Andrey Klimkovsky is a Russian composer working in the electronic music space. Musical images he created — «Music of Celestial Spheres», «Starry Sky», «ALEALA» and «DreamOcean» have become classics of the genre, gaining fame both in Russia and abroad. The musician regularly gives spectacular live concerts and collaborates with many other representatives of the Russian electronic scene, leads a popular community about synthesizers and workstations, participates in astronomical expeditions and practices a healthy lifestyle.
Someone will say: "What a horror! - The Earth has been captured by cyborgs!!!"
But do you think that the fact that we are terrorizing the Earth is much better for the Earth?
What if I told you that each of us has a program running in our heads that is roughly the same as any robot, and without even knowing it, a person obeys it? After all, it often happens that we do something... and then we are surprised, as if it wasn't us who made that decision.
The most interesting thing is that what is inside us is not everything. It is only the drivers - very often outdated and conflicting with the hardware (with our body), that is why it suffers.
And there is also the external part of the network software - the Universe, with which we are usually not in contact at all. It sends us updates, and we are like: "Oh, these updates again... I won't install them."
Well, well... this is also a decision, and also a choice. But then we - those who are especially outdated - can simply be replaced. And such a replacement can begin in the very near future. If anyone has heard of the prophecy of Ra Uru Hu, then the replacement of Humanity is already on the threshold... unless of course we'll not suddenly come to our senses and agree to connect with the Universe to update the software.
Sorry, Friends. I have exaggerated a bit. But I think it is important for each of us to know that in addition to what is going on inside us - in our thoughts, experiences, worries - in this personal space of incessant thoughts inside the head, there is also an external part of each of us, which is much more significant and large-scale - extending into infinity and being everything that is implied when they say: "A Human is an entire Universe."
Let's talk about new music and new albums - the first of which is in this post
My name and surname are not on the cover. The album is part of the chain of releases of the project "HEAVEN", although until yesterday there was only one link in that chain - the album "sad & soli music", recorded in 2003. I wanted to do something earlier that would continue the undertaking that appeared during the period of my going through some life troubles - I did not understand then that these are periods of the strongest transformations, and unusual times are accompanied by unusual music. But, perhaps, the subsequent times were not about that.
In all the time that has passed since then, I have recorded a couple of tracks - supposedly for the "HEAVEN" project. They are now attached to the first album as bonuses, and in fact have little to do with this story (only in that they were recorded on Korg TRITON series instruments, which were relevant at the time).
Something changed in the summer of 2022. On June 11th, some force made me turn on my already quite old Korg TRITON Extreme - a music workstation from the 2000s (on which the continuation of this project was once conceived, and the first album was recorded on a similar instrument) - and I start creating.
The work moved very intensively. The first 4 pieces were recorded in a few days. True, it was the 4th that became the first stumbling block (I was not fully prepared to create it, and later I reworked it several times, and this energy of throwing is still present in the music, but, as I now understand, it is needed there). Then there was a pause of 10 days - I switched to something else, but soon returned to the album I had started.
After that, the creative process was steady but measured - one piece per week or two. It seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel was already visible - in September I recorded the key track of the album - the eighth, and sketched out the structure, harmonic grid and melody of the ninth. 85% of the work is done - I'm at the finish line...
Friends, today two albums were released at once - both continue the project "HEAVEN" that I started back in 2003 (almost an eternity ago), the music of which was so unusual for me that, as you can see, it took me a long time to mature enough to continue and develop the themes raised in it.
In a nutshell, this is music about our probable future. And the future awaits us is absolutely amazing. And, as far as I managed to embody this (from what I overheard in borderline states), the music largely corresponds to that series of unexpected discoveries that are already rushing towards us from the abyss of the Ocean of Time.
Everything new is brought into this World by new people. And new people are children. Society believes that children come empty-handed, that they need to be taught everything, brought to their senses, instilled with all the baggage of values and limiting beliefs that have been developed here since cave times... and only after that, children who have already grown up will be able to live in this world, becoming at some point part of it.
In many ways this is true. In order for angels to crawl, they need to cut their wings, because the sight of a flying person frightens non-flying ones.
But in the process of comprehending worldly wisdom, children lose the most valuable thing with which they come here. At best, only a small fraction of their light remains with them - they dim and become like adults. And that is why progress here is so slow, and inconsistency with the universal plan of renewal brings crises and disasters.
But something is changing. And in recent years, more and more especially bright souls have come to Earth, who, despite their youthful appearance, are surprisingly wise, kind and adaptive. They are called by many names: Indigo Children, Rave Children, Turquoise Humanity. And this is the new blood of earthly civilization, these are people who will not need decades to comprehend the routine procedures of marking time. They have enough energy to reject the outdated and begin to live in a different paradigm.
