“In Persona 3 FES, areas are called Malebolge, Cocytus, Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, Judecca, and Empyrean.” —Wikipedia
Paraadiso, Unison (2021)
“TSVI & Seven Orbits debut their Paraadiso* project with a whorl of sweeping choral arrangements and staggering rhythms for Shanghai’s SVBKVLT powerhouse. Inspired by Italian folk music, noise, ancient compositions and rituals, the result is a sort of widescreen 4D soundworld, something like Enigma/FSOL’s Lifeforms bolstered by smashed/syncopated hard drums and emo arpeggios rendered in slow motion.
“Unison is the duo’s conception of ritual music for contemporary, collective physical experience, aka the rave. With a masterful grasp of technoid dramaturgy, its 10 tracks draw on ancient choral traditions as much as up-to-the-second rhythmic diffusion styles to suggest new ways of moving and being moved, with a pointed focus on synchronising social action and reaction.
“Following their 2020 debut, Seven Orbits approaches the project from an audio-visual background, bringing a highly animated structure to TSVI’s rugged rhythmic proprioceptions. Unison was created by the pair to be performed in live context with visual accompaniment, and clearly conveys a strong sense of movement through the audio alone, coming close to the kind of balletic dynamics of Jlin and Second Woman.
“For the strongest examples we advise checking the lush choral lather and polymetric slosh of ‘Liquid Matter’ finding the duo at their most uplifting, the knuckled scuzz of ‘Berserk’ for their rudest workout, or the killer arrangement of haunting ancient chorales and bombed out dembow swag in ‘Riflesso,’ coming off like Laszlo Hortobagyi meets Paul Marmota at their darkest and most theatric.” —Boomkat, see also their artist statement on bandcamp
The final track is titled “Paradiso terrestre.”
* The spelling of the group’s name as ‘Paraadiso’ is intentional
Dan Simmons, The Hollow Man (1992)
“Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he’s been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity. Now Jeremy is on the run–from his mind, from his past, from himself–hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that propels him on a treacherous trek across a dark and dangerous America. From a fantasy theme park to the lair of a killer to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis, he follows a voice that is calling him to witness the stunning mystery at the heart of mortality.” –Amazon
The novel is filled with references to Dante and his works, and opens with a quotation from Paradiso 17.
Community, Season 5, Basic Story (2014)
“The insurance appraiser in the Season 5 episode ‘Basic Story’ of Community recites from Paradiso XVII.58 as he climbs the short staircase in the entrance of Greendale Community College: ‘And you shall find that salt is the taste of another man’s bread, and hard is the way up and down another man’s stairs.’” —Wikipedia
Donna Distefano’s “The Love That Moves the Sun and the Other Stars” Ring
“I created a one-of-a-kind ring inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto 33, The Final Vision. I’ve studied The Divine Comedy in both English and Italian and have always loved the way the poem combines so many seemingly disparate elements: mythology, realism, love, judgment, geometry, and astronomy to name a few. In Canto 33, Dante faces God and sees ‘the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.’ It is the moment when his life on earth intersects with his life outside of this earth.” –Donna Distefano
The ring, which features pieces of actual meteorite, was featured in the exhibit “Out of this World: Jewelry in the Space Age” at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia (November 7, 2020 – October 24, 2021). In Style magazine did a piece on it, too (see image below).
See also our previous post on Distefano’s “Elixir of Love” ring.
Contributed by Donna Distefano
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