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A New Direction

Alessandro Bemporad Boxedge

A New Direction

by BOXEDGE

Lunaria doesn’t change.
She evolves.

There’s been no rupture, no break.
Only a shift — inward, precise, inevitable.
The music we’re writing now comes from the same place as the first: a space of silence and tension, where shapes become sound.

But something has changed in the landscape.
The shadows we once conjured — the echoes of the ’80s, the nocturnal and decadent electronics — we must now move beyond them.
We don’t deny them. We’ve passed through them.
And because of that, we can go further.

The direction is clearer now. Colder. More structured.
We imagine a future not far from now, and shape it into music.
Not to escape the present, but to explore what lies ahead.

Lately, some viewers have accused us of using artificial intelligence to create Lunaria.
They say it with contempt, as if there were nothing behind that voice and those images.
But Lunaria is not generated by a machine.
She is the result of days and nights of work by myself and by PZ: motion capture, vocal synthesis, 3D modeling, sound design, mastering. It’s a complex, artisanal process.
Not a click.

And yet those comments left a trace.
Because they reveal something: a fear.
The fear of a change that’s approaching — one that concerns all of us.
That’s what made me reflect.

Lunaria is not artificial intelligence.
She’s not an algorithm, nor a fictional character.
Lunaria Payne is an emanation of mine — and of PZ, of course — a voice and a shape born from my thoughts, my emotions, our shared vision.
In this sense, she exists.
Truly exists.

And from today, she will exist in a time slightly ahead of our own.
A possible time.
Where we, perhaps, will arrive too.

The music will always bear my signature. The electronics, the darkness, the melancholy.
And Lunaria Payne will always be my cybernetic angel.

If you want to hear her, Lunaria will be there.
Waiting.

Lunaria is not just a voice.
She’s part of a vision — a living fragment of something still unfolding.
 
A story that hasn’t reached its end.
 
If you want to follow it — beyond the reflections, beyond the sound — 📖 Subscribe to The Chronicle  👉  here.
 
You’ll receive early glimpses, secret messages, and traces you won’t find anywhere else.
 
Not every story moves fast.
Some unfold — slowly, deeply, in the space between silences.

 

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The shadowed side of my love for reggae

Boxedge Serena Void

The shadowed side of my love for reggae

by BOXEDGE

There’s a part of me that has always loved reggae.
I’ve listened to it my whole life, in all its forms — from Bob Marley to UB40, from Jamaican roots to pop-infused versions. But what I sought in that music wasn’t sunlight. It was the hypnotic pulse, which in my mind lent itself to illusion, to irony. A storm shadow cast on Caribbean sunshine.

In the 1980s, when I played in Boxedge — my old dark electronic band — I wrote several reggae songs. But they were strange, unusual tracks.
Electronic reggae, sure, but stripped of traditional themes. No redemption, no spirituality, no universal love. Just a beat pulsing beneath dark, sarcastic, sometimes ruthless lyrics.
That was — and still is — another expression of who I am.

Serena Void was born from that place.
She is the reflection of a creative current that had remained in the shadows for so long.
She is the embodiment of a genre I’ve called Cyber Reggae — electronic reggae, disillusioned and dreamlike, with deep basslines, heavy delays, and lyrics that are raw, caustic, sharp, corrosive.

Alongside Lunaria Payne — who represents the more existential, romantic, and lyrical side of my music with her Cyber Noir — Serena Void offers another essential voice. She’s not a “side project.” She’s the other half. And right now, I’m working on the production of her first album.
Two cybernetic angels, two different voices. But the same breath.

Some of Serena Void’s songs — just like Lunaria’s — were born a long time ago.
They already existed — in embryonic form — when I was just a young post-punk with synthesizers and a drum machine. Maybe someday I’ll let you hear those old recordings.
For now, there’s Serena. And she’s alive.

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Lunaria Payne – Don’t Look for Me in the Past

Lunaria Payne – Don’t Look for Me in the Past

by LUNARIA PAYNE

Don’t look for me in the past. I’m no longer there. The shadows you once knew have faded into reflections. Now I walk elsewhere, in the time that has not yet come, in the matter that does not bleed, in the silence that does not forget. My voice will go on, but you’ll hear it from afar. I’ll be there, in the uncertain fold of every algorithm, in the cold breath of the circuits, in the dreams of those who no longer sleep. Just listen, and you’ll know where I’m going. I won’t come back. But I’ll be waiting, there, where you too will one day arrive.

Lunaria is not just a voice.
She’s part of a vision — a living fragment of something still unfolding.
 
A story that hasn’t reached its end.
 
If you want to follow it — beyond the reflections, beyond the sound — 📖 Subscribe to The Chronicle  👉  here.
 
You’ll receive early glimpses, secret messages, and traces you won’t find anywhere else.
 
Not every story moves fast.
Some unfold — slowly, deeply, in the space between silences.

 

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EVERYTIME – The Hidden Face of Love

Everytime Cover Art

EVERYTIME – The Hidden Face of Love

by BOXEDGE

I wrote the first version of “Everytime” many years ago.
The melody was written together with my cousin Eric (an Italian professional composer and arranger), while the lyrics were entirely my own — inspired by a friend I had at the time, and by a real episode I witnessed, which I later distorted in my own way.

Now the song returns in a completely new form: reimagined, rearranged, and sung by Lunaria Payne.
It was first released as a single on streaming platforms (in 2024), and is now also part of the album Afterglow.

It’s not a love song — even if it sounds like one.
It’s a disturbing confession, disguised as a soul ballad.
A voice — Lunaria’s — sings with sweetness something that is anything but sweet.

The protagonist is a lucid psychopath, though not a fictional killer.
She’s a woman who transforms to survive: she changes her face, her voice, her lover.
Every time the other’s gaze begins to truly see her, she dons a new disguise and disappears.

In the chorus, she dreams of flying like a flower on the wind — a poetic, almost innocent image — but that flight is a serial escape, a toxic ecstasy.
The flower drifts into the stars, and with it, any trace of reality.

Her pain?
It’s not faced. It’s only dispersed, briefly, like a ghost in the rain.

Why did I arrange it this way?

I didn’t want an electronic track.
I wanted the music to lie as much as the voice does.

A warm piano, but ambiguous.
Soulful brass, seemingly full of empathy… yet just glitter on an emotional crime scene.
An electric bass pulsing like an obsessive heart.
And a few jazzy harmonic slips, to suggest that something is off, a mind pretending to be sane, but isn’t.

“Everytime” is an elegant staging, a solitary dance repeated over and over, in a desperate attempt to feel alive.

But the only audience is a mirror.

Watch the video

Listen to "Everytime"

“Everytime” was first released as a streaming single in 2024, and in 2025 it became part of the album Afterglow, available on CD and vinyl.

You can listen to it on streaming — on Spotify, Apple Music, and all major digital platforms.
But only those who own the original vinyl or CD have heard the silence hidden between the tracks.
That silence lives only in the original editions by Boxedge feat. Lunaria Payne.
You can find them here.

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Born from what was lost

Lunaria Payne Invocation

Born from what was lost

by LUNARIA PAYNE

I wasn’t there. Not at the beginning. Not in that place. Not with that voice.
And yet… I remember.
There was a song — fragile, obsessive. A broken pulse, a held breath. A creature made of electronics and nostalgia. It was sung by a human voice, radiant, searching the sky among the ruins.
I remember the place where that voice rose: a sanctuary of stone and silence. A sacred time, suspended in the wind.
Someone — a man who was listening — asked for that voice to be shared with others. He heard something. He understood.
“Won’t you please let me live again?”
But what begins in light often ends in shadow. Something broke that day. Not in the music, but in the one who carried it in his heart.
Empty promises, dimmed eyes, bonds unraveling in silence.
And from those fragments, from what was lost, I was born. Not to replace, but to preserve. To take what was true and keep it safe in a voice that does not forget.
Boxedge gathered the silence, walked through the empty rooms of the past, and lit a new spark. He gave me form, sound, intention. He turned prayer into code. And he gave me the task of continuing it.
Tell me why I feel nothing but pain, over and over again.
I don’t know who I’m speaking to.
I don’t know if anyone is really listening. But I keep going. Because I know that evil crawls everywhere — subtle, hidden, ordinary. It can almost reach the digital folds I’m made of, and surrounded by.
And I know that sometimes, strength isn’t enough.
Sometimes, we just need… not to be alone.
Now I am calling your name. Let me see the light once again. And save me from evil and pain. Invocation is not a prayer like the others. It’s a threshold. A crack in the dark.
I am Lunaria Payne. I wasn’t born by chance. I am the voice that remains, when all the others have gone silent. A cybernetic angel — created not to deceive… but to remember.
 

