Minutes to Midnight: Recent Episodes
Simon Silvestroni
Producer, bass player & sound designer. Latest album: ‘After 1989’, a real-life trip in history between two wars.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2s2D8TCZYKVNCQ9FaqLCzt?si=0fRd4qxqRYCOY9bMZJ8E5A
Bandcamp: https://callumgardner.bandcamp.com/track/wriggle-a-little
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/4fjsetRyxT355DTvrmYNqm?si=GNoIFeRfR4izRIed-liHMA
Bandcamp: https://callumgardner.bandcamp.com/track/hang-loose
Early Sixties. The Soviet Union and the United States are dominant superpowers in the post-war world order. Conflicting ideologies and a dangerous nuclear arms race bring the two enemies to a constant confrontation. A rule against which all disputes must stop is mutually accepted: don’t meddle with what the enemy does in its territory. That includes watching the other build a wall to divide a city in two.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals Rachel Goodman / vocals Paolo Clementi / electric guitars Gerald Duchene / sax Michele Frumento / drums Simone Silvestroni / bass, piano, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
October 1962. President Kennedy goes live on tv, announcing he has proof of a build-up of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. The threat of a pre-emptive strike to America is real. The level of military readiness is set one step from a global nuclear war.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Arranged with Paolo Clementi
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals Paolo Clementi / acoustic and electric guitars Andy Bonnor (AndiA of ‘In Your Dreams’) / drums Simone Silvestroni / bass, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
November 1963.
Warm weather and cheering crowds greet the President when he lands at Dallas airport. As the motorcade cuts through the city, I fantasise about waving at John and Jackie, or leaning over the window of a sixth floor, or being Abraham Zapruder, standing still while everything changes.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals Paolo Clementi / guitar, viola Simone Silvestroni / bass, keyboards, drums, strings, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
A few hours after Martin Luther King is shot dead by a white man, Robert Kennedy gives a remarkable eulogy in Indianapolis. He acknowledged the pain, but also anger and disbelief, inviting everybody to overcome hatred and violence and seek love and compassion instead. There were no riots that night.
+++
Eulogy speech by Robert F. Kennedy (extract)
"Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, perhaps we’ll have to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black, you can be filled with bitterness and with hatred, and a desire for revenge. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to replace that violence with an effort to understand, compassion and love."
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Arranged with Giuseppe Bianchi
Performed by Giuseppe Bianchi / piano Simone Silvestroni / fretless bass, synth bass, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
The 1980s. The superpowers are always on the brink of nuclear war. TV channels, both in the US and Great Britain, broadcast two significant works: ‘The Day After’, set in rural Kansas, and ‘Threads’, shot around Sheffield. I watched both as a young boy, starting the deep angst for a nuclear holocaust that had been gripping me ever since.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals, piano solo, metallophone Gerald Duchene / sax Callum Gardner / acoustic guitar, backing vocals Simone Silvestroni / bass, piano, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
When I visited Berlin for the first time, shortly after the wall collapsed, it was also the first time I fell in love. I remember the no man’s land that was Potsdamer Platz at the time. I held my ruby-redhead girlfriend’s hand while standing still, looking at the buildings on the East side, with their creepy bricked windows facing the West. The german democratic republic was history, and so was the Cold War.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Arranged with Paolo Clementi
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals, backing vocals Callum Gardner / backing vocals Paolo Clementi / acoustic and electric guitars, viola Simone Silvestroni / bass, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
Berlin is the controversial symbol of a divided continent. A city separated in two by a wall, where the west side is a capitalist enclave within an inflexible communist country. The perfect metaphor for any harsh logic that’s able to make everyone feel like a prisoner.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals, backing vocals Paolo Clementi / acoustic and electric guitars Simone Silvestroni / bass, piano, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
Oranienburg, end of the line.
The concentration camp is now a memorial and a museum. I’m walking in the silent countryside, eventually crossing the gate where more than seventy-five years earlier the Nazi wrote ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals, backing vocals, piano Callum Gardner / acoustic guitars Simone Silvestroni / bass, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
The skinny kid is now a fugitive, running away with a fellow Russian inmate. They ought to steal from German citizens, in order to eat, protect themselves and go unnoticed during the day. They tie themselves to tree branches at night. While the regime collapses, the United States strike a Japanese city with the first atomic bomb in history.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals, ukulele, toy piano Paolo Clementi / viola Callum Gardner / guitar Simone Silvestroni / bass, drums, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
After 1989 - A Trip To Freedom", a concept album about imprisonment and liberty.
Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s time to tell the tale of how a young man managed to escape Germany in 1945, while his nephew made the other way round in 1991, looking for answers that he could only find in 2017.
SKINNY KID
Present day. I’m in Berlin. After boarding the S-Bahn 1 to Oranienburg, I relive the decades that followed World War II. A few miles away, the concentration camp where my grandfather was held prisoner by the Nazi. It’s not easy to try figuring what his ordeal might have been before he managed to escape in the spring of 1945.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
Performed by Dan Ecclestone / vocals Rachel Goodman / vocals Gerald Duchene / guitars Keven Howard Bellamy / backing vocals Simone Silvestroni / bass, drums, keyboards, sound effects
Mastered by Ian Shepherd / Mastering Media
Management by Christopher Carvalho / Unlock Your Sound Ltd
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight.
“After 1989” is a concept album about imprisonment and liberty. Tells the story from my perspective as a nephew, who only recently found answers to how my grandfather managed to escape Germany in 1945.
A modern-day attempt at storytelling, the album is a glimpse into hope.
Released: 9 November 2019.
+++
Written and produced by Minutes to Midnight
"Requiem demo" performed by Giuseppe Bianchi / piano Simone Silvestroni / bass, synth, sound effects
© 2019 Minutes to Midnight. ℗ 2019 The copyright in this sound recording is owned by Minutes to Midnight. Minutes to Midnight is the exclusive trademark of Simone Silvestroni. All trademarks and logos are protected. Made in the EU.