Today marks an exciting milestone for Ceiling Spirits, the ambitious project led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Mario Quadracci. As they unveil their sophomore album, The Bloodwren, they also share the single “Platonic Forms,” a track that embodies the album’s complex musical layers and deep narrative storytelling. Born from the isolation of the COVID lockdowns, The Bloodwren reflects a journey through emotional extremes, crafted with a level of detail that marks a significant evolution from the band’s debut.
“Platonic Forms” is one of the longer songs off this LP, Post-Punk.com asked Mario Quadracci to elaborate on the track’s narrative during an interview about The Bloodwren LP:
“The entire record was written with a story in mind. Platonic Forms is unique in that it has to cover a lot of narrative ground for a number of different characters. Because of that, the composition is almost like several different vignettes or scenes that are pieced together into a larger musical format. We get some darker, heavier moments which has to do with the chaos and destruction unleashed by The Bloodwren. In previous pieces, the character who will become the Bloodwren begins as an awkward kid who endures relentless cruelty and misfortune. He ultimately retreats inward where he suffers a psychic fracturing and the worst part of himself, which he sees as a twisted bird-like creature (the Bloodwren), tosses all that is good about himself (represented as his boyish form) into the abyss of his mind and rises to take complete control of the man. During Platonic Forms the Bloodwren, who has already manipulated others to rise to power and now controls them with manipulation while staying in the shadows, attempts to cause as much suffering as possible for those he views as his enemies. At the same time, the virtuous part of himself, with the help of an angelic figure—a representation of a girl (who may or may not have been real) who was kind to him when he was young—begins to struggle upwards towards the light of his outer consciousness. There’s a lot more to it than that, and I don’t want to get too bogged down in it, but you can hear in the music the contrast between the destructive darkness and chaos of the Bloodwren and the glinting hope and flickering triumphs of those who oppose him before a final confrontation.”
How did the COVID lockdowns influence the composition and production of The Bloodwren?
“The lockdowns had a massive impact on this work. Thematically, the heavy uncertainty of this invisible darkness that was creeping over everything played a huge role. So did that time’s political turmoil and social unraveling. On the positive side, the glut of extra time on my hands let me be much more detail oriented with the compositions than I ever have been. When we started recording, we had to manage everyone being tested and isolated before getting together and all of that, which was weird then but seems even weirder now.”
Comparing The Bloodwren to your self-titled debut album, how has your approach to composition and experimentation evolved?
“The first record was born out of these live film scoring shows I was doing on occasion. I would piece together interesting found footage in such a way as to tell a sort of loose meta-narrative then perform solo along with it. I used lots of looping and unconventional guitar techniques to try and create large soundscapes with varying textures and layers. The first record took the musical outlines I used for those shows and formalized and expanded them into parts for other instruments. The new record was composed meticulously from the ground up and is way more musically complex and varied. The connective thread between both works is in the use of real strings.”
Listen to “Platonic Forms” below:
Ceiling Spirits, Mario Quadracci’s primary musical project, began as an experiment in live film scoring. Quadracci would perform solo, using extensive looping, effects, and non-traditional guitar techniques to create dense atmospheric soundscapes behind self-produced films made from found footage. This project expanded to include other musicians, including a string ensemble, evolving the material from live shows into more compositionally constrained forms suitable for an LP. The self-titled debut was recorded in London and Ireland, produced by Gareth Jones, and released in 2018 to acclaim.
Explore The Bloodwren
The Bloodwren is now available on all major streaming platforms, vinyl, and in Dolby Atmos / Immersive Audio.
Order the album here, or listen to it via Spotify.
Connect with Ceiling Spirits
Or via: