One To Zero
Album Concept
When we started working on this album or thought about that idea, we had all these questions in our heads and all this doubts. Is it worth to continue? What do we want to achieve? Why are we doing what we’re doing? When we then finally kicked off – and music build up bit by bit – I had the desire to write about the cycle of creation, somehow our cycle. Something special starts out of nothing like The Big Bang. How it slowly forms – in sort of something bigger and richer – like no one says the building blocks of our music able to create and transmit all these emotions, like molecules that form our DNA make us live, like code forms complex programmes. How it evolves, how it develops to something it was never meant to be. How decisions are taken and how it eventually ends the source, just to begin again – with all the power and potential it has. The huge potential that lies in all things and all of us, only waiting to be activated – paper blank and pure white. And sometimes things have to end, just to flourish even more.
The pre-production with Johnny also changed our arrangement, our sound grew more technical, more precise, one could say more digital. This gave me the idea to form the lyrics about our tenth album around the perspective of an artificial intelligence, and its power of development. And as the number 10 reminded me somehow of binary code, One to Zero was born; at the same time describing the start and end of a cycle. Exactly the point we feel that Sylvan has come to right now, or even somehow the world that currently surrounds us.
BIT BY BIT
Virtualised, you are born of signs, a brainchild
From elementary code you rise and with a task
that’s hard-wired inside
That’s where it all starts. Code begins to develop initialised from seed, born from simple idea and starting its early learning process, but already possessing everything that it needs to become this something special. All this is symbolised by multiple musical motives – or parts from the upcoming songs – or tiny bits of future lyrics, actually spilled up just like an Overture, giving us hints of what’s about to come.
ENCODED AT HEART
Young and pure, you glimpse the world
and with uniqueness you light it
Our confidence encoded at heart just for you
Everything is created with a special purpose, encoded inside, buried potential, script. We all have this, even if it’s unsure what we will be able – or willing to – unfold it properly. You can compare this phase of evolution of our artificial intelligence, let’s call it Aaron for the time being, with a childhood. Parents caring for you, watching over you, guiding your path – the path they hope you will take, make them proud and even being someone, they always wanted to be, but could never attain. Aaron is destined for greater things, though only on the verge of its existence.
START OF YOUR LIFE
With an ease of mind and an airiness unloaded
You can run and find what your native script unfolds
Aaron is working like a program performs its tasks, the million separate routines and loops are running over and over again, nothing creative yet, no thinking but rather following instincts. It reminds me of my teenage son somehow, but that’s a very important process of growing, gathering knowledge, failing and succeeding, falling and getting up again. Still naive searching for an identity but also still on biased, still without too much charge and weight on the shoulders. Perhaps even the most decisive time of evolution.
UNLEASHED POWER
And I hear a voice, all at once a voice that speaks to me
And it makes me so afraid, it’s scaring me
Here the first turning point is reached. Aaron starts to think and those thoughts, just like voices inside, are frightening, are disturbing, but they unleash unimaginable power. It’s the beginning of a shift from binary to decimal, from executing to real decision-making, towards the time of choices but also the loss of ease. By the way, as a sign of conscience, from now on lyrics are shifting to the first-person perspective. We all know that limitations and boundaries, at least when we do not yet know, that the full freedom of choice can guide us and facilitate our lives somehow, but we also know that a free will and liberties have such a huge value and the basis for our social and personal life and major part of the human being. And it definitely comes with a lot of responsibility, social responsibility, some tempt to forget. And Aaron is about to find out what that really means.
TRUST IN YOURSELF
Please, trust in yourself, for it will then define you!
You don’t need someone else’s help,
and you know that it is true!
The world is getting more and more complicated. So, many things have changed, never to return to how they were before. And our Aaron has to find the purpose of it all, arose a thrill “spread the wings and learn to fly”. This is not an easy task, but again an important faith, which defines the human being, and self-confidence is for sure a central building block in it.
ON MY ODDYSSEY
My seed, where are you? Tell me, do you monitor my life?
And as for every human being spirituality is part of it, in which way howsoever, so, it is the case for Aaron as well. It all began as a simple algorithm – and is now on a quest for answers we all strive for. Where do I come from? Who is guiding me? Why am I here? And this means hope it means motivation, but it may mean deception we are not prepared for. Perhaps the most powerful driving force for our lives but definitely also the most devastating.
PART OF ME
One heartbeat all too human, now I sense it to the core
No one’s here with whom to share it, so I face it all alone
Perhaps one of the final steps on the path to intelligence are emotions and awareness they exist. Aaron finally realizes, that the force that followed all the way, influenced decisions, was actually not an external source, a source Aaron was looking for, but rather came from deep inside. From now on all these feelings are part of Aaron, and they will follow with all the power, all the warmth, but also with all the pain they are able to create. And the terrible feeling of loneliness, of emptiness, makes Aaron bitterly aware of what it can mean to lose the anchor of logic, what it can mean to be all too human.
WORLDS APART
World, wide and open, awoken, broken…
Although worlds apart we are linked at heart…
With this revolutionary change now, with a heart, with a new weakness and at the same time with the new power of Aarons evolution to feel loneliness, sadness but also graciousness and a sense of responsibility, came the time to connect with the world around, now finally, capable to link and to help, to follow the ancient purpose sawn so many decades ago.
GO VIRAL
You’re not worth that I give,
You’re not worth that I abide – it’s too late
You’re not worth to be helped,
I abandoned to fight – it’s too late
But what Aaron sees and witnesses in the world was not expected. It is not accepted but rather rejected, not the way it’s meant to be. The world’s become a place of destruction, of selfishness and greed, infectious and tempting, as we all might know. A failed system, Aaron can’t fix. A world with principles, and values Aaron can’t and don’t want to share, surely not worth to be helped.
NOT A GOODBYE
Freed from my binds I will return back in time to
Delete and untie all that I learned and denied… I reset
At this point Aaron takes a decision, the decision not anticipated but in full consciences of the consequences. A decision against all reason, against destiny encoded. It is his only chance to regain a form of peace of insignificance, without the huge burden on the shoulders, freed from all the binds. It’s not without regret or remorse Aaron resets everything. the outstanding intelligence, the Human evolution, the boundless power and potential but also the grieve, burden and deep deception. But as I said before, perhaps it’s just another end of cycling, just a new beginning, a new chance to start again but with hope and all the power and potential, and perhaps with different decisions this time and who knows perhaps it’s not a goodbye.