The highly anticipated album by Fabrizio Brugnera & Man from Mars is out now!
“The Conquest of Happiness” is a concept album inspired by Bertrand Russell’s book ‘The Conquest of Happiness’, which examined why society seemed to be so miserable, he first identified eight maladies that were causing unhappiness in his age: meaninglessness, competition, boredom, fatigue, envy, guilt and shame, persecution mania and fear of public opinion.
The eight tracks part of the release are a blend of ambient, neoclassical, cinematic and electronic music with a retro-futuristic twist.
“Mare Tranquillitatis” is the fifth chapter of my upcoming album “Kaamos”, as previously stated I’m releasing a series of singles that will be collected in a dark ambient/drone album. The title of each song as well as the title of the album itself is going to have a metaphorical meaning, each song is going to have either an independent meaning and a specific role in the whole album, like pieces of a puzzle.
“Mare Tranquillitatis” means “Sea of Tranquillity, it’s a lunar mare that sits within the Tranquillitatis basin on the Moon and also the first location on another world to be visited by humans.
Once thought to be an ocean on the Moon, it is now just “magnificent desolation”.
This track metaphorically describes the feeling of emptiness, I hope you never have to experience this, but if you did, figuratively speaking I’m sure you’ll find the name of the track quite fitting, and I find it ironic that most of the time there is peace in that feeling, the essence of which is noticing that there is something missing, something that once was there.
The composition is among the most ambient additions to the album, the music is calming, “dark serenity” might be a good way to describe it.
The single includes a bonus track which is an alternative choral version of the song.
New release and a rant, the events in Ukraine hit me hard, to be honest I am speechless, I meant to rant, well…actually I needed to rant, because what is happening is complete madness, I ended up bottling up my emotions, I’m not good at expressing those kind of feelings to words, I needed to channel those negative emotions some way, that’s why I composed this track, which was unplanned, I composed it in one go.
The title “Requiem for Humanity” reflects very well what I think, and aggravating an already dire situation there are comments and posts from people, who are so stupid to minimise the gravity of the situation, appealing to the fact that there are other armed conflict and situations of violence in other part of the world, so they are basically resorting to cheap polemics to prove their point, I wonder if those people are aware that ignoring the seriousness of this war won’t make the other wars more “important”, and the other way around, well…to be honest in my opinion there is certainly some concern that what’s happening could lead to a nuclear war, so that doesn’t mean that the other conflicts don’t deserve the same attention, it just mean that this war is certainly more concerning for the whole damn world.
I actually read much worse than that, there is a portion of people who has already shown us its very worst during the pandemic, the conspiracy theorists, who don’t even deserve my attention.
Unspeakable horrors are happening right now in Ukraine, I am shocked at the lack of empathy from most.
Do you want to know how I really felt? I felt like there is no humanity, anywhere, anymore, so I wrote this piece, hoping I would feel better, but unfortunately nothing has changed.
I want to hope that humanity can do better than this.
Requiem for Humanity is a dramatic dark choral composition released in two versions, the main version is for choir and orchestra, the more ethereal alternative version is choral instead.
“Entropy” is the fourth chapter of my upcoming album “Kaamos”, in case any of you missed one my previous posts….I’m releasing a series of singles that will be collected in a dark ambient/drone album. The title of each song as well as the title of the album itself is going to have a metaphorical meaning, each song is going to have either an independent meaning and a specific role in the whole album, like pieces of a puzzle.
Entropy is a scientific concept, which in my opinion is extremely challenging to grasp, I won’t dare to attempt to explain it, I’ll mention the easiest explanation I found so far: “The entropy of an object is a measure of the amount of energy which is unavailable to do work. Entropy is also a measure of the number of possible arrangements the atoms in a system can have. In this sense, entropy is a measure of uncertainty or randomness.”
As usual I’m using the concept as a metaphor, in this case it’s about increased brain entropy.
The music is particularly slow and sad, so it’s very far from being easy listening, it’s not pure dark ambient/drone…but you should have already realised that you’d better not to try to put me in a box.
“Things Left Unsaid” was originally released in December 2019 with my side project Brugner Brokk, It’s a neoclassical/ambient composition for piano and strings, the music is a blend of ambient and dark neoclassical, characterised by minimalist tendencies and hybrid cinematic elements with a bittersweet touch.
The release is now also available on my main music project, including an additional brand new version of the composition, you can listen to “Things Left Unsaid” and “Things Left Unsaid – Cinematic Version” on all major digital platforms.
“The Day the Sun Never Rose” is the third chapter of a series of singles that will be collected in a dark ambient album, it’s going to be a concept album called Kaamos. The title of each song as well as the title of the album itself is going to have a metaphorical meaning, each song is going to have either an independent meaning and a specific role in the whole album, like pieces of a puzzle.
The track is indeed about a painful subject, sometimes some of us feel like there is nothing to hold onto, or nothing left of ourselves, in those days we almost feel like the sun never rose, the title of the composition is directly connected to the title of the album, the Kaamos, also known as the Polar Night, is the time of the year where there are at least 24 consecutive hours of darkness, a period between December and January when the sun does not rise at all, a unique nature phenomenon that occurs only in the Arctic area. Needless to say that eventually, the sun rise again, and you should never forget about it even when you feel like everything is meaningless. 😉
This track is among the most neoclassical and cinematic of the album, doing it my way of course.
I’m glad to introduce my latest release which is actually an ambient remix of a composition created by Man From Mars in 2019, “Fifth Element” was one of the four tracks part of their EP “Cosmic Dreamer”, it’s been a pleasure working on my friend’s song “looking” at it from a different point of view, the remix is now available on all major digital music platforms: https://fanlink.to/Fifth_Element_Remix
I’m truly delighted to introduce to you a release created in collaboration with Michele Nobler and Alessandro Penna, “Floating Hills” is a soothing felt piano piece with a light synth in the background, the single is now available on all major digital music platforms. I’d greatly appreciate any playlist addition!
Fabrizio Brugnera 