Surprisingly, this will become possible after our society goes through another crisis, after which it becomes clear that the old formats of relations between people at all levels are no longer acceptable.
PS: I omitted a couple of chapters from the story (tracks 4 and 5 of the new album. This one is «turquoiseGeneration» - the 6th in the tracklist). But we will return to those apocalyptic episodes later to see the whole picture.
We don't really like changes... we did at school, but those were different changes. And we were different. And Humanity as a whole has always lived with the dream of building an ideal World, in which nothing will have to be changed, improved, or added to. And then everyone will be happy.
Meanwhile, the World without Man was approximately like this - everything in it was adjusted, balanced. Changes, if they happened, were smooth and imperceptible. It was Man who made the most changes on planet Earth - a creature who is now terribly afraid of change.
The main change that awaits us is that if previously there were turning points that were considered a disaster, but after which stability and calm reigned for a certain period of time... now there will be no pauses between large-scale updates of our World. Much like in modern computers - while you are typing the text of this publication, you suddenly installed a new operating system, and did not even ask for a restart - everything is already working in version N+1. But you don't know how to use it.
We are now living in a short lull before a global wave of updates, some of which have already been installed, but we have not yet realized it. And we admire the night fireflies, which are so beautiful in the darkness, and each one beckons somewhere in its own direction - “Fly with me, it’s good there... No, fly with me, it’s wonderful there... Fly and don’t think about anything, just accept this night for what it is..."
With dawn, all the fireflies will fade away. Some will really lead you to a better place, but only if you yourself somehow felt that you were on the same path. But more often than not, the firefly did not care at all where to fly in this equally directed World - they come here only for the night.
Now forget everything you read. Because this was the preface to the new track «nightFireflies» from the new HEAVEN II album «past - music - future»:
The graphics at the heart of the video were created by Irina Shamaeva (aka The Prompter), an expert in writing prompts for neural networks. Don’t forget to look at Irina’s feed - many new and absolutely amazing neuro-pictures appear there every day (all links are in the description of the video on Youtube).
Enjoy watching and listening to music and everything else!
Another episode from the new album, which was also illustrated with AI images of Irina Shamaeva. True, the gallery that hooked me was not enough for the entire track (there were only 8 images). I had to review all of Irina’s neural network creativity. There are a great many amazing images, but not everything suited my particular mood. Something that will fit perfectly into the following tracks. But we managed to choose anough for this one, although it didn’t turn out to be a stylistically monolithic picture. However, the main thing is to present an audio track. Each listener may have his own visual interpretations. My idea in general was that sometimes a slight push to change the usual can destroy the harmony and order that has developed over centuries. But the point is that you don’t need to put anything together for centuries.
You should not look for the indicated meaning in this video sequence. It's beyond that.
New track «stellarInfluence», opening the new album of my long-standing project HEAVEN, the first and so far only album of which was released back in 2003. But very soon there will be a second (and a third).
As visual content, I took a dozen AI pictures of Irina Shamaeva, who is known on FB as The Prompter. A link to Irina and her stellar neuro-gallery can be found in the description of the video on Youtube.
Friends, some of you know, and for some this will be news, but such a phenomenon as “Music of the Spheres” or “Music of the Celestial Spheres” came to us from ancient Greece (as well as many other things). Cosmos is a Greek word, and it means — neither more nor less — "Order". Music and Harmony are also Greek concepts. The desire of Greek philosophers to understand the structure of the World in which we live combined Music and the order of movement of the heavenly bodies in such a way that each planet or star had its own specific tonality or note, and the sound of these notes created Harmony. These were absolutely no joke researches — relying on them, the smartest people of that era found for themselves and other people the meaning of our lives (what do we live for?) and the rules, following which you can live your life happily, without suffering, because the laws of harmony are the same in Heaven and on Earth. It’s just that for now there is less Harmony on Earth, and more disharmony — disorderly, incoherent, out of step with the sound of each of us. But the Music of the Spheres can change this — at least, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and many other thinkers of ancient Greece thought so. Just as a tuner compares the sound of a string and the tuning fork by which he tunes it, so people had to compare their deeds and actions with how harmonious they are with what the Cosmos sounds around us.
More than two thousand years have passed since then, but these ideas are still relevant. And a person finds happiness only when he is in harmonious resonance with the World around him. Well, if for some reason this resonance is suddenly upset, the Music of the Spheres still helps to return it.
