Mariusz Duda, Claustrophobic Universe, cassette tape. Mystic
Let’s emphasize one thing – “Claustrophobic Universe” is not an album inspired by books on astronomy and astrophysics. It’s a record about a trip into the depths of our mind. The cosmos here is merely a metaphor for our escape from reality, an escape to a place where we mute our reactions to stimuli.
We no longer have to look at the sky in the evening. We find planets floating in milk instead of breakfast cereal every day, and stars spill out of medicine boxes and taste like lemon. Tired of the information noise – which on the album is symbolized by all sorts of banging noises on the wall, dull sounds and distortions – we take a trip to the inner galaxy in our private escape capsule, to at least get away from the information of more numbers and more denials.
It’s been a year since we lived in this very different world. We have already become accustomed to many new customs. “Claustrophobic Universe” is also a story about habituation, about adaptation to a life of confinement, to a life of constant stress and uncertainty, to a life of constant threat and endless war of thought between two camps – believers and non-believers. In Pandemic, in Freedom, in Truth, in the Other Man, in God. We’ve also gotten used to the fact that some people keep trying to tell us that the earth is flat, while others keep trying to tell us that we’re not living in 2021 at all but have gone back to 1984 or moved straight to 2084.
“Claustrophobic Universe” is the second part of the so-called “Claustrophobic Universe. “Lockdown Trilogy”.
