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O n k a l o - Eskatoteleologinen Odyssey - {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 50​:​24]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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O n k a l o

- E s k a t o t e l e o l o g i n e n O d y s s e y -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 50:24] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"´Hiding Place´. Or ´Onkalo´ (in Finnish).

For me, structurally, in all its idiosyncrasy: an astounding contemporary Symphony. Or, as composer and multi-instrumentalist Otacílio Melgaço defines, an ´eschatoteleological´ Piece; and I declare: a Piece architected in sequences of ´sound cavities´ that turns out to be premonitory, prophetic. Emphasizing the context: cavities representing the drilling of earth; the piercing of the future; the puncturing of mankind; the penetrating into the human being himself - under a prism new, unique, alarming, (even) frightening and (by all means) thought-provoking.

´A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there´, once said Meister Eckhart. The three movements of this Melgacian sonic Saga denote to me unavoidable/indelible parts of such learning.

>> Among several preciousness contained in ´Onkalo´, I´ll mention a triad:

1 - The always valued and surprising range of timbres - embraced by O.M. - is the surrounding case here. Singing saw, saxophones, organ, punctual electronic beats, sound poetry, geiger counter noises, nuclear alarms etc.

A priori - or, apropos, simultaneously -, it´s worth mentioning that seems to me to be in the formalism of composition a kind of mirror of Onkalo's spatial structure:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Onkalo-kaaviokuva.png

(a ´gargantuan detail´, in my view, endowed with admirable genius).

A posteriori, it´s inevitable to find a certain atmosphere of sci-fi. More scientific than fictional, if we analyze the whole context already in progress. But I´ll extrapolate: more than scientificist - concomitantly - because, in the end, the work of Melgaço foreshadows perhaps the post-science and the post-fiction; a post-civilization in a post-temporality;

2 - The album cover image, an outstanding compendium of metaphors.

If the radioactive waste repository name means ´small cave´ too (etymologically), certainly this happens, in Finnic lands, underground. Otacílio, giving us his version of Hieronymus Bosch (not by chance a fragment of a triptych and exactly coming not from Heaven or Purgatory but from Hell), makes the nothing small orifice occur in the very body of a man, of all of us! By itself, this turnaround is fascinating and of an incomparable potency.

Notice that the image is purposely blurred. Our retinæ can try to decipher it but with difficulty and gradually (notwithstanding when it´s enlarged). Does this lead us to conclude that the position of humankind on so many issues like this is also as the focused by Melgaço? I think so.

The treatment (expanded) he imposes on color makes it appear that we are dealing with a comic book character, another rather symbolic message. Plus: the blue, almost Kleinian, seems to shift our view out of the earth, when it was first called ´a blue planet´ when sighted by astronauts. Another valuable connotation to the plastic signs that Otacílio offers us and thus everything becomes even more instigating. There´s a temporal distancing (literally beyond poetically) and probably, embedded in it, a critique of the risks we run when try to find answers to get rid of problems that we ourselves cause (so ... distance ourselves from them - again: literally), as is the complex issue of radioactive garbage;

3 - Through peculiarly diverse lenses, we may be facing a possible parallel between Music and Radioactivity - if we abstract ourselves. As figures of language, to relate the act of allowing oneself to be raptured by Art and to be under impregnating effects (´spontaneous emission of a stream´ preserved to an extent that extrapolate the limits of our imagination; an unforeseeable form of legacy), it´s an ode to a ransom of that relationship, so trivialized nowadays.
In the same sense, in the midst of such a miniaturized era and a relativism that can make everything so Lilliputian: assuming an immeasurable proportion to the concept of ´Odyssey´, swimming against the current, we should not deny the analogy (perhaps a clairvoyance of who is a creator par excellence) between Music and Perenniality - as if it were above us, beyond us.
The Art Into Eternity. <<

E-s-c-h-a-t-o-l-o-g-y: a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the ´end of the world´ or ´end time´. The word arises from the Greek ἔσχατος eschatos meaning ´last´ and -logy meaning ´the study of´, first used in English around 1550. The Oxford English Dictionary defines eschatology as ´The part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.´ In the context of mysticism, the phrase refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and reunion with the Divine. In many religions it is taught as an existing future event prophesied in sacred texts or folklore.

T-e-l-e-o-l-o-g-y: the study of evidences of design in nature; a doctrine (as in vitalism) that ends are immanent in nature; a doctrine explaining phenomena by final causes; the fact or character attributed to nature or natural processes of being directed toward an end or shaped by a purpose; the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena. A philosophy of Teleology sees purpose in ends rather than stated causes, making the outcome the actual, or ´final´ cause. When you see things in terms of teleology, you explain actions by their results. We can trace the origin of teleology to the Greeks: to teleos, meaning ´complete´, and its root telos, meaning ´result´. Then we add the suffix -logy, which means ´logic´, or ´reason´. The philosophy itself suggests that acts are done with a foregone purpose in mind - people do things knowing the result they wish to achieve. As Aristotle said, ´Nature does nothing in vain.´

O.M. inexorably does not - as well - invent the term
E-s-c-h-a-t-o-t-e-l-e-o-l-o-g-y in vain.

