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Tensience

by von Neumann Sonde

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Olde Nick Skaredoff
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Tamara Skaredoff
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1.
Memories of a Lost Civilization 08:43
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2.
Space Elevator Music 12:30
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3.
Fae Swarm 08:53
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4.
The Caldera Awakens 13:12
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5.
Journey to the Hive World 12:48
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6.
Buried Treasure for Archeologists of the Future 07:37
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7.
Churning Swirl of Edgeless Bubbles 13:07
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8.
Tides of Panthalassa 07:21
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about

During the pandemic lockdown of 2020 Shifty and I began experimenting with improvisational space music. We would convene in our small Portland kitchen every Thursday night, and it soon became apparent that certain patterns and frequencies would induce a trance like state, lost time, and vivid visions of a fantastical world. We would emerge from this state having little or no memory of what transpired. The music we recorded during these sessions was unlike anything we’d ever heard… it was evocative and transporting… it told us a story we could not understand, but could only experience viscerally…. and through dream journals and meditations we slowly became aware of what was happening to us… We were being contacted by an ancient interstellar probe… a self replicating machine sent out from a distant civilization, now long gone… this machine was an ancient relic, an artifact of a consciousness that has passed into oblivion perhaps billions of years ago. It has been existing and gathering materials somewhere in the Oort Cloud, making persistent telepathic contact with the earth for millions of years.

What can it mean? What is the message that some long extinct beings had constructed and contrived to build an interstellar von Neumann probe that can traverse immense distances with the patience of eons?

The message is:

“We were.”

This music is all that remains of this long dead civilization. This is all they chose to preserve… nothing about their culture or accomplishments… no warnings about their impending demise… only this music… sent out into the universe billions of years ago as the sole record of their existence.

It is not ambient. It has a narrative quality that is at once engaging and entrancing. Many of our friends in the visual arts community use it to evoke a flow state while they work and create. We have coined the word “Tensient “ to describe it.

We do not compose this music. We are merely vessels, and it is already there… waiting. It has been waiting a very long time.

credits

released March 26, 2023

Leigh “Shifty” Brooks: synthesizer, backward synthesizer, live analog manipulation, homemade infrared Theremin, random house cat interference

Olde Nick Skaredoff: guitar, backwards guitar, live analog manipulation, mixing and mastering

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von Neumann Sonde Portland, Oregon

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