Up to this point in Earth’s seemingly never-ending history, five mass extinctions have hit the planet we call home, including the one that saw dinosaurs become mere fantasies from a long, mysterious past. “We’re certainly more intelligent than dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were clueless snake-ish cunts” would retort the Trump voter, too happy to make his contribution to the ideal of a Great America, rid of all Mexican rapists and thiefs, and emancipated women, and anti-NRA democrats – yuck – and… and so many things that have no rightful place in Trump’s Great America anyway.
Sorry to undermine all fossil fuel power station-lovers, Dodge RAM drivers and all their fellow climate-change deniers, but in such situations – and even though you guys did a great job against the nazis, the US have no leverage in the natural order of things but to alter the course of the industry just like we – Americanised societies – should. No matter how mighty a country may be under our present perspective, it will nevertheless be scraped from the map just like any other dog mess in the giant wasteland we’re building. Raising our voices has become of critical importance.
Yet, as with all great tragedy to be faced, climate change doesn’t find the answer it should get because people prefer to bury their head in the sand and curl up in their own ignorance, even though a fresh report from WWF, involving 59 scientists from across the globe, revealed two days ago that “Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.” Nothing new to be honest, but maybe the frightening confirmation that we’ve crossed the Rubicon for good. In the flow of media, a mere SOS ringing in a symphony of alarms.
Amongst those who’ve spoken out on the subject, urging nations to take drastic measures to help change the course of what is, to this day, a very bleak future, renowned philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky further endorsed the bone-chilling observations notably unveiled by Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent investigation work, ‘The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History‘: “There is good reason to believe that we have already entered the Sixth Extinction, a period of destruction of species on a massive scale, comparable to the Fifth Extinction 65 million years ago“.
You may have not come here to read this, but if you have a brain, and a heart, as we expect our readers to be the proud owners of, you’ll understand the nature of this long incipit when you’ll get to listen to Orlando FitzGerald‘s fantastic conceptual album, ‘Extinction 6‘, due out 16th November on a new label called New Info. Drawing its source from the all-consuming anguish of large-scale devastation, the LP is presented by the label as “an ethereal exploration of waste, greed and ultimately the failures of our society“. Going against the flow of expansionism that’s animated most of the 20th century, the record’s balance relies on an intricate game of harmony and dissonance.
Both fragile and resolute, subject to the temptation of gloom but never giving an inch to fatality, FitzGerald’s music teems with a vibrant organic life, magnifying details and textures to see beyond the surface of things. Entering ‘Extinction 6‘ is to experience a profound, pared-down, often stirring meditative movement, but incredibly rewarding when silence is made, and you willingly return to its enveloping obscurity. This is an album that stuns and submerges all at once, and our premiere ‘A Failed Species‘ definitely encapsulates most of its aforementioned qualities. A vital awakening.
Extinction 6 is released via New Info on 16th November, pre-order a copy from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
1. Our Exhalation
2. A Failed Species
3. The Endling
4. The World Doesn’t Want Us
5. Warning Signs
6. The Red Sun Of Ophelia
7. Sylvia Earle
8. Illusions Of Progress
9. Pine Island Bay
10. Siberia
11. The Oracle’s Song
12. A Different Kind Of Battlefield
13. The Skeleton Of Industry
14. It Will Return To What It Was Before
Discover more about Orlando FitzGerald and New Info on Inverted Audio.