Dronescape 3 is the third in a series of albums, containing new, digitally created, compositions by Oscar van Dillen. The work on this album was composed August-September 2020.

The third Dronescape album by Oscar van Dillen contains a single long composition:

• Infinity – Pantonal Dronescape (duration 2 hours 56 minutes)

Infinity goes back to the composers’ childhood inner aural memories, already encountered in Emanations (from Dronescape 2), to explore them in exhaustive depth. This work is called pantonal in the original philosophical sense of the word as intended by Arnold Schoenberg: to include all tones and possible modalities or keys. Unfortunately popular use changed his term to the more superficial and above all negative atonal which literally means rather the opposite: to exclude all tones and possible modalities and keys, much to the dismay of Schoenberg. Infinity’s subtitle attempts to remind us of the original intentions of one of the pioneers to venture in an inclusive manner beyond the gravity of those traditional tone systems, still taught as a main theory body in professional music education until today. The pantonality of this music encompasses several stable tone centres or horizons, which are often layered, so not quite as discrete nor predictable as basses (lower horizon tones) are in a Notre Dame organum. Instead, the many allusions to an imaginary polymodal music, performed in what Oscar van Dillen usually names the acoustics of the cave, which has been the musical historical norm for a likely 80,000 years (cathedrals are not exempt from this notion), the suggestions of overtone techniques, in combination with microtonal inflections, but also the transitions into triads, all add up to the overall pantonal character of the work. Register, timbre, stereo width and dynamical depth have been used to keep every layer optimally distinctly audible, even when blending occurs.

In many ways, Infinity – Pantonal Dronescape bridges and connects literally dozens of millennia of human art, using up to date technology while including possibly paleolithic sound aesthetics, such as microtones and the focus on natural harmonics. The title can therefore considered to be referring to two complementary meanings blending into one: on the one hand the exploration of infinite space-time – such as can be found in the works of astronomer Carl Sagan, but also to the exploration and imaginative reconstruction of paleolithic cave art and its rituals – such as can be found in the works of archaeologist Jean Clottes. Both have been major sources of inspiration to van Dillen for decades.

See OIJ Records for more information and links to online streaming platforms.