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Matters of Life or Death

Composed quickly and in a burst of inspiration and hard work, Matters of Life and Death has become the eventual realization of a cri de cœur, in hindside foreshadowed in the earlier Dronescapes. We are slowly destroying our human planet by killing the life we depend on for food, a collective suicide. For good reason avarice, better known as greed, was considered a mortal sin for centuries. In fact all the famous seven contribute to this disaster, let us list them all: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy, pride.

Greta Thunberg’s words should be enshrined in our hearts, as should the sound of her voice be, a voice in the desert of the hearts of the people who refuse to face reality, and especially in the desert of the hearts of those who actively contribute to the destruction of our home, our planet, and most of the life on it, without which we cannot survive.

Growing up in a world in which technology is believed to be the ultimate answer to everything, one may perhaps hope for a miraculous escape by means of magic. But the problems are far too fundamental to be solved by the mere invention and application of yet new gadgets. Technology cannot replace the living organisms we depend on for food, and for revitalizing the air and the water for breathing and drinking. The scale of the planet as a whole is just too big, and we need to consider that resources for technology also need to be taken from the very same planet. We need to come to the collective realization that here is a line: endlessness does not exist. The longer we keep up belief systems that promote a kind of endlessness or infinity as a real promise, be they of a religious, political, or economic nature, the sooner we will meet our end, because it creates a lethal mindset.

The music

The 3 tracks follow a path of reverse deconstruction and unraveling, going back to the origins of this composition, and presenting earlier stages of creation as later tracks progressively. In this way the listener is not only able to hear details that might be hard to hear in the tutti version (track 1), but also the tracks become more introvert, while striving to keep their emotional impact. Gradually the clear and concrete music of We will never forgive you merges into the slightly more abstract The song without words, which is in fact a minus-two version, to be followed by the even more abstract Planet of the Ants, connecting to the sound universe of van Dillen’s earlier Dronescapes. The title of the last track explicitly refers to Dronescape 5 – Myrmecology, this time as a planet of the ants, which may be the very thing we are currently creating and heading towards. As mammals succeeded the dinosaurs, now ants may have a good chance to succeed the mammals, once extinct. If that happens, may they thrive and develop collective intelligence instead!

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Download the CD booklet HERE

Full information on label website

See OIJRecords for full information