we are planning another CD, a quadruple CD even, for our band Bald Angels, with our most experimental music so far.
the album or albums will describe our religion. it is clear that there will be only 4 very long tracks, each track describing the celebrations on the 4 holidays of our Gaian religion (of which Friede and I are High Priestesses). the solstices and equinoxes. it will start with the spring equinox followed by the summer solstice, the fall equinox and the winter solstice.
it will actually be one long cyclic track (about 5 hours long). that means CD 1 will end like CD 2 begins, CD 2 will end like CD 3 begins, CD 3 will end like CD 4 begins and CD 4 will end like CD 1 begins. it will not really matter which CD you start with; the sequence of the CDs is important though. so you can actually listen 1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-1, 3-4-1-2 or 4-1-2-3. or, hopefully, 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 ad infinitum. the working title of the album is "The Gaia Cycle".
the album will come with an extensive booklet describing the rituals we perform on our holidays and lots of other information about our religion, like for example the 13-months calendar we designed for our religion.
there will be a recurring main theme and some minor themes. structurally the music will be quite similar to Magma's "Mëkanik Destruktiw Kömmandöh" or Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells". this does not mean there will be any musical similarities, there will just be some vague structural similarities.
as usual I will play keyboards and some guitar, my wife Friede will play drums, tuned and untuned percussion and some bass, my sister Bea will add diverse kinds of flute (she collects different kinds of flutes from all around the world, like her idol Didier Malherbe), saxes and violin, our daughters Alice and Dorothy will be joining too (Dorothy will be providing cello, trombone and keyboards, Alice will play guitar, bass and trumpet). all members of the band will also sing and play percussion instruments. there will be lots of unusual singing.
it definitely is an extremely ambitious project, and we don't think it will be finished before 2020. everything will be recorded live in the studio, as our two previous albums. this means we will have to play 5 hours without interruptions. of course there will be some breaks for all musicians; 5 hours of continuous playing does not mean all musicians will be playing all the time. nevertheless, it will be difficult, and there will have to be a lot of rehearsals
we are also planning at least one live performance of "The Gaia Cycle". all members of the band will be nude on stage (slurp, slobber)! there will be a lot of dancing too. there will be 3 breaks in the performance during which the stage will be redecorated and the members of the band will put on different body paint.
since our daughters and my sister are also members of our religion it will be a truly ritualistic performance. with the breaks the whole show will be almost 6 hours long.
the name of the band will be changed to "Mother Gaia" for this project.
Bea made an interesting suggestion: that the lyrics should be in ancient Greek. our daughters have been learning ancient Greek in school for the last 6 years, and Friede and I decided to learn along with them because Gaia is an ancient Greek Goddess.
Bea doesn't know ancient Greek, but she speaks modern Greek (as well as several other languages, she is an interpreter for the EU) and will be learning ancient Greek for this project.
ancient Greek has a more complicated grammar, the pronunciation is somewhat different from modern Greek, and the accents on the words are very different, but in a way that make ancient Greek ideal for singing. and many words, although homonyms, have different meanings in ancient and modern Greek.
of course we will include translations of the lyrics in the booklets for the album cycle. in live performances the translations will be shown on a screen.
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I hope this all comes to fruition.
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