When I recorded my first music album (in 1997) I didn't know any of this. But I intuitively searched for harmony and resonance of sound with the vibrations of the World, with the barely audible singing of the stars. When the record was ready, I finally thought about what to call it. At some point, a hint seemed to flash in my mind — “Call it “Music of the Celestial Spheres”.” And I gave it exactly that name, although at the time I had no real idea what I was dealing with.
Over the years, I then found amazing examples of other musicians and scientists going through a similar path. Johannes Kepler devoted many years of his life to attempts to create the “Music of the Spheres” based on mathematics and celestial mechanics. But in my search there was more of a desire not to calculate cosmic melodies, but to feel them with my heart, if such a thing is at all possible. It seems to me that I managed to feel something. In any case, many of my listeners who left reviews for that very first album uploaded to Youtube think the same.
Most of the time, this album was published in Russian and English versions. A couple of years ago I published an album with translations into Spanish and Chinese. And only recently I remembered that the idea of “Music of the Spheres” is of Greek origin, and that I simply must publish the Greek version of the album “Music of the Celestial Spheres”. My colleague, artist and singer Nataliya Victoria, who has lived in Athens for many years, helped me with this. And now the first album of the “Music of the Celestial Spheres” cycle has been uploaded to Youtube in Greek design — with Greek melodic names and descriptions in this beautiful language.
We also translated the design of the booklet for the CD and created a colorful digital ArtBook — all this is included with the digital version of the album. Those interested can receive it.
I hope this work will continue, and the next parts of the “Music of the Celestial Spheres” series will also be republished in the language of Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle.
A completely unexpected and amazing version of Amber from James Hill. He, being a modest man, indicates my authorship here, and to himself he only mentions playing the trumpet. But he breathed more Life and Love into this work than I ever could. Plus, he also made this wonderful video.
The final composition from the «Star triangle» album
By the way, just today and right now - on the night of August 30-31, is the “Last Night of August”. This year it coincided with the supermoon ("Blue Moon", as it is sometimes called - when two supermoons in a row) and on this night we had a conjunction of Saturn with the Moon - right during its opposition. Amazing picture...
By the way, year after year I have always intended to make a video for this tune and publish it on the last night of August. Finally it happened. True, in the video the night is completely moonless, but that's what makes it good - the last August night (in the classical sense of this metaphor), that nothing prevents the shining of stars in the black August sky. Supermoons come and go, but the image of the dark starry sky of August remains.
I and James Hill — American jazz trumpeter — spent some time choosing a piece for our next recording together. It must be said that electronic music is specific, and classical jazz instrumentation cannot be easily used everywhere. But the «Song of the Setting Sun», it would seem, itself asked for the brass section - its leading timbre was an electronic imitation of brass, and the trumpet is very much in tune with brass. In addition, this work is marine, and the trumpet is probably the most marine instrument in terms of its energy.
James recorded the trumpet part very quickly and accurately in his TCAB Studio, and sent me the record. I, as usual, could not refuse to make some adjustments to the overall mix, and suddenly realized that the work needed to be completely remixed — it's 2023, and you can't leave the sound of 20 years ago.
I disassembled the composition into parts, digitized them again, even added another new one part to them, and connected everything in a way that I could not do before. And besides, a completely new Sea now sounds here.
You can compare versions. In the Youtube channel of James Hill sounds the very first — traditional — version of the «Song of the Setting Sun»:
There is a new version of the work on my channel, and a slightly different sounding trumpet. And the video was created with the participation of the BlueWillow neural network.
Friends, you can subscribe to James Hill's Youtube channel:
Unexpected collaboration with American jazz trumpeter James Hill.
Nothing foreshadowed such a turn of events. I just wrote a review of one of the experimental electronic albums of a musician I know from the social network Facebook. In that album, a completely divine trumpet sounded, from the voice of which I shed tears, and began to search the network for this trumpeter, who, like God, is able to breathe soul into everything created on Earth, and make it heavenly.
To my own surprise, I soon received a comment from James Hill on an earlier version of this composition. James liked it and would like to record a trumpet part for this tune. And a day later I was already listening to the beta-version. All I had to do was balance the mix and in the meantime James made a video version.
Friends, I can't listen to James play without emotions and tears. I am sure that voices of the trumpet and the feelings invested in them will not leave you indifferent either.
Many thanks to James for collaboration and such an unexpected surprise.
These are pictures from a recently published video about "Blue Moon". But it is these frames that are not in the video - the images were created later, and they have two additional figures of constellations, which, as it seemed to me after the publication of the video, were somewhat lacking.
Friends, you can guess which figures of constellations are added here.
The starry sky in this scene is taken from the Bryce 3D program and slightly fixed - some stars were initially out of place.
The Moon is borrowed from the Stellarium program and is set approximately on the date October 26, 2023.
Figures of constellations are from the stellar atlas of Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius — "Uranographia".
And everything is put together again in the Bryce 3D program. Mountains and trees are a typical "Brycean" implementation of fractal geometry.
This 3-minute episode corresponds approximately to the 12th lunar day... or is it more correct to say — to the 12th lunar night?
This is closer to the truth, because the melody has a "nightly" name.
When I gave the play a name, I proceeded from my own associations that had developed over hundreds of observational nights. Despite the fact that the Moon in our minds is strongly associated with yellowish hues (which is quite reasonable), near the full moon, the Moon can cause the illusion of a blue glow. this is especially noticeable in cities where street lighting is most often orange — much yellower than the Moon. And in contrast to this difference, the Moon itself, and everything that it illuminates in the sky, begins to appear blue to our eyes. There was even such a term "Blue Moon". But when this music was created, it was practically not used. Now (perhaps) I would call the work differently — «Night of the Blue Moon». But it's too late to change the name of this melody.
Friends, the album of the «NGC» project — «Phantom galaxy» — is entirely uploaded on YouTube. And this time it's not just a picture with music — it's a dynamic image born from the cover design that lives and breathes, and you can look at it as long as this music sounds.
Welcome to an intergalactic journey to the «Phantom galaxy» NGC 628 in the Pisces constellation:
It's not hard to guess which album this visualization is from. «Pisces» is the sixth album in the Starry Sky project, dedicated to the constellation of the same name. And "Celestial Pisces" is the second track from this album - you can find it in its entirety at the links below:
A variety of technologies and sources of inspiration are mixed here. The result is somewhat unexpected for me. It was hard to imagine what would happen if we combined star maps from the Stellarium program, celestial-underwater abstractions drawn by the Midjourney neural network, romantic images from the old-world stellar atlas by Johannes Hevelius and a photographic survey of the sky SIMBAD. By the way, the innovative DaVinci Resolve platform helped to mount all this - this is the best thing I have touched in working with video. But this clip, of course, is largely experimental.
This tune is presented in the maxi-single «Song of the setting sun», released in 2005, and it sounds only there - it is not present in any album (this was not supposed to be - this is an exclusive track specially written for the single). Nevertheless, the melody turned out to be memorable, touching something in the depths of the soul. And it needed a video-version for a long time.
This footage was created using the BlueWillow neural network. It is hardly worth considering it as an unambiguous correspondence to music - it turned out that modern artificial intelligence very easily reacts to seascapes in the context of sunsets and sunrises, but it is not so easy to convince it to do something close to the night element. As a result, it was decided to leave the dawn-sunset design, which is quite in tune with the entire maxi-single «Song of the setting sun».
By the way, if one of you, my listeners, missed this release, it's not too late to get to know it and even make friends:
This music continues to fill me with faith in the best for almost two decades. And the longer I listen to it, the more I realize that I am not quite its author, but maybe a guide.
As it turned out, few people saw this video. Although, it should have been the other way around — the video appeared at the very beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine — sit and watch — you don’t need to go anywhere, you don’t need to do anything. But people were not at all up to it — people were drowning in fears — in front of the disease and in front of the uncertainty in the future of mankind. But the music is about fearlessness. And it did not sound in unison with what was happening, but rather even in dissonance with our emotions and mental activity.
But still, the music came at the right time. And in general, all the keys are given to us a little earlier than the moment at which we already know where to insert them, what to open, and what is there behind the door.
And behind the door — a new world. It will be happy if we allow ourselves to perceive it as such. And it will be extremely cruel if we do not accept the changes.
A melody you might have missed. This is understandable, because it was released only in a single-version — in the tracklist of the maxi-single «In spite of laws», and then was not repeated in any albums (this was not planned) — then I just decided to make an exclusive track for the single.
Meanwhile, for myself, this Tune turned out to be very valuable, and I have long wanted to make some kind of video clip for it. This was possible when neural networks became available that generate visual content on query. To create this video, I used the BlueWillow neural network — a free analogue of the Midjourney neural network. This net is lighter, but coped with the task. And now one of my best tunes has a video version. By the way, I was not too lazy to tweak the sound a little more.
I am not a fan of direct and unambiguous images. And in music they have no place at all — not a single musical message imitates exactly the sound of the phenomenon that it reveals. And if it comes to something that in the usual sense for us does not sound at all, then a special approach is required — both in music and in the accompanying video, if any.
