This EP is the culmination of a year experimenting with my modular synth, and what a year!

Exactly a year ago I bought my first Doepfer mini box, and a few months later I had to buy a much bigger box to make room for all the modules I bought throughout 2018, most of them from Mutable instruments (I started with Tides v1 and Clouds, later Marbles and Plaits would arrive), the DIY modules of Befaco (Rampage and Hex VCA) and the module (filter) that has helped me define / compose / interpret the themes of this EP: Three sisters by Whimsical Raps.

This EP, it would be as the title says, tells the story of a hypothetical trip back and forth to Mars (starting from the Earth it is understood) the first theme "Always ascending // The fall" is the outward journey, the takeoff of the rocket, the vertiginous ascent and acceleration, the gravity of the Earth and the absence of it in space, and, without a break, the heavy "fall" of the capsule on the red planet.

I imagine "Mars anthem" as the first steps of the astronaut on the Martian surface, the fear of the unknown, the weight of gravity.
At first this track did not convince me, I thought about reinterpreting it but (like the rest of the tracks of the EP) it is recorded in a single track after a small previous trial of the interpretation, and obviously it is complicated to replicate the same patch. After giving a lot of thought to the track, I had an idea: to process the audio of the already recorded track with the modular (Clouds and Sisters) with a new interpretation and thus give it a different touch.

Trippy travel // Rover on fire "the astronaut (driving his vehicle) gets lost in a sandstorm and falls into a chasm, manages to continue but his vehicle is damaged and ends up stopping at the foot of Mount Olympus.

"Last broadcast // Forgotten ruins" With the vehicle destroyed, the astronaut decides to venture on foot because he has little time left to consume the oxygen left in the tanks. He finds the access to a cave where he discovers geometric shapes carved into the rock, and a continuous descent that seems to have no end. He stumbles and falls into a well that seems to have no end. The walls of the well include geometric shapes and inscriptions more and more detailed. After a time that seems to be eternal, the well expands and turns into a huge cavern that looks like ruins of an ancient city. When his body touches the ground everything slowly fades away.

"Dark portal // The end" the astronaut awakens, he finds himself in a dark room in which there is only one source of illumination: a small, warm and pulsating light. He slowly approaches the light, decides to touch it and in doing so opens his eyes and he has returned to home, has it been a dream?

Recorded in six short sessions, one for each track (minus "Mars anthem" ) and a long afternoon putting it all together and fine tuning In Ableton live.