Some background.
Sometimes people ask about Mythos, and I have tried to explain meaning and intension, but it is hard for me to do so. It is always fragmented. Because I’ve been working on it for such a long time, many ideas were absorbed into the album. Mythos is a continuation of the Astral Son story, an incredible journey into the unknown, a world of sound to dive into. It was after releasing the album that I came to fully understand. I’ll try to give some context.
Astral Son is a dreamer, artist, and a yogi, living in a confusing material world. He has always been playful with spiritual ideas, searching for ‘The Sound’. One of the themes on Mythos is different perspectives on meditation and attaining higher states of consciousness…
‘That which colours the mind’ is a definition of Indian Raga. Those words had a significant impact on me and the development of the album. There are bits of Yoga, Tao, Buddhism & Psychedelic philosophy scattered all over. I imagined every song to be like a tiny symphony, a story, an image…
I started working on Mythos in the spring of 2019 and made a demo version of the whole album. I put the project aside for a while, doing other music projects. A thing I do more often, just to let it sink in and take distance. I work on my own and stepping aside is a wonderful way to keep it fresh. This time it took a wee bit longer because of the pandemic. It changed my working flow. I couldn’t get myself to take up the album again, for many reasons. Around that time, I intensified my yoga and meditation practice. I would do yoga in my studio in the morning before touching any instrument. I tuned the mind first. I played a lot, without recording anything.
The initial album concept didn’t fit anymore but I really wanted to continue because I felt it had to be done. So, I just concentrated on the parts that spoke to me and got to work and slowly got into it again. Looking back, it seems like madness because of the many hours spent. But it was that kind of album, I knew it, and continued. I recorded numerous takes, did various mixes, different lyrics, trying this and that, only to delete it all. Sometimes it is necessary to do that, to get somewhere.
Once the new concept became clear everything fell in place. One of the ideas was to make an album that would sound great, sonically. This gave me headaches because I really became critical. Over time the complexity of the album increased. I have stuffed a lot of sounds and atmospheres into the mix, which made it quite challenging. It was also important for me to have a solid cohesion between songs, in sound and meaning. Every song became a clear image. I could ‘See’ the whole album. And that I tried to express in the front painting.