For the composition «Starry Depth» video accompaniment has long been requested and required. But what it to make from? — to collect a bunch of photos of the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope again? — this has happened many times already. I had to turn to the Midjourney neural network for unique material. And the neural network willingly shared its vision.
This is how — just 10 months after the release of «Delphinus» album — a video was formed for one of his melodies, which could not have been created at the time of the album's release (in any case, I was far from these technologies then, and neural networks, of course, already existed).
The music itself has its origins even earlier. This probably needs to be reminded (I once wrote, but not everyone read it, but someone may have already forgotten). One winter — more snowier and windier than this winter — I was returning home from the center of Moscow by running through a heavy snowstorm — at night, as usual. The sidewalks were covered up to the knee, the wind was in my face, my eyes were clogged with snow, and I could hardly see the way. Stiff, exhausted, got barely alive, but when I got home, the first thing I did was turn on the synthesizer and play a new Melody — she overtook me in that blizzard. I did not know then for which album, but later she herself asked for an album about Delphinus constellation.
If someone hasn't heard this album yet, listen to it in its entirety — it's worth it.
Galaxy M74 or NGC 628 is located in the Pisces constellation. Now astronomers know hundreds and thousands of galaxies within any constellation, but this galaxy is special.
Firstly, not many galaxies can be seen with your own eyes — it is visible in amateur telescopes. But it is visible at the limit — it is guessed when looking at it with peripheral vision, and it is for this feature that it received the name «Phantom Galaxy».
Secondly, the «Phantom Galaxy» M74 is a classic example of a spiral galaxy, which is visible from the Milky Way Galaxy in front — flat. Others — even closer and brighter "star cities" — the Andromeda Nebula, the Triangulum Galaxy, the Bode Galaxy in Ursa Major — all of them are visible in half a turn.
In recent years, the «Phantom Galaxy» has delighted scientists with supernova explosions three times — in 2002, in 2003 and in 2013. For astrophysicists, this is "just some kind of holiday." Thanks to a series of these events, the distance to the M74 galaxy was measured quite accurately — 35 million light years.
It is worth noting that the «Phantom Galaxy» itself is somewhat more modest than the Milky Way and the Andromeda Nebula. It contains about 100 billion stars (our Galaxy has about 200 billion stars), although it is only slightly smaller than the Milky Way in size.
«Manger» is one of the brightest star clusters in the earth's sky. It is inferior in brightness to the Pleiades and Hyades, but is one of the seven mysterious (obscure in appearance) celestial objects of the Almagest star catalog of Claudius Ptolemy, which means it has been known to people since ancient times.
This night the Moon will rise before midnight. It will move into Gemini constellation and will be close to the open stellar cluster M 35 (also known as NGC 2168). The open stellar cluster M 35 has an integral magnitude of about 5m, which means that under favorable conditions it can be seen by the eye. Indeed, this cluster has been known since ancient times. Its description , as a foggy spot resembling the sole of a sandal, is present in the astronomy textbook of the ancient Greek astronomer Geminos. Two thousand years later, in the middle of the 18th century, the cluster was independently rediscovered by Jean Philippe de Chezo (Swiss astronomer) and John Bevis (English astronomer and physician). Renowned French comet catcher Charles Messier listed the cluster as number 35 in his catalog of nebulous objects — the cluster has been best known by that number ever since.
Interestingly, M 35 is indeed located in the place of the Gemini constellation, where the impressionable priests and philosophers of the past saw the right foot of Castor — one of the characters in the Greek myth, due to the sudden death of which the Gemini constellation arose. So, the mention of the appearance of the accumulation in the form of a sole could have been inspired by mythical fantasies at that distant time.
The story of the Hyades is highly foggy, like an autumn morning in Greek Boeotia, when the radiance of the predawn stars melts in the rays of the rising Helios, but the clouds floating from the north bring only rain, and not the warmth of the passing summer...
Now no one will remember how many there were — star sisters born from the passionate love of the titan Atlas and the oceanid Aethra. Someone claims that there are only two, but there is a mention of fifteen daughters of the "Holder of Heaven" ... But are all of them Hyades? Of course not. After all, among the daughters of Atlas there were also the Pleiades and Hesperides. They also had a brother, Hyas. It was because of him that the very name of the Hyades arose — mourning about Hyas. Hyas was careless and died hunting. There are at least four culprits for his death — a huge boar, a ferocious lion, an angry lioness, a Libyan snake. His sisters could not come to terms with the loss of Hyas, wept bitterly day and night — so inconsolably that even the sky itself was moved, and began to shed tears along with the Hyades sisters.
