We assume most MAGNET readers are already under the magical, musical spell of the Soundtrack Of Our Lives, but if not, 2011 is the perfect time to change that. The Gothenburg, Sweden, band just released Golden Greats, No. 1 (Little W/The Orchard), a 19-track compilation of songs from throughout the group’s career. TSOOL formed in 1995 after the demise of Union Carbide Productions, a great, punk-leaning band featuring vocalist Ebbot Lundberg and guitarist Ian Persson. Since, TSOOL has released five studio albums and a handful of EPs and non-album singles, earning a Grammy nomination for 2002’s excellent Behind The Music. Lundberg will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Lundberg: Giordano Bruno was an Italian-Dominican 16th-century friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who is best known as a proponent of the infinity of the universe. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in identifying the sun as just one of an infinite number of independently moving heavenly bodies. He is the first European to have conceptualized the universe as a continuum where the stars we see at night are identical in nature to the sun. He was burned at the stake by civil authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy and turned him over to the state, which at that time considered heresy illegal.
After his death he gained considerable fame; in the 19th and early 20th centuries, commentators focusing on his astronomical beliefs regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas. His work has immense influence on the Soundtrack Of Our Lives, who are also waiting to be burned at the stake by fanatics and stalkers. Therefore, the Soundtrack Of Our Lives band symbol OEOC (“as above, so below”), which is taken from the Hermetic emerald tablet and has its origins in Atlantean/Egyptian mysticism.
In addition to cosmological writings like all the TSOOL albums, Bruno also wrote extensive works on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. More recent assessments, beginning with the pioneering work of Frances Yates, suggest that Bruno, like myself, was deeply influenced by the astronomical facts of the universe inherited from Arab astrology, Neoplatonism and Renaissance Hermeticism.
Video after the jump.
