The origins of Aelios Nova

Aelios Nova is a prog rock solo project headed by Milano Sebastian. After many years of writing and abandoning songs that didn't fit the style of his band, it took him an injury and a lengthy recovery period at home to start piecing together an album. At that point, all the songs were instrumental sketches without much cohesion. The first step for him was to amalgamate all those sketches into cohesive songs. After those had all taken shape, it was clear which story each song was telling. After that it still took a while to properly translate that story into words.

The debut album covers Milano's path from a dark place in his life (with matching views of the world around him) to his current brighter, more balanced and nuanced take on the world.

Before recording the debut album, Milano had extensive experience playing different instruments, but little to no experience recording, mixing, mastering and singing. With the council of his bandmate Robin as co-producer and the help of a few very talented guest musicians, the album started to take shape.

For the artwork, Milano found his friend and bandmate Dave willing to express his vision on the themes the album means to convey: the album art on the outside of the upcoming vinyl release depicts a rather depressing, but intricately drawn cityscape in the grips of hyper-capitalism, reflecting the lyrics on the A-side of the album (tracks 1-3). The artwork on the inside reveals the same cityscape, but after some radical, systemic changes. These are also reflected in the lyrics of the songs on the B-side of the album (tracks 4-7).

All together, Aelios Nova is proud to present you with new music, which has been written, recorded, mixed and mastered entirely without help or influence from AI/LLM's. The artwork has also been lovingly hand-drawn, so we are proud to bring you art made by humans, for humans!