we lock our dark halves deep in the basement of our souls but darkness always finds a way of seeping through the cracks

Ostel is the artistic vision of Mexican artist Sergio Sanza. His 2024 debut Album “we lock our dark
halves deep in the basement of our souls but darkness always finds a way of seeping through the cracks”
defines itself as the life described in Joel Dicker: a long dropdown. Where the most important thing is
knowing how to fall.

The music opens up as a stream of consciousness and awareness, capturing the listener in an impartially
uncomfortable inner world. “lounge chat with my inner demons” depicts the experience of self-
awareness with a perspective of simple, direct, necessary outflow trajectory. The author expresses his
world because of a need. As in Joyce’s and Svevo’s (i.e.) literary works, the sense of constant flow is
present in the music and sealed in the meanings of the titles. A word that could well summarize the
attempt in expressing this concept is: emergence, the natural sense of blooming. When thoughts take
place in our minds, they rise in a disconnected yet intrinsically human way. So does Ostel’s music. It is
natural, raw, introspective, and lonely – sometimes too direct, sometimes too metaphysically
architectural. As if it were recorded right out of the creator’s mind, without a filter. The dotted line
joining all the tracks, in this viewpoint, is the need, the baseline human need, of expression and
manifestation of the internal movements of the soul.

I recall a concept that months ago was attributed to my music – and I now bequeath to Ostel’s Album; it
feels like it delves into the big consequences and underlying roots we can’t avoid (Thanks, Francoise).

While we move to the core tracks of the Album, we step into the magnificent “echoes in my head”, and
the tragic “uncertainty, roads and wishes”. The focus is on what streams under the surface of our lives,
all the demons, the fears, the cracks, the tombstones, traditions, and thoughts that haunt our ordinary
and push us downwards further and further, every time we give them the possibility to.

But the Album is not just that, it is not solely this dense, dangerously close fog of melancholy. It further
holds a present and vibrant symbolistic feel. In which – maybe? – Baudelaire would have fit in or at
worst resonated with. Consider the track “irreversible”. Using Baudelaire’s euphemism, the listener
discovers how the music fathoms the sky. The melody is a promise, a prayer. An alarm that pulses in
our minds and pushes us to dig deeper into our history.

Ostel’s whole Album is a way of seeing life, a way of seeking through the cracks (also, indeed, seeping
through the cracks), in search of a meaning. The infinite, the infinity of what we can see, foresee, be
afraid of, or love.

It finds its small space in the sideboard of the infinites that both haunted and sparked the creativity of
countless authors over the past centuries. Just to mention, Baricco’s infinite paintings of the sea,
Calvino’s infinite lawn, the infinite of Leopardi – without the need for other decorative words. And
then, this humble attempt, to brush the infinitely miserable condition of the human being – by Ostel.

But in what is miserable, lies room for hope. In fact, the Album ultimately offsets the definition of
destiny. In the last tracks “the space between the cracks” and “deliverance”, we can finally see through,
after the Odyssey, and connect the dots to an ending that claims the smell of hope.

Anyone who has experienced the Album, might keep walking with the countenance of those who are
resigned to be hopeful for the rest of their lives.

As in Baricco’s literature, the music converges with the idea that destiny is not a chain but a flight.

 

Edoardo Gastaldi, 08 August 2024