DINING ROOM (Just Music series vol. 2)

I made this CD while mixing some albums by BIOnighT, the electronic music duo I'm one half of, though I wasn't originally planning of releasing a new solo album... When we decided to include in one of those CDs - Daybreak - a song by FaBIO (the other half of BIOnighT) and his remix of another track, I thought it would be nice to include a solo track by me, too. I came up with several songs, but FaBIO rejected all of them (not unreasonably, probably, since they had nothing to do with the rest of our music). Therefore, I found myself with a handful of tracks by me and some by BIOnighT he had discarded that I just didn't want to throw out. The only solution was to write a whole album in which I could include those tracks, too, and this is how this CD came about. Unlike Aphasia - my previous CD - this work didn't come to light out of a desperate need to communicate, since it was a quiet period for me, but I had fun making it and the tracks are fairly intense nevertheless, so I hope you will enjoy it :) All tracks written, arranged, and performed by Mac in 2002 except where indicated Self-released

1) CLEAR SKY (1.55) Go to the mountains, sleep in a cabin or something, forget about the big cities and the horrible noise that make our lives dirty... Wake up in the morning, open the door and step outside, breathe the pure air that your body had almost forgotten about, listen to the silence, enjoy the view of the trees around you, and look at the sky, so clear. That is where your soul should always be, not in the games our rotten society plays; it should be up there, in the silence and beauty of a clear sky...

2) UNBREAKABLE (4.18) One of the things I've always admired is resilience. Life can be very hard at times, and I think it is fundamental to find the guts to stand for your right to look for happiness, in spite of the painful experiences we are often put through. Instead, I see many people just fold over and spend their lives in self-pity, and I see others just break and not even try to recover, sometimes even after events that aren't that terrible after all. Most of these people become eventually just a burden to themselves and to those around them. Sometimes, though, I see people go through some devastating experiences and - after a period of recovery - stand up on their feet again, ready to go on living; I can almost hear them yell, "I'm back, and I'm gonna fight for my happiness!" That makes me feel proud, especially when some of those people are part of my life. This is one of the tracks rejected by FaBIO, but it's OK: it was actually very personal.

3) SLOWLY (5.56) It's hard to hold on to your projects, because sometimes things seem to move so slowly - or even in the wrong direction - that you feel as if you will never get anywhere. But if you are persistent enough and you never stop believing in yourself you will eventually make it. Hopefully.

4) DON'T GET RID OF ME (5.15) It's sad, but one day somebody very important to you (a lover, a friend, a relative...) may want you out of their life. You may even get to the point of begging them not to get rid of you, because you're suffering a lot, but eventually, if their decision is final, you can only accept it. It's so hard that you feel as if you were being torn apart, yet somewhere inside of you there is an odd sense of excitement and freedom that perplexes you... and then you understand: it's the beginning of a new phase in your life. This song was written in 1993.

5) MACJINGLE (0.08) One day I was playing around with a hard disk recording software that I didn't know; it featured several unusual functions, including one that allowed you to "write" notes and have them played by your computer. I just jotted down a few random notes and the result was irresistibly funny to me - it sounded like a silly jingle for a radio station or something - so I fixed a couple of details and decided to keep it and make it my own jingle, just for fun's sake :)

6) NOTTURNA (4.30) Night can conjure up some pretty strange atmospheres and moods at times...

7) LEFTOVER (3.25) Written by Mac and Sbrizzi FaBIO, arranged and performed by Mac There are times when you feel as if you were a leftover, an unwanted scrap of food neglected by life. You know you are good and you are aware of your qualities, but society just doesn't seem to give a damn about you and what you have to give. You see idiots who don't do anything for anybody, and people so empty that they have nothing to give, and even people so bad that they don't care about anybody but themselves be successful and get all they want; you actually see them being rewarded by society for what they are, while you're sitting in your room and counting the cents in your pockets, hoping to make it through the next weeks, or feeling desperately lonesome 'cause nobody seems to want you... The chorus of this track is a leftover as well; it was written by FaBIO for a song by BIOnighT but, for some reason, he hated this chorus and insisted that it be removed from that song. What was left of the song was, from my point of view, truly ugly and embarrassing, so we discarded it. In my opinion, though, the chorus was pretty good, so I decided to write a new song around it, and this is the result.

8) WAITING (0.52) This is an introduction to track no. 13.

9) ANCIENT (2.40) Imagine the main title of a film - adventure, mystery, sci-fi, whatever you prefer - and yourself sitting in front of the screen, feeling thrilled as you see the pictures supported by music that introduce a new, exciting adventure. The ancient excitement of listening to a story has taken many forms in the past centuries, but cinema is probably the most complete form of storytelling. Too bad most movies today are only made to rake in as much money as possible... When I wrote this piece it was supposed to be the intro of a long suite called "A Life" (on the album "Songswell" by BIOnighT), but FaBIO didn't like it and so he only left the approximately 40 seconds that you can now hear at the beginning of that suite. However, I liked the original intro, so I kept it and it is now this song.

10) SICK AND TIRED (4.04) Enough is enough; sometimes you just can't take it anymore. You've been telling yourself that it will be OK, that it's just a temporary phase, but then you realize that it doesn't have any intention to stop; at that point you lose it and decide it's time to make it stop, whatever the cost. This is one of the tracks I wrote for Daybreak rejected by FaBIO.

11) IF ONLY FOR A MOMENT (2.17) Sometimes deep inside of you there is something you intensely wish you had or were, if only for a moment... I wrote this piece in 1993; it is actually a "spin off" of "Don't get rid of me," as you can tell from the fact that the main sequence is in fact a part of the bass line of that track.

12) A LONG SPEECH (0.47) People are talking all around you, but your mind is so worried and distant that you can't even make out the words that get to your ears; they just talk and talk, an endless speech that goes on while you need so badly to be alone with yourself...

13) UNBEARABLE WAIT (5.44) Waiting in a corridor or a bed of a hospital; waiting for a doctor who will tell you if they managed to save the life of a person you love; waiting for the results of a test that will tell you if it still makes sense for you to go on making plans for the future. It's impossible to describe this kind of wait to somebody who never experienced it. You wait, and wait, and wait, till nothing exist in the universe anymore except for your own waiting, till you get to the point that you'd rather go on waiting forever because your fear of knowing the truth has grown so deep that you only want to run away from it all and pretend that reality itself is not true, till you only want to find out the truth as soon as possible and get it over with. Your tension keeps on growing, like a blade revolving endlessly on itself that never seems to change and still gets more and more terrifying by the minute, piercing thru your very soul. And then your wait abruptly ends, and you find out. This song is dedicated to all those who have experienced the Unbearable Wait.

14) TV SERIES (3.54) For a period of time I coincidentally found myself hearing people talking with some excitement about all those American TV series of the 80's (no need to name them, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about) and I unexpectedly realized that they have left a mark in a lot of people's memories. It's strange, because after all they were pretty average in terms of quality, and their structure was very standardized; still, they managed to find their way into the hearts of many. So - even if I can't certainly say that they impressed me as much - I decided to write this song as a tribute to those TV series. Listen to it, and imagine it is the theme song of a new series that you can sit down and watch in your mind...

15) WALKING IN THE NIGHT (4.36) Written, arranged and performed by BIOnighT (Sbrizzi FaBIO - Mac) A man is walking alone in the middle of the night; his thoughts are whirling in a mixture of diverse feelings as he walks along the empty streets, trying to make the right decisions about his life. Occasional distant sounds break the apparent silence reminding him that other people are awake, even if he can't see them and it's hard to tell where those sounds come from exactly. Now and then a louder noise brings him back from his inner world to the real world. FaBIO and I recorded the solo on this track "live," taking turns in front of the keyboard without stopping the recording - one got up from the chair and when he lifted his fingers from the keyboard the other one took his place immediately. "Walking in the night" was supposed to be included in one of BIOnighT's albums; for some reason FaBIO never liked it, though, and so it was discarded. However, I've always thought it was one of our most intense pieces and decided to include it in my solo album, even if it is actually by BIOnighT.

16) BROKE (0.39) You can hope, and fight, and hold on, but when you're broke you're broke, and that can stop you right where you are...

17) STRENGTH (6.28) Sometimes it takes a lot of strength not to give up, but we owe it to ourselves - after all the fighting giving up now would be crazy.

18) WATCHING THE SUN RISE (4.05) The sun is rising, and in a few minutes light will once again shine all over the land and sing the glory of our star. You just look at the sky changing color as the sun appears above the trees, and your heart fills with elation and awe once again... This is actually the second song I've written about this subject; some day I will probably record the other one, too.

19) UNBREAKABLE RMX (7.17) I'm not particularly fond of the modern concept of remix, so here's an 80's style remix of Unbreakable.

copyright on all material: Mac 2008