Tesla

Electrical Storm
He looks outside
Standing in the doorway he watch the sky
Dark clouds have gathered
And charged the air
In their bed
his wife is breathing heavily
He close the shutters
And locks out the wind
Tension building up
Waiting for release
First the glimpse
Then the distant roar rolling down the hills
Rain is falling
as he locks the door
Scalded towels
The nurse is sitting calmly by her side
Waiting for the moment
That's getting close
Tension building up
Waiting for release
Held forever lingering
When the moment came
everything was agony
sparks discharging history
Shockwaves
a welcome to this world
Outside
Macak the Cat
As a child
My happiest moments
Were those I spend
With him
We would run
Roll in the grass
My best of friends
My cat
He was then the fountain
Of my joy
The finest of them all
His fur was black as coal
I loved him heart and soul
Winter came
The air was dry
We would stay
Inside
Then the strangest thing
happened before
my eyes
You should have seen the magic that I saw
The cat would shake its paw
Like if it had been wet from the rain
He shook it again and again
And when I stroked his back
A million tiny sparks
Would jump from fur to hand
I want to understand
Transatlantic
Leaving the old world
heading for the promised land
With great expectations
Lost all my luggage
All I had left was what I wore
And barely survived a mutiny
Arrived in New York
At the castle clinton fort
Queued up in a never ending line
Though I said Smiljan
They wrote 'swedish' in the form
granted permission to move on
Transatlantic
Transatlantic travelling
Please let me tell you
'bout this thing I'm working on
A wireless transmitter
Earth as conductor
almost perfect spheric shape
Allowing resonance around the world
A guy in Cornwall
Send a signal 'cross the sea
using my own patents to beat me
Let him continue
He is such a nice guy
But I wish he had ideas of his own
Transatlantic
Transatlantic wireless
Synesthesia
When
Whenever I close my eyes
Darkness
Like a starless sky
inevitably leads
To a spectacular sight
Green
Green flakes appears
Scintillation
A random pattern of spheres
Then parallel lines
Are flooding my vision
Before my sleeping
I see faces or things
I'm slipping away
There
There it happened again
I see bright
Bright flashes of light
I know is not real
But something only I can see
It happens
When in distress or despair
I see sollutions
To the problems there
And when I’m exited
It shows me things to invent
I know it’s unusual
This gift that I have
I choose to use it
Wisely
Contraptions for Pigeons
So beautiful
Dressed in feathers
all in white and grey
Each day
she comes to my window
She's my next of kin
I sit and wait
by the window
I'll sit here for days
I'll go
through hell and contraptions
for her being well
What a bird
Such a bird
Such a hurt
Oscillations
There are many kinds of wars
Fought in many different ways
In love and war it's said
that everything is fair
That everything is fair
He sits in silence by himself
With concepts brewing in his head
A system to replace
And render obsolete
The way the world had worked
Once his mentor now a foe
Inferior in many ways
Refusing to realize
The strenght of transformation
So he declared it war
The feud would reach an all time low
Dogs and cats would disappear
A wooden chair was build
A jolt of thousand volts
What an ugly war
Reason
Would proove him right
The future
For which he worked so hard
Belong to him
....
Please don't follow
I work alone
On the meadow at night
When the towns people sleep tight
Across the field
A grid of orbs alight
Illuminating a vision
Of how the future would be
All around the world we'll have
Energy right off the ground
Powers that belonged to Zeus
Free for anyone to use
....
Rotating magnetic field
Voltage, current, frequency
Polyphase electric field
Voltage, current, frequency
Nature is energy
Static charge and spark
Aether wind as medium
Voltage, current, frequency
Polarity, intensity
Voltage, current, frequency
Nature is energy
Vibration and pulse
....
A thousand lights was glowing bright
Ablazed the fact he won the fight
A luminated fair
for everyone to see
For everyone to see
Reason
prooved him right
The future
For which he worked so hard
Is now
A brownish faded photograph
Depicting nights in Chicargo
A job well done
A new horizon to pursue
The future has come true
....
Look at that wave
So powerful
All this resonance
all in tune
Look at that wave
Look at that wave
A stationary wave
Forever changing phase
My journey seems
As endless as my dream
Picking up the berries
That I find
Sometimes approaching
Sometimes fading
Everytime I think
that I will grasp it
Now
So exhausted
From travelling
It seems to me
That noone walked this road
Before
A Piece of Empty Sky
The skyline
The city
Ablazed by your work
Forever changed
Because of you
It has become
Modern
In silence
Deserted
Your room is lit
But you are now
Nowhere here
A piece of empty sky
Where you were
A moment
A lifetime
Filled with things to do
You could
Live a life on repeat
Or loose it at Stampede
Or you could change a world
What would you choose?
'Tesla' is something as unfashionable as a concept album. All songs are about the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. From his birth which, according to legend, happened during a thunderstorm, to his lonely death in a hotel room in New York. In between these two extremes we find songs about his inventions, his rivals and his cat.
Music and lyrics by Ste van Holm
Produced and engineered by Ste van Holm
Lyrics based on the writings 'My Inventions' by Nikola Tesla and 'Inventor of the electrical age' by W. Bernard Carlson
The Tesla coil melody at the end of ‘Voltage Control’ was stolen from ‘Music to go with art’ by Thomas Hillebrandt
‘Voltage Control’ contains a sample of Tom Bearden’s ‘Tom Talks Tesla’
‘Synesthesia’ includes audio excerpted from an interview with Carol Steen, produced by Nell Shaw Cohen for beyondthenotes.org
Cast:
Tanja Hollerup: Vocals (Electrical Storm & Oscillations)
Julie Frey: Vocals (Macak the Cat & Synesthesia)
Minella Ribert: Vocals (Contraptions for Pigeons & A Piece of Empty Sky)
Anders Brandt: Vocals (Transatlantic) & Lead Guitars
Jesper H. Petersen: Acoustic, electric and fretless basses
Klaus Schønning: Keyboards
Emil Rønning: Lead Guitars
Ste van Holm: Acoustic, electric and barytone guitars, chapman stick, mandolin, keyboards, DuS and programming
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