough geeking out! The story. I am obsessed with cyber-punk and androids. I love to think about the future and look at it from the eyes of an even more distant future. That inspired these artworks and haikus. Our young feel android, number 0049, is a future generation old fashion android who is used in combat in remote and desolate areas of our solar system. She performed live in the Ractive art installation at the festival of the impossible last year. And she is now the subject of this EP. She is equipped with old fashion materials and equipment despite the high level degree AI. Lead-acid, carbon fiber, plastic lungs, nuclear core… all things of the past future. She will guide you through an interactive AR experience that I will describe int he next post, when the second song will go live. For now I hope you enjoy Android Youth and are so excited to follow SubLuminal on Spotify. The work would have been possible without Jenny G and Franz Fabiano, true talents and amazing collaborators. Cheers.