To finish.
Finnish.

David Ross Brower was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations. Let us look at one of his statements: ´Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations´. I say Otacílio Melgaço, in his field of activity (the cultural universe), is doing his part. Eschatoteleologically. How about you? How about we?

´All is worthwhile if the soul is not small.´ (Fernando Pessoa)

Much beyond mere entertainer, being (the Artist) another and very peculiar source that brings to the surface dilemmas like this, it gives more carat to the dynamo that should also serve as source - to all of us - of reflections, new perspectives and attitudes. Local and global. Can the world itself, in an uncertain future, become a ´hiding place´ for the human race? Far from the actual reborn of reactionary tendencies (a serpent's egg?) which appear to be sprinkled across the globe as evidence of a dehumanizing pandemic (from the viralizing and often virulant ephemera of digital environments to the growing controversial-political command of countries ... including everything that is between them); on the other hand, far from a pamphletary speech or naive or typical of the marketing of the martyrs of postmodernity; ... the Melgacian sound mosaic points to another earth, an uncovered place, destined to be substantially habitable but not by those of small souls. Or - today and always - not by the dwellers, residents, hostages of the real small caves." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´Radioactivity
Is in the air for you and me
Radioactivity
Tune in to the melody´ (Kraftwerk)

ἀποκάλυψις.

Apokálypsis.

Apocalypse (literally meaning ´an uncovering´).

Otacílio Melgaço and Apocalypse.

The Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository is a deep geological repository for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel, the first such repository in the world. It is currently under construction at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in the municipality of Eurajoki, on the west coast of Finland, by the company Posiva. It is based on the KBS-3 method of nuclear waste burial developed in Sweden by Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB (SKB).

Otacílio Melgaço between Nothingness & Eternity.

[´Onkalo. In my time it is still unfinished though work began in the 20th century when I was just a child. Work would be completed in the 22nd century long after my death. Onkalo must last one hundred thousand years. Nothing built by man has lasted even a tenth of that time span. But we consider ourselves a very potent civilization. If we succeed, Onkalo will most likely be the longest lasting remains of our civilization. If you, sometime far into the future, find this, what will it tell you about us?´ (Danish artist and film maker Michael Madsen from his film: ´Into Eternity´.)]

Otacílio Melgaço and the Visions of the Emerald Beyond.

[´Onkalo is probably the most ambitious human endeavour ever put into practise, and in its quiet, reflective style, the film ´Into Eternity´ presents the project in its full madness. It makes us consider the big questions in a way that we, in the 21st century, don’t usually do outside of theological and philosophical circles. Questions of war, economic collapse, mass migration, ecological catastrophe, societal structure, all seem to pale away when we are faced with a time period that, in reverse, stretches back tens of thousands of years beyond our recorded history, to when Homo sapiens, or modern humans, were not the only species of human on this Earth. This is an idea that is almost inconceivable to us now. For all the questions thrown up by Onkalo, and of all the possible and predicted events occurring in its lifespan, only one can approach definite status as a likely event over others. It is inevitable that one day, in the next 100,000 years, Onkalo will be discovered by someone.´ (Maria Gilardin / TUC Radio)]

Otacílio Melgaço and the Inner Mounting Flame.

´Once upon a time, man learned to master fire. Something no other living creature had done before him. Man conquered the entire world. One day he found a new fire. A fire so powerful that it could never be extinguished. Man reveled in the thought that he now possessed the powers of the universe. Then in horror, he realized that his new fire could not only create but also destroy. Not only could it burn on land but inside all living creatures; inside his children, the animals, all crops. Man looked around for help, but found none. And so he built a burial chamber deep in the bowels of the earth, a hiding place for the the fire to burn, into eternity.´

Otacílio Melgaço and the Birds of Fire." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - After the Finnish Nuclear Energy Act was amended in 1994 to specify that all nuclear waste produced in Finland must be disposed of in Finland, Olkiluoto was selected in 2000 as the site for a (very) long-term underground storage facility for Finland's spent nuclear fuel. The facility, named "Onkalo" (meaning "small cave" or "cavity") is being built in the granite bedrock at the Olkiluoto site, about five km from the power plants. The municipality of Eurajoki issued a building permit for the facility in August 2003 and excavation began in 2004. A construction license was issued 12 November 2015. According to Posiva construction will begin in 2016 and operations in 2023;

II - In 2012, a research group at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, published research that suggests that the copper capsules are not as corrosion-proof as the companies planning the repositories claim;

III - www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4WwYf9PQMA

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.

credits

released November 11, 2016

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design [O.M., after Bosch] | production | direction}

Special Guests: Nausícaaa Ensemble | Zycluz Quartett

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
from
Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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