VOLO Vibes & Esoteric Eclipscapades with Oliver Brusca and Jorge Mesa
Oliver Brusca is the man behind the music of VOLO, who has crafted an ethereal selection of uplifting and artful audio odysseys. Tonight we'll discover what makes his metronome tick and explore thoughts on the role of music in society. Joining us once again is the greatest bassist in our band, music theory teacher and podcaster Jorge Mesa.
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In this episode
Core themes
Music as Elevation and Cultural Influence
One of the hosts argued that certain kinds of music had been deliberately engineered to lower human consciousness, while people in the past used music to lift their minds toward a spiritual ideal or a shared social harmony. Oliver Brusca said festival audiences told him his music felt refreshing against a backdrop of dark, heavy sounds, and he spoke of the endless possibility in production. Later, one of the hosts relayed a podcast claim that tempo changes heart rate and that classical music helped plants grow, then questioned what heavily promoted mainstream music was doing to listeners.
Choosing Music With No Plan B
Oliver Brusca recalled finding music production in high school and feeling it was his truest expression. He said that watching older coworkers at an insurance job convinced him to commit with no plan B, so he took freelance web design and night shifts at a grocery store while living month to month. He credited steady showing up, Ashtanga yoga and breath work for his flow states. One of the hosts argued that rehearsing a mental to do list drained energy. Oliver also said he tried to stay fluid and not over identify with being a music guy.
Protective Visualization and Night Experiences
Oliver Brusca described waking to disturbing night experiences and teaching himself to hold his ground by picturing a sphere of light and refusing fear. Gabe said the projection of will was one of the keys, and that the dreamer could call the shots. Chance said the same mindset worked outside of sleep, and that reading everyday events like dream analysis changed his life. One of the hosts argued that visualization was a real energetic form. Oliver added that during a difficult psychedelic experience, body shapes and mudras reshaped his surroundings, deepening his respect for yoga.
Entities, Festivals and Reasoning With Fear
One of the hosts described a festival memory from an altered state in which hooded figures appeared to send small shadowy creatures onto intoxicated people, and said he could not rule out intentional psychic interference. Oliver replied that festival crowds were energetically open and vulnerable. Later, one speaker argued that adversarial entities could be reasoned with, saying that Satan means adversary and that serving non existence made no sense. Chance said that on rare occasions, touching the ancestral river with a tuning fork brought a message to mind.
Tarot, Mugwort and Eclipse Season Stories
One of the hosts pulled five cards for Oliver, reading the Magician, a reversed High Priestess and Temperance as a path toward fearless creative balance, and Oliver said it captured his arc. Gabe linked Artemisia to Temperance and called mugwort dream medicine, while Oliver said he had brewed and burned it. Gabe called his eclipse season intense, and Jorge said he felt settled and grounded. Oliver described a mountain lion at his door on a full moon night, and a host read animal medicine about the cat.
Quotes
“It's not often enough do we talk to musicians or painters or artists or people that are pursuing that type of lifestyle and doing it with a high level of consciousness.”
“Well, I love the variety, first of all, especially in the genre that you're in, there tends to be a lot of, you know, repetitive nature, kind of lazy stuff. Your stuff ain't lazy at all. And the production's great. And you know, the different instruments that you bring from different continents. And even when you have vocals, I think it's really complimentary.”
“I had this really deep feeling when I first started dabbling in music production, which was in high school. And I really had this feeling of like, Oh, wow, this is something I feel good at and nothing else felt so true in my life. Like it felt like the truest expression I had.”
“I think one of the keys is that term command. You know, the projection of will is kind of essential in those vulnerable moments, the ability to be like, Oh, yeah, I'm the dreamer. I'm the one to call the shots and to put that into action, you know, that is crucial.”
“If you can make that assertion, you can actually take that outside of sleep paralysis, outside of lucid dreaming. You take that mindset to everything in life and watch what happens. Cause one of the biggest changes that occurred for me in life was when I started interpreting the things that were going on in external world, the way that you would do dream analysis.”
“Just even choosing to do music in the first place has felt like just a courageous, bold, heroic act to just follow what felt the most true to me, even though, you know, maybe I wasn't having support from anybody in my close circle and had to just like be the hero of my own situation.”
“And I'll be like, what is this? Oh, there's the ancestral river right there. And there'll be a reason for that. And as soon as I make the connection that I'm touching the ancestral river with the fork, then a message will pop in my head of like what the ancestor wanted to say.”
“But at least if I am doing stuff that feels authentic, like music and art and just like being a good person, that's something I can anchor to. I don't have to understand the complexities of all the layers of reality and what's all going on, but I can just drop into what the feeling I'm having in each moment is and just like, keep it as simple as that.”
“I've actually seen that Artemisia is correspondent to that temperance card. And so then Michelle brought it to a whole nother level when she revealed that that has a strong relation to mugwort. And that mugwort is also really good medicine for journeying into the dream realm.”
“But I really felt settled and grounded as a result of it regardless of all the chaos. That seems to be happening with everyone I've ever talked to about it in the past two days, the past day. But I feel I have a very good sense, a good trajectory coming from it. I feel like it's a platform for forward motion for me.”
“It felt very primal and it felt like it activated something in me where I was like so hyper aware. But it was almost like a mystical moment, you know, like when you're out in nature and everything just you're just like, whoa, this is like something shifted.”
“I'm really grateful that you reached out and got in touch with me, Oliver. It's cool as heck to be, you know, connecting like this and getting to know you better and I hope we can stay in touch or maybe we see you in the Telegram group or something.”
“It's fresh information, brand new stuff, man. Just the idea of a Polaris, a center point, musically speaking with everything dancing around it. I've been really kind of focusing on that and probably going to turn it into my own episode, but I've got a lot of other episodes coming.”
Gabriel, known on air as Slick Dissident, co-hosts InnerVerse's Vibe Rant show and is a longtime recurring guest on the podcast. He teaches occult symbolism and tarot on his YouTube channel, ranging across the Major Arcana, the esoteric Enneagram, mythology and archetype, mystic linguistics, and the symbolism hidden in popular film. He is best known for Tarot-tories, his own system mapping the 22 Major Arcana and zodiac archetypes onto the geography of the United States.
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