Evolutions 1.1: Hadean (in 15 Events) is the first in a new series of evolved music created by Oscar van Dillen.

The work on this album was conceived of, composed, created, recorded, post-produced and mastered from

October – December 2023.

MOTTO: FROM NOISE WE ARE MADE TO NOISE WE RETURN

Music and art were created by Oscar van Dillen.

Production and mastering by Oscar van Dillen.

Booklet text written by Oscar van Dillen.

additional Hadean image from Wikimedia Commons 

photo Oscar van Dillen by Elise van Rosmalen

Tracks

1. Before a Beginning Noise exists                                               2:38
2. Noise condenses to molecular Dust                              2:38
3. Dust coalesces into a Protoplanetary Disk                      2:38
4. At the center of the Disk the Sun Ignites                         2:38
5. Accretions of Earth and its Sibling Planets                     2:38
6. Violent Volcanoes fill the first protective Atmosphere      2:38
7. The early atmosphere of Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide    2:38
8. The Moon forms and stabilizes the Earth                       2:38
9. The first Rain brings about a planetwide Ocean              2:38
10. Early tectonic mechanics and chemistry sparking the beginning of Life                                                  2:38
11. The Late Heavy Bombardment Extinction                      2:38
12. Life survives at Tectonic Edges deep in the One Ocean    2:38
13. The accreted Earth Core powers the protective Magnetosphere                                                        2:38
14. Weather Events abound in the Toxic Atmosphere                       2:38
15. And Deathly Winds blow over the Living Waters             2:43

Total duration                                                            39:35

CD Booklet HERE

Evolutions ONE

The story this album embarks on is the greatest story ever told, and it was told for millennia, more times than the number of cultures and religions, but always in parables.

Some examples of such storytelling are given below:

“At the beginning, there was a huge drop of milk. Then Dundari came, and he created the stone.” (Fulani, Mali)

“At the beginning, there was nothing. In the darkness of the world lived Sa, Death, with his wife and only daughter.” (Kono, Guinea)

“At the beginning, everything was water. Then Olodumare, the supreme god, sent Obatala down from heaven, to create the dry land.” (Yoruba, Nigeria)

“Now the spirits of heaven all commanded the mighty one He who beckoned, and the mighty one She who beckoned with mighty words, proclaiming: ‘Make firm this drifting land and fashion it in its final form!’” (Kojiki, Japan)

“In the beginning Eurynome, the goddess of all things, rose naked from chaos, but found nothing substantial for her feet to rest upon, and therefore divided the sea from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves.” (Pelasgian creation myth)

“At the beginning of all things, Mother Earth emerged from chaos and bore her son Uranus as she slept. Gazing down fondly at her from the mountains, he showered fertile rain upon her secret clefts, and she bore grass, flowers, and trees, with the beasts and birds proper to each. This same rain made the rivers flow and filled the hollow places with water so that lakes and seas came into being” (Olympian creation myth)

“When skies above were not yet named, nor earth below pronounced by name, Apsu, the first one, their begetter, and maker Tiamat, who bore them all, had mixed their waters together, but had not formed pastures, nor discovered reed-beds, when yet no gods were manifest, nor names pronounced, nor destinies decreed, then gods were born within them.” (Mesopotamian creation myth)

Such stories are many, they are beautiful and poetic. Yet they hardly relate to the precise circumstances and history of the world. These myths are far more revealing about the people who wrote them down; the details found relevant to mention, the things not spoken of. Even in our more enlightened times, the number of people still sticking to these old stories is overwhelming. Such is the power of poetry. But there is new poetry being written on this topic during our lifetime, are we even aware of its details? The new poetic story is told by extremely precise science: by biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy and meteorology. All the sciences are working together now to create a coherent and above all, a verifiable story of what actually happened long ago, at the beginning of things, before the beginning of things, was there even a beginning to it all? The story of this album starts before it.

The idea behind the music in this album started with the idea of composing a growing music, strictly made from similar techniques and principles but lateral to the story, never expressing, let alone depicting it. Not a metaphor, nor an allegory, but a parallel work of art in its own right. For a while the idea of pentimenti was also a working title. Eventually it led to the concept of Evolutionary Music, evolving each next part out of former parts. This is always done in strictly single track quasi live rendering of a chain of changes applied to the former track. From this process of compositional evolution grew a parallel story to the real evolution of the planet we are part of.

Let us be clear: we are not living on a planet, rather we are alive as part of a planet, a living planet of which we are a tiny part. Life simply cannot be seen as separate from the planet that gave birth to it.

We ourselves then are the planet become alive, become aware. Forget the old stories: we are not living on earth; we are part of Earth. This our planet is a finely tuned but very robust system of acting and reacting chemicals. Of ecosystems driven to growth by the forces of tectonics, emerging from the depths of the planet. Of complex interdependencies constantly on the move, evolving.

It is time to tell this, our BIG story, again, in a new form.

You are about to embark on a new listening experience that will forego the usual elements used in mainstream music; missing are traditional tuning system(s), instruments, scales, intervals, chords, forms, and even the classical roles of lead and accompaniment among registers, foreground and background hierarchies. In the polysemic abstraction of this music there is a different flow of musical time, not confined by time signatures nor beat structures, nor accompanied by rhythmic sections. But all musicality is there, in different appearance and sound: linear pitch movements, but not equally tempered tuned, harmonies, but not traditional chords nor tonalities and modalities, and finally pulsating rhythms, but not like machines; these lively sounds are evolving rather like elements, seasons, earthshakes, weather, tides, heartbeats, breaths – per event, but also over the whole flow and form of the work.

The full history of our planet spans over 4.6 billion years, which can be divided into four distinct periods called eons: Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic. Each of these periods is represented by 15 Events, adding up to a total of 60 Events representing the total history of life, of our planet. This album is the first of four, presenting the music of the 15 Hadean Events, an era in which life was found to have started relatively early, in an ecology very far removed from the current one.

Each of the Events is musically and technically developed, evolved, from a parent event, and often offspring events are developed from it. With each event this is indicated in the description. An overview tree of the evolution of the 60 Events is given below. Each parent event is literally and consequently morphed to evolve into its offspring Event(s).

The backgrounds of the numbered fields each contain a tiny visual representation of the waveform of the Event. Large versions of these colored waveforms are shown with each event further down. Additionally, a colored spectral graph is shown each time. Whereas the colors of these waveforms represent frequencies of loudness (green is lower, deeper), the colors of the spectrographs on the contrary represent loudness of frequencies (red is louder). When comparing waveforms and spectral graphs of evolutionarily related events, similarities in either or both can be observed: similar forms, similar patterns and colors, similar yet different, because evolved into the next stage, not a higher or lower stage, just the next stage.

Since the main story is told in music, the colorful visuals (waveforms and spectral view) are intended as help for aural orientation. Our ears will hear much more than our eyes can ever see, perceiving over 10 octaves of sound, meanwhile eyes seeing hardly 1 octave of light. Nevertheless, as with musical notation, these graphs will be a help to the listener who takes the time to study them.

Hadean

The Hadean is the oldest yet the shortest of the four major geological eons. It starts with the formation of the Earth 4,567,000,000 years ago and ended with the solidification of the crust 4,031,000,000 years ago. Meanwhile the planet’s surface was an almost unbroken ocean under an atmosphere the composition of which is again under scientific debate. Originally thought to be an eon before life, recent research and discoveries concerning the nature of life itself propose life may have started already in this first age of Earth’s life as a planet.

The geological record in the rocks concerning the Hadean is variously documented from meteorites (rocks as old as the solar system) and terrestrial rocks from Greenland, Canada and Australia. It was in rocks from Western Australia dating 4,100,000,000 years old, remains of possible “biotic life” have been found in 2015.

A major event was the Theia impact event, which is hypothesized as a Mars-size planetoid crashing into the Earth, melting a large part of the solidified crust while leaving the orbiting Moon behind. The moon’s rocks are clearly the same as the Earth’s, as was a surprising result of the Apollo missions. The collision offset the rotating axis of the Earth, yet the Moon’s gravity stabilizes its oscillation.

Plate tectonics, a major motor for the evolution of life, is today documented to go back to almost this time, as early as a mere 600,000,000 years after the planet’s formation.

Before a Beginning Noise exists

HADEAN Event 01

Parent event                  none

Offspring events             02, 46

only to start before a beginning is to really start at the beginning    

Noise condenses to molecular Dust

HADEAN Event 02

Parent event                  01

Offspring events             03, 15

what we know as beginning is energy filling spacetime, taking forms

Dust coalesces into a Protoplanetary Disk

HADEAN Event 03

Parent event                  02

Offspring events             04, 21

dust with atoms created in dying megastars forms our solar system

At the center of the Disk the Sun Ignites

HADEAN Event 04

Parent event                  03

Offspring events             05, 09

the igniting sun blows the system clear of its very lightest particles

Accretions of Earth and its Sibling Planets

HADEAN Event 05

Parent event                  04

Offspring events             06, 11

planets form by the force of gravity, each in its own orbit

Violent Volcanoes fill the first protective Atmosphere

HADEAN Event 06

Parent event                  05

Offspring events             07, 49, 50

cosmic rays and particles are blocked by a forming atmosphere

The early atmosphere of Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide

HADEAN Event 07

Parent event                  06

Offspring events             08, 47

its atmosphere makes earth an ecology, a place apart in the universe

The Moon forms and stabilizes the Earth

HADEAN Event 08

Parent event                  07

Offspring event              48

days are only 12 hours, but the moon will slow the planetary rotation

The first Rain brings about a planetwide Ocean

HADEAN Event 09

Parent event                  04

Offspring events             10, 36

water brought by meteorites rains from clouds: essential for life

Early tectonic mechanics and chemistry sparking the beginning of Life

HADEAN Event 10

Parent event                  09

Offspring events             13, 56

meteorites brought organic molecules: life is born from the cosmos

The Late Heavy Bombardment Extinction

HADEAN Event 11

Parent event                  05

Offspring events             12, 53

the first of many extinctions to come is by a meteoric bombardment

Life survives at Tectonic Edges deep in the One Ocean

HADEAN Event 12

Parent event                  11

Offspring event              30

fueled by heat and radioactivity, continents form under the sea

The accreted Earth Core powers the protective Magnetosphere

HADEAN Event 13

Parent event                  10

Offspring event              14

at the earth’s core there is a huge ball of pure iron, repelling rays

Weather Events abound in the Toxic Atmosphere

HADEAN Event 14

Parent event                  13

Offspring events             none

more than life on a planet, the earth itself is an ecology, a living planet   

And Deathly Winds blow over the Living Waters

HADEAN Event 15

Parent event                  02

Offspring events             16, 19

billions of years are needed for lifeforms to emerge from the water

On scientific content as artistic inspiration

The new BIG STORIES are all told by science, their scope is vast, and their telling has only begun relatively recently. We are daily getting updates on answers to all the ancient basic questions of life that inspired human art, cultures, and religions for millennia, and we are getting verifiable answers this time. Most important is perhaps that we are also facing completely new questions.

It is high time the old myths and beliefs are abandoned and replaced by contemporary, that is to say: scientific sources of information, imagination, and inspiration. The vast field of modern science is far more complex, has a verifiable and direct relation to reality, and it offers a far greater abundance of possible stories and references for artists in all disciplines than any older belief or myth system, however poetic, could ever come up with[1].

In our times we need new and innovative music in all genres, whether electronic or no; let these leave behind the stories of our alleged past and use such new narrative sources as our present times offer for reference and inspiration.

[1] as was fantastically demonstrated by writers such as Stanislaw Lem (The Cyberiad), Primo Levi (The Periodic Table), and Italo Calvino (The Complete Cosmicomics).

OIJ Records 052 – Donemus DCV 581