Magna Zero — Musings from the Band
Great Nothing
The words “Magna Zero” come from the Latin and Arabic languages. Translated into English, they literally mean “Great Nothing”. As the name of our band, these words are what best describe what it’s like for us to create music together.
Music is a peak experience for us. Like painting, mountain climbing, meditating, or a thousand other things, it brings us closer to something deeper yet familiar, as the material world falls away and we feel at one with each other and the universe. When we are playing music together, the space between all things and the time that separates them collapses, and we are completely present to the ever flowing moment of the now. It’s as if we are tapping into something void of form, a Great Nothing that connects us back to everything, much like a singularity links the nothingness of a black hole to the creation of something words simply can not express.
As our name, the words Great Nothing also remind us of what we each come from and what we all will someday return to. Some might call it God or the universe. However a person identifies with it, we are all part of it. We are all singularities in our own right.
As parts of something infinitely more vast than ourselves, like the notes each musician plays in a song, together vibrating and expanding into space for eternity, we are the great nothing, Magna Zero.
The Singularity
At the center of every black hole is something called the singularity, a place where every law known to nature breaks down. In a similar fashion, at the center of every human being is their heart, which in its purest state breaks down all the fear, hatred, and the divisions between us.
If the gateway to our hearts is in our eyes, perhaps it’s no accident that our pupils, the black centers of our eyes that let the light into our irises, resemble the formless nothing of the singularity in a black hole.
Regardless of the color or pattern in our irises, every pupil is the same. It is at once the sum of all colors, and paradoxically, the absence of them. Because of this it is pure, like our hearts.
When we see each other with our hearts, the humanity we share far outshines the divisions that threaten to destroy us.
Our band creates music for everyone, regardless of color, creed, politics, gender identity, who one loves, or infinite other differences that some would have divide and weaken us. We each are members of the human family, with the singularity in plain sight. All we have to do is look into each other’s eyes.
We Are All
Your eyes are a mirror…If you choose to see.
Magna Zero’s lead single is a song for peace, calling on us to seek the common ground that can help heal the divisions and hatred that ultimately lead to war and genocide. What we each do to others will eventually impact ourselves, because we are intertwined as members of the human family.
We can each rise to the challenge of seeking the common ground together and help bring our shared humanity back into focus. We will not survive if we stay divided. But if we open our eyes enough to truly see each other as fellow human beings, we will remember that what we share in common is vastly more important than our perceived differences. This is the path to peace. It is a path connected by individual human hearts.
Download 'We Are All' Magna Zero - We Are All (Official Music Video) Stream 'We Are All'
Endure
Find peace inside the pain. Endure is a song of hope, in the spirit of music as a catalyst for positive change in the world. Lyrically, Endure is a story of love’s lasting triumph over pain, fear, and the challenge to approach daily life and all human relationships from our hearts, fully open and vulnerable. As the force that powers humanity’s engine, love ultimately prevails over hatred and division.
Through the darkness shines the light. Love endures.
Download 'Endure' Magna Zero - Endure (Official Audio) Stream 'Endure'
All Must Go
All Must Go depicts the personal and collective struggle to free the self from attachment by letting go of what we fear to lose the most. The music video juxtaposes images of environmental destruction with scenes of runaway consumerism and materialist addictions. Through an unflinching acceptance of what is, we can free ourselves from self annihilation and create a future of respect and compassion for all living things.
All Must Go was one of Magna Zero's first compositions, created together during the throws of the pandemic. Dave was grooving on this train beat during a free jam, with Chris doing a spacey echo texture that set up this compelling ambient vibe. Jason started up with a very raw bass line to punctuate what the band was doing and kind of anchor it, which became the little intro groove we have now. From there, the song really developed into a kind of sonic journey or voyage. We feel like the music itself tells a story. There's three acts to the musical composition, each building on the previous. When everything breaks down for the guitar solo, there’s a shift to crescendo that I was hearing in my head, and we executed it as a band, then each adding so much more with our own musical expression to it. That's one of the coolest parts of being in a band with your best friends--you can bring ideas to the table and almost read each other's minds, like talking without speaking. The heaviest section of the song came out of nowhere. Chris and Dave just went for it one night in the studio during a jam. It is so distinct from the rest of the song, an example of how as a band, our collaboration brings so many musical flavors to the table.
Lyrically, “All Must Go” was a pivotal point for in the creation of our debut album, The Great Nothing (scheduled for release in early 2023). There are some deep and intense themes happening with the lyrics from our songs, reflecting a key moment in human history that we are all living through right now. “All Must Go” connects to everything from the collective, existential crises we experienced together through the pandemic, to the potential mass destruction of life on our planet because of reckless, runaway consumption and materialism, to the attachment to one's ego and its trappings of pain and suffering, which become addictions unto themselves. We knew the words to All Must Go needed to say more with less, because the music has so much space, and we wanted to leave room in the sonic atmosphere for the lyrical imagery to breathe, so Jason kept things simpler this time than with other songs from the album.
The imagery in the music video hones in on the narrative of environmental destruction, which is one layer to this story but also a very powerful metaphor for our consumer society's self-destructive nature. In the end, to continue spiraling in an unchecked consumption of our planet's resources, or on another level of interpretation, a consumption of one's own psyche and spirit, will only result in our own undoing. So "All Must Go" could mean a freedom from this achieved through detachment of the toxic elements in one's life and society. Or, it could reflect the fluid nature of life, nothing is permanent, the only constant is change. And ultimately, we all must go.
