ALBUM OUT NOW
Foucault’s Pendulum is now available for consumption digitally on Bandcamp.
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About Foucault’s Pendulum
Genre
PROGRESSIVE ROCK
Release Date
January 9th, 2022
Publisher
MELODIC REVOLUTION RECORDS
‘The Foucault pendulum or Foucault’s pendulum is a device named after French physicist Léon Foucault, conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth’s rotation. The pendulum was introduced in 1851 and was the first experiment to give simple, direct evidence of the Earth’s rotation.”
The music was originally spawned in 1993, when I was writing music for both commercial and personal use – I had invested in and built my first PC with a very high end MIDI/E-Mu sound card and my trusty Roland JX-8P keyboard, a Zoom guitar processor and with my trusty Svilpacaster I was playing college pubs and beach resort bars to support myself while going back to school. The piece that is the seed for Foucault’s Pendulum was a 5 minute instrumental that I played in between songs by Stone Temple Pilots and Alice In Chains for the college crowd.
The piece itself was pretty complex with a lot of dynamics, layered pieces and syncopation – it sounded and was perceived to be really odd meter but the syncopation and what could be considered compound meter phrases formed a 4/4 common time base meter, so therefore it was a really fascinating piece of music for me personally that had a lot of potential for expansion.
2019 was the opportune time to do this effort.
Originally part of a much larger project – To Sleep, Perchance to Dream – that project eventually stretched out to more than 120 minutes of music. Thematically, all of the material on the large project shared certain musical themes and motifs but as a listener experience the feedback I got was it was way too long. That very thing was what motivated me to put Foucault’s Pendulum into its own project – not only so that the intent as a piece of music rotating on it’s axis to return to the beginning would be a lot more notable to the listener, but I also had all of the music recorded and contributions from my guest musicians included and mixed, so there was no point in holding onto it any longer.
As in the preface to this, the composition takes the original piece of music that starts and ends with the same stark aggressive guitar riff, and it gets filled out with variations on themes and motifs in between the start and finish. The variations cover different styles, sometimes going into an entirely different genre but just like the ball on the chain and frictionless pivot, it oscillates back and forth across a wide gap while turning with the rotation of the earth. As we reach the end of the piece, we get the pieces fitting back together and ending on the guitar riff.
The coda (PostScript/Denouement) introduces a new set of themes and styles – hinting at what could be coming in future projects.
CREDITS
Robert Svilpa – all guitars & keyboards, hand percussion
Tracks 1 and 5 – Drums: Todd Sucherman, Bass/Stick/Double Bass: Marc Miller
Tracks 2, 4 and 6 – Drums: Andy Edwards, Bass: John Jowitt
Track 3: Drums: Igor Willcox, Bass: Chris Cullman
Engineering credits:
All tracks recorded and engineered at home in Covid 19 isolation.
Produced, mixed and mastered by Robert Svilpa
Copyright ©2021 Robert Svilpa / Hyperboreal Music LLC, all right reserved worldwide
Any reproduction of this material is prohibited unless expressly granted by Robert Svilpa / Hyperboreal Music LLC
SOCIALS
A little bit about Robert
Robert Svilpa is an enigma – iconoclastic in how he tears down boundaries and beliefs held dear in music and just about anything else, mercurial in his approaches to creativity in writing and music. All while honoring influences by pushing against the tried and true – eschewing the easy path to grow in skills and incorporate everything he hears and listens to into his work.
Disciplined in approach but improvisational and instinctive in practice, Rob’s music has evolved from originally being loose-blues-based rock, through a highly regimented classic progressive compositional rock and coming to a place where the blues and progressive rock has incorporated all the improvisational aspects of jazz and fusion into a rock framework. Not living entirely in any one place, there’s a comfort now in allowing himself and his collaborators to let themselves contribute freely, allowing instinct to take over and elevate the music to the next quantum level.