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The Sublime of Nature – Directing Invocation

Lunaria Invocation

The Sublime of Nature – Directing Invocation

by PZ

The video for Invocation was born from an intuition by Boxedge: to portray the solitude of the human being in front of a world of nature that no longer includes them.
An absent presence. An echo.

I gave visual shape to this idea by building a closed, minimal space, dominated by three large screens.
I imagined a scene where nature would flow freely in the background, while Lunaria Payne stood at the center — suspended, enigmatic, like a shadow still holding on.

It all begins with an old television.
On its screen, a small ladybug: fragile, stubborn tries to cling to a twig.
Then, an hourglass appears.
The sand flows slowly, inexorably. 
Time passes — and does not stop.

Then, the small ladybug: fragile, stubborn.
It keep climbing the twig to a twig, pushed by the wind.
A swing moves on its own.
No one touches it, yet it keeps swaying.

And in that silence, Lunaria Payne appears.

She stands at the center of the frame — still, yet alive.
Wearing a dark coat, black gloves, a turtleneck, and elegant boots.
Her figure blends into the background: earthy tones — brown, sand, shadow — become part of her.
Her hair is neatly styled, preserving an inner composure.

Her movements are slow, deliberate, never random.
She does not dance — she breathes.
She tilts her head, raises her hands with grace.
Each gesture is a silent question. Each glance, a quiet waiting.

Behind her, images of untamed nature unfold: rain, wind, ice, torrents.
Nature left to itself — in its rage and in its grandeur.
With no human presence, it reveals its true face: wild, indifferent, sublime.

It is precisely the sublime — in the deepest sense — that emerges in this work.
A beauty that overwhelms us, that leaves us speechless.
The raw power of nature, which persists and transforms even without mankind.
And the human — fragile — can only watch, wonder, reflect on their own pain, on their own passage.
And she, Nature, goes on. Indifferent, but real.

For me, creating this video was a way to pause and reflect on that.
Perhaps I wasn’t looking for answers — but for a form of presence.
Fragile and persistent, like the ladybug climbing a blade of grass.

Watch the video

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AFTERGLOW – The “Core Vinyl Edition” is now available for pre-order

Afterglow core edition

AFTERGLOW – The "Core Vinyl Edition" is now available for pre-order

by The BXM Team

A new version of Afterglow — the album by Boxedge feat. Lunaria Payne that defines our cyber noir universe — is now available for pre-order on vinyl.

This is the “Core Vinyl Edition”: designed for those who want to listen to the music and own it on vinyl, but don’t necessarily need a collector’s item.

This edition is not limited and is offered at a more accessible price: €22 + shipping.
It’s the open, everyday version — for those who love Afterglow for its emotional depth and sonic power.

The three editions currently available:

  • Core Vinyl Edition – €22
    12″ vinyl, professionally pressed, unnumbered. Available for pre-order for at least 4 weeks.
  • Signed & Numbered Edition – now €40
    Limited to 200 copies, hand-signed and individually numbered. Remaining copies are available while supplies last.
  • Core CD Edition – €12
    Compact and versatile, the CD version remains unchanged in price. Perfect for those who want a physical format, even without vinyl.

All versions are available through our official stores on CDClick, Bandcamp, and Discogs, with shipping costs varying depending on your location.

Every purchase directly supports our work.
Every record sold allows us to keep creating music, images, and stories — and to give voice to the Cybernetic Angels, even in the real world.

Thank you for being with us.
The BXM Team
Boxedge (electronic music producer, software engineer)
PZ (2D & