Track By Tracks: Moonin Down - The Third Planet (2024)

At the beginning of the album, the listener arrives from the outside, attracted by a repeated guitar sound, to be introduced into the cave where the songs take shape. The attitude is the immediacy of the live performance, and the production tried to highlight this. The themes dealt with in the texts are intimist: oppressive moods from which to escape, existential reflections, broken dreams, the inevitability of fate; accompanied by social issues and a dystopian vision of the future of the planet and humanity as in the title track. The artwork represents a now inhospitable, desert-like and toxic Planet Earth, as sung in the song that gives the work its title: “The third planet was green and blue...”

1. BONES:

Bones apparently describes the running of a man hunted by armed men up a cliff.

In reality, those who menacingly pursue the subject are the inner demons and obsessions that shake him to the bone. Life loses meaning: ”why did I live the life i no longer have?”. The guns are at the throat, a situation perceived as having no way out, it is not possible to return home, and one's chances are exhausted, but rather than give up in the face of the inevitable all that remains is to jump, a leap that still represents the choice of 'immortal hope.

2.WHEELS:

Moonin Down are bikers, the lyrics are a snapshot of a short ride in the hills just after work, a perfect way to leave the stress and thoughts of the day behind. On winter evenings the motorbikes have been customized and are now ready to make their roar resonate in the rural quiet.

3. DARK SKY:

Dark Sky falls, in terms of the construction of the story it tells, in the tradition of Murder Ballads. The concept we wanted to express and from which the text was built is the inevitability of destiny, or what in Eastern traditions is the law of Karma. The overwhelming force that directs and upsets the life of the narrator takes the form of Leo, what one might call a bad friendship, which on a wild night involves him in a murder without him being able to resist.

The progress of the music is hypnotic in the story, as if to seize in its coils, and then explode overwhelming like fate, in the chorus: “When destiny plays his cards, you can try to leave the game, but it's useless...”

4. THE THIRD PLANET:

The third planet of the solar system is ours, the Earth. The song describes the condition of a small group of humans who, having escaped the catastrophe, travel between the planets to reach a safe haven. In the passage, the planets are associated with characteristics attributed to them by astrological tradition. The parallel is with the Remnant of Israel narrated by Prophet Isaiah; no matter how great and traumatic the catastrophe is, there remains a remnant of survivors from which hope can arise. The awareness of the dramatic times that put the survival of the beautiful green and blue planet and of Humanity at risk have inspired a dystopian vision, but at the same time aware of a possible leap in quality by sailing towards the Sun, understood here as the millennial symbol of the dispenser of Life.

5.KOLI:

At the beginning of the 90s, many Albanians looked at Italy as the promised land where they could project their dreams of a better life. “She bought a ticket for a new world, She rode the sea under a red moon”. Koli is one of the many girls, simple souls, full of dreams and hopes who will find a nightmare waiting for them. Many were enslaved and forced into street prostitution, and for those who rebelled, death. The ending of the song is a painful lullaby for the beautiful soul who had to go through the worst nightmares.

6.SPRINGTIME:

The rebirth of nature in contrast with the frustration of those who have lost love and would like to start life again in a new spring but cannot. The pain of loss is too strong. It is not enough to try to relax by smoking a pipe, deluding yourself into achieving a serenity that no longer exists. Then thinking about the birth of the child, which is also identified as spring and new life, only aggravates the suffering. Only the last verse gives the listener a slight hope that the nectar that flows from the happy Spring season could alleviate the feeling, being perhaps the only reason for man's existence: his perpetual rebirth.

7. MY MOONIN’ DOWN:

The song tells the almost transcendental experience of sexual intercourse which then evolves into a dreamlike abstraction where desire is recalled through the symbol of the message in the bottle; the hope is that it will reach the mermaid of the sea. The bottle will arrive, and then he will begin to perceive monsters in his mind and the experience will be all-encompassing and satisfying.

8. THE DAY THAT DAVID BOWIE DIED:

I learned of David Bowie's death when I woke up while on holiday in Barbados, the happy context in which I found myself accentuated the Shock even more, together with the fact that his last touching album had been released two days earlier. The feeling of contrast and estrangement made a text flow that carries references to Bowie's work and places the event in an apocalyptic context. In the end it is a reflection on the difficulty, after a fulfilling life, of leaving everything behind: "the sky comes black when my soul returns", the curtain closes and everything goes dark. Music expresses the labor of passing and then opens up, expands, soars, in the moment of liberation from matter.