every•thing•a•part debut album by SATNAV out now via The Big Oil Recording Company
every•thing•a•part is a concept album inspired by climate grief. Here, thinking machines in the distant future remember and mourn the world of the living
Stream the album here via Soundcloud
SATNAV, the experimental electronic solo project of Sebastian Zieler, co-founder of The Big Oil Recording Company (Debbie Sings, Tettix Hexer, Aperly High), releases his debut album, every•thing•a•part, uout now.
With detailed sound design, pop-inspired harmony and high-contrast sonic imagery, the album is a series of lamentations and love songs for nature. every•thing•a•part is a climate grief concept album, where thinking machines remember and mourn the loss of a world once living.
Composed with spontaneity and meticulously produced, the album mixes folk and pop melody with avant-garde electronic experimentation. SATNAV describes the process as "painting with an imaginary palette”. From the trance-inflected ecstatic longing of Sky Burial to the cumbia-nugaze of Concrete Rainbow / arco-íris de concreto, the album weaves in and out of euphoric highs and stark despair with compositions that feel like sound paintings in vivid, shifting colours. In One World, We Were Two Towers on Opposite Shores, Facing Each Other for 3,000 Years is mythic, time-collapsing storytelling (a multiversal ‘what if’), while title track every•thing•a•part is a psychonautical ode to interconnectedness. Floe Wichu, originally released on Petrola 80’s 2020 Expand compilation, is the ocean remembered, first by thinking machines that experienced it teeming with life, then by generations with no first-hand memory. It was the first track composed for the album and became its blueprint. r u alpha waving at me?? is a goodnight story for all animals, read aloud in 1’s and 0’s, while Stim Sim is about the importance of imagining better worlds: “Raise a ladder to the heavens / Smuggle mana across the REM border”. (A) Soft Round Kind (Thing) closes the album in catharsis, flickering gently like the embers of a digital ship burial.
The album is released with a 360, VR journey exploring the cycle of life and death, perception and sensory categorisation, at once violent, beautiful and serene in feeling. A collaboration with 3D animator and musician Joakim Moesgaard, set to the track Sky Burial, it is -- without hyperbole -- unlike any other VR artwork, exploring eight separate “lives” in rapid succession. It is designed for exhibition, but you can also experience it here on YouTube (use a mouse or trackpad to navigate in 360 if you don’t have a headset): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT4SkWun9JU
About SATNAV
SATNAV is a portmanteau of “satellite navigation”, the UK-English name for GPS systems, and refers to the God’s-eye view from above – an awesome and useless state. With works of grunge, space rock, art pop and dungeon synth that you can find if you look for it, SATNAV makes the music he would like to make right now.
For updates, follow @satnavsystems and @thebigoilrecordingcompany on Instagram
