INTRODUCING: Caelestra
Some people seem to have unending creative potential. One of those is CAELESTRA; for such a cosmic enormity, the project is in fact the soul work of Bristol based multi-instrumentalist Frank Harper. We caught up with him about his latest record Bastion, the human experiences behind the scenes, and finding time to create his own character action figures.
For something so fully fledged, it would give DEVIN TOWNSEND envy, CAELESTRA only started up in the lockdown of 2020. “I had accumulated a bunch of ideas for my previous band, FEVER SEA,” Frank describes. “We had been inactive for a while and kept trying to get the ball rolling again but it never came to much, so I would be writing riffs etc for that which ultimately went unused. So rather than let them go to waste, when the lockdown happened and I suddenly had all this time, I thought ‘why not make a record myself?’ and that’s where CAELESTRA started.”
The scope for Bastion is virtually unending. From post-rock ambience, all the way through to full on blackened prog, it’s a vast, awe-inspiring sound. “I guess it comes from a few things, really,” Frank muse. “I’m heavily inspired by film scores. Especially those from 80s sci-fi and fantasy. So I always wanted to do something that incorporated that unique nostalgic feel but in a way that sounded bombastic and huge. And with my background in progressive black metal and post-metal. I guess it was always going to have some of those dynamics and traits. I think a lot of the leg work in finding the sound was done on [first record release] Black Widow Nebula and Bastion has been an exercise in trying to build upon and refine that sound.”
There’s also a fair amount of cosmic world building gone into CAELESTRA as a project. The narrative takes you on an epic journey that lives up to the music that contains it. “I had the rough idea of the story that takes place throughout the record when I started. So, I had a direction to take the music, but often times the music I would come up with would impact the story. Usually for the better! So, it was kind of a back and forth of visualising the story, writing music, seeing what the music would do to my mental imagery and then responding and reacting again. The record is a product of that process, for sure.”
“The lyrical narrative is definitely the through line,” Frank agrees. “And though I record non-chronologically, with each song as its own stand-alone thing, in my head I very much know what part of the narrative each song speaks to. For instance, the song Lightbringer is the middle of the record and the middle of the narrative, but was recorded last. I work on the songs I can visualise best at that moment in time.”
As with all creative output, being a single entity has it’s pros and cons. While you have the liberty t set your own parameters, it’s sometimes hard to know when to say that a piece of work is complete. “Yes, absolutely,” he agrees. “And quite often my first instincts are to go way overboard with the layers and textures! As it stands, my latest record Bastion is incredibly dense in terms of its layers but, initially, it was even more so. Through the process of mixing my producer Charlie Nevett and I would decide whether parts were essential or not, and then work backwards, editing the unnecessary things out from there.”
External to this mystical interstellar story, there’s a very real centre to the work Frank makes.
“This record is incredibly personal to me, and I’ve used it as a tool to come to terms with things in my personal life,” he explains. “The record for me deals specifically with themes surrounding cystic fibrosis, a degenerative lung condition that my wife has. So, for me, it’s very much about how I came to wrap my head around that one specific thing, albeit through the lens of a loose sci-fi story/concept. But ultimately, it’s about accepting the things you can’t change regardless of all those things we would do to change them, and being thankful for the things you have for no matter how short a time you might have them for. It’s cathartic for me and I hope that it makes anyone that might listen to it feel better about their situation, even if only briefly, and that they find it cathartic in that way too.”
It also appears that Frank wasn’t content with taking on the behemoth of producing his own albums single-handedly, but he also created his own figures to go along with the record. “Seeing as my music has a story and characters, I thought it would be a great thing to do myself and help sell the world of CAELESTRA,” he positively enlightens. “I’m a professional sculptor in the stop motion animation industry, so it wasn’t too far a stretch to sculpt, print and paint some Wayfarers (it did end up being a lot of work, though!). I feel that with the kind of 80’s Sci-fi and Fantasy reverence as a running theme through CAELESTRA, action figures that harken back to those times made sense. But yes, I definitely need to give a shout out to Luke Oram [who did the artwork for my previous release] and a band he collaborated with called WALLOWING for giving me the idea!”
While CAELESTRA is unequivocally Frank Harper’s intergalactic baby, there’s every likelihood that we could be seeing a live incarnation of his music with a fuller compliment of musicians. “I have a few musician friends that are keen to help me bring this stuff to the stage. I’d most likely step back from any instrumental duties and focus mainly on my vocal performance, but I’m not ruling out rhythm guitar! So far, I have a drummer, bassist and a guitarist lined up and we’ll most likely play a backing track that holds most of the synth instrumentation. It’s early days in that regard! We’ll have a lot of kinks to iron out, but yes, ultimately the goal is to bring CAELESTRA to a live setting at some point this year.”
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