A few quick facts about The Quiet Earth Orchestra:
They are not an orchestra.
They are not even a band.
In fact, "they" are not even a "they"…they are a "he" known as John Ludi.
And since this is actually John Ludi writing this, He/I will now switch to a first person
perspective.
I grew up with two main musical influences: Progressive/Art Rock and Punk. The
former for the musicality, the latter for the politics and rage. These two wholly
incompatible genres have manifested themselves in various ways during my recording
career, but the latter has generally prevailed as most of my releases have been in song
form, usually oriented towards politics, economics, environmentalism, and screeds
against the generally destructive dominant trends in western civilization overall. I always
felt that it was far more important to try to directly change the world with direct
messages, before it's too late.
(Now that I am pretty much convinced that it's too late, I can be a lot more artistically
flexible.)
The "Prog" influence had come out in my soundtrack work and in a few instrumental
projects I've thrown together over the years, but until this album I have not had a chance
to realize one of my primary artistic goals: to put out at least one (hopefully several)
album(s) of quality Progressive Rock that hearkens back to the days when bands like
Yes, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, ELP, etc., enchanted listeners with brilliant and mind-
expanding music. In my youth (and still today with bands like Porcupine Tree, Marillion,
The Flower Kings, and many, many others) these bands took my heart, mind, and soul on
journeys that were both cerebral and emotionally cathartic. They were to me, in fact,
mini-symphonies filled with imagery and nuance, imagination and passion…far more of
such than the average 3 minute pop/rock song could ever hope to deliver. The genre had
a brief spell of commercial success during the 70's and was subsequently consumed by
the New Wave and early Hip-Hop marketing manipulations of the major labels during the
80's.
That was regrettable.
I have long held to the "garbage in-garbage out" theory of human development: Complex
art encourages mental dexterity and higher spiritual development…simple art turns you
into a dumbed-down and stunted tool of the Corporatocracy. All we have to do is look
around at our current culture to see just how base and idiotic we have become in the past
30 or so years. Encouraging the popularization of more evolved forms of artistic
expression may have prevented much of this devastation. These days the most
enlightened form of entertainment the vast majority are capable of engaging in is
watching Brittany Spears shave her head.
But enough of my cynicism and paranoia.
This is a project that I have been working on since around 1999. It has been back-
burnered more times than I care to remember, sometimes for a year or so at a stretch.
2008 has finally seen this album brought to light. I am hoping that the enjoyment I get
when listening to this music is at least somewhat universal, and that those listeners out
there who thrive on extended compositions and thoughtful lyricism will get some level of
gratification out of this album.
