One is the first album I recorded as Night Gestalt, and the first in a trilogy of One/New Glasir/Thousand Year Waves. I created videos for all the songs together with Anders Abrahamsson Mølgaard. We also printed a limited edition book with photos taken from the videos.
As with all Night Gestalt albums I pressed the B-sides to the singles on unique vinyl records that were buried in three corners of the world. These songs doesn’t exist anywhere else (even the digital file has been deleted). Some of these B-sides have been found, and some remain in the ground (as far as I know).
The album was released digitally and on a limited edition vinyl record with artwork by graffiti legend Ziggy.
The album tells the story of the spaceship One. Sometime in the near future humanity has decided to colonize another planet after giving up all hopes of saving Earth. The last remnants of our civilization – 7000 men and women – board the spaceship. But something goes wrong and the spaceship is bound to travel into the void with no possibility of changing the course. Religious cults appear on the ship trying to save all souls. Others just give up. Finally even the ship computer – SHE – decides that it’s over. The remaining people kneel in her huge hall, but then she screams within everybody and then goes silent.
The second album in the trilogy (New Glasir) tells the story about the last society on Earth, reversing the chronology and starting with the end.
Limited edition book with photos taken from the videos by Anders Abrahamsson Mølgaard.
The creation of the art work by Ziggy for the limited edition vinyl record.
“They came early in the morning. All clothed in white and silent, slowly walking barefoot through the corridors of the ship. They didn’t talk to anyone. They just gathered at the same place every morning and started walking. There were young boys and girls, old men that barely couldn’t move, I even saw an old woman in a wheel chair. But they had one thing in common: their faces were so peaceful.
Every morning a few people joined. After a while the whole ship talked about them.
One morning they started singing softly. The melody was slow and sad, but after hearing it a few times it felt uplifting. First I couldn’t make out the words, but after a few minutes one voice grew stronger. It was a young boy. His clear voice cut through the rest of the choir like a bell.
“Falling Together as One”, he sang. And the others joined him in unison.
The same words, the same sad melody. Over and over and over again.”
“Only a few weeks after we had left the destroyed earth something went wrong. This event was later to be called ZERO. But it wasn’t a start to something new. It was the beginning of the end.
We lost control of the ship. We didn’t collide with anything. There was no crash. The ship just changed course, and no one could change it back. After checking the navigation system we realized the ship would continue straight into space.
The fact that we weren’t on our way to our new home, but instead straight into nowhere, didn’t change our lives that much.
We still had hope.”
“In my dream I walked through a dark long corridor. At the end, a huge hall opened up. I heard whispering voices echoing against the concrete walls. From the ceiling people were hanging upside down, swinging back and forth like pendulums. I saw Steve Reich, I saw John Cage, I saw John Luther Adams. Their feet tied to ropes hanging from above.
From one dark corner I heard a murmuring voice. I walked over and saw Arvo Pärt swinging back and forth. He was dreaming. They were all probably hanging like this, not touching the ground, to achieve clearer dreams. I walked closer towards Steve Reich. He looked so calm. I reached out to touch him.
Then I woke up.
This is the music they heard in their collective dream.”
“A year after we had lost control of the ship we were still heading straight into nowhere. The whole staff of ship engineers had worked overtime for a year, but there was nothing they could do. Chief engineer J Bao now stood at the podium, ready to deliver the message to the 7 000 men and women – the remains of mankind – that had left earth to find a new home.
“Fellow citizens of ONE”, he mumbled into the microphone.
“We all know what happened a year ago. We all know about ZERO.”
It took a few minutes for the chief engineer to get to his point: the fact that leaders now had given up on changing the course of the ship.
But after that everything went fast. Fighting began and spread fast through our ship.”
“What do you do when there is no future? What do you do when there is no hope? What do you do when the web of society is crumbling? There is no right, no wrong.
You go back to the nature of man. To the primordial lusts of your ancestors. You go back to whatever existed before cities, before organizations, before technology.
You take what you get, indulge as much as you can, and you forget about tomorrow.
The flesh is still in control.”
“One night when everybody else was asleep I strolled around in the lower regions, close to the garbage system. On a wall I saw a sign I’d never seen before. Or maybe I had, but in a dream?
It was a handmade wooden sign with the words “The Shrine” written in red. It almost looked like a seal. I followed the sign and ended up at a spiral staircase leading downstairs. From the bottom I heard music, reverberating and echoing through the cylinder space, creating beautiful arpeggios and rhythms I’d never heard before.
At the bottom of the staircase was a tiny room. It was a club. In a dark corner stood a clone of Fela Kuti, playing on a keyboard. He didn’t have his saxophone around his neck. Maybe the engineers couldn’t find any brass on the ship so he had to play on a vintage modular synth from the museum instead?
Three women and a young boy were dancing in front of him, slowly, with their eyes closed. It looked like they were moving backwards in time. Fela Kuti was swaying slowly from side to side, tweaking the knobs, while his right hand played the same notes over and over again.
The night after I went back to The Shrine again, but I couldn’t find the staircase. Even the sign was gone.
This is the music I heard that night.”
“Several years after the catastrophe, ONE was still heading into nowhere, straight into space. It was like any other morning on the ship. But instead of the soothing voice from the main computer, SHE, all that was heard was a static noise. The programmers tried to manually override the system, but she was gone.
Then on the seventh day we saw a flashing light through the ship. It was a sign. We gathered and kneeled in her huge hall. The doors shut and a light slowly lit up the whole room. It became brighter and brighter until we were bathing in the whitest light we’d ever seen.
It seeped into our souls. It gave us hope.
Then suddenly SHE started to scream inside us all. We started screaming too. A split second later the hall went dark. We stopped screaming, panting. It was silent.
SHE was gone forever. Leaving us alone, without dreams.”
“Everything must come to an end. But no one was there to see it. One night the oldest person on the ship died quietly in his sleep at the age of 97. All the 7 000 men and women, from all of society, that had left earth to find a new world were gone. The ship’s computer – SHE – had been dead for many years. We left the destroyed earth to find a new home. Now all our dreams were gone. Humanity had come to an end.
The only thing left was our ship – ONE – heading straight into space.
Straight into nowhere. Forever.
Everything must come to an end. But is this the end, if no one is there to see it? ”