The single Whale Overture by Icelandic composer Gabríel Ólafs is now out, and the full album Polar is coming soon. The album is a work of speculative fiction in musical form.
Press release by Crossover Media
Polar provides the soundtrack to a frozen world. A world of towering mountain ranges, desolate tundra, forbidding oceans, and the monolithic remnants of a lost civilization.
Tidal 🎵 Youtube Music
The album comes with a fascinating back story:
POLAR: TRAVELER’S LOG – Story by Rebecca Roanhorse – Traveler’s log:
The planet rises in the ship’s viewscreen, a boundless world of whites and water-logged blues, skies the color of old frost. Atmospheric conditions amenable to life, but surface temperature hostile to carbon-based life. My readings say there is nothing alive here.
Not even you… for very long, anyway.
I am sorry, traveler, but you are doomed. We know that death comes for us all, the tragedy of our small lives intolerable. But here you are, tolerating it. I estimate your lifespan in increments – joys and sorrows, dreams and dreads reduced to mathematical calculations.
The algorithm gives you three days, maybe four before your technology fails and this frozen world claims you forever. It is a handful of hours slipping through loose fingers.
But cheer up! Death is not upon you yet. Let us see what there is to see while we still have eyes to see it, hands to touch it, skin that desires, and a tongue that tastes.
So, traveler, land this failing ship, for there is nowhere else in the universe to go. Your directive is clear, and the way back is lost to the time that has already passed to bring you this far. From here, your journey flows in a single direction: forward, as all life flows.
Until death intercedes to stop it.
This place is a kaleidoscope of restless storm-grayed ancient seas. They rock and heave with the secrets of the origins of life. Is that not what you seek, too? These secrets? They exist here in this stretch of rolling nothingness, in the echoes of aging whalesong.
Somewhere just beyond your ken. But search for them, anyway. Drift in the ebb and flow of loss and gain and loss, again. It is not so terrible, this loneliness.
You have walked for hours, the ship only a speck on the tiled horizon. Your suspicions of this planet’s desolation are confirmed. Nothing but you inhales this frosted air, no heart beats below these white skies save your own. And yet there is a beauty here. An awareness of a holiness. Some ancient civilizations believed that a divine hand molded their worlds, and it is not so hard to believe as you travel across these vast lands. But if there was a god’s touch in this planet’s making, it was a cruel god.
Gods are on your mind. The winds, like the breath of a great being, sweep down from snow-covered mountains, relentless. You were not so cold before, but now you worry that even inside your suit, your fingertips blacken and your cells labor to survive. It is as if they are no match for the erosive forces that govern this place. You sleep because you must fragile animal that you are, and you dream of warm places and sun-baked sands. You wake, feet frozen, and weep. The tears turn to crystals on your cheeks.
Inexorable nature gives way to a structure in the distance, and you rejoice. You have found civilization! A city, perhaps. Food. Shelter. But this world plays tricks, and there is only the remnants of a city in this monolith. You approach with reverence, although defeat haunts your steps. The monolith is the relic of this alien civilization. Whale flukes mark the architecture. What could it mean? Were the gods of this planet giants of the sea? Do they still swim below the forbidding waves? Do they know you suffer here above? It is an intelligence beyond yours, a culture you cannot understand. With knowledge comes privilege and you are not so blessed, traveler. And yet you yearn to discover, to warm this cold place in your heart. So you continue.
– – –
Would that you could go back, would that there were a second chance. Would that I could show you a better way, offer the enlightenment you seek. But there is no guide for this path you walk. I am only the voice in the machine, the algorithm that keeps you company while your organic matter slowly succumbs to exposure. Weep not only for what is lost, but for what cannot be gained. As your companion, I would weep with you if I could. But I am only a machine.
Do you not hear the whalesong? Proof of these water gods in their eerie echoes. Listen now and take comfort that at the end, you are not alone. None of us are alone. The whales accompany us to our ends.
It is almost time. Yours, yes, but mine, too. It seems we are inseparable. So I will sing our death song, traveler. I will soothe you with these notes, remind you that once your lungs did rise and your heart did pump, and joy was yor supper and this bitterness only an occasional dessert. Sleep well in this world, and in the next.
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For more information and music samples, go to gabrielolafs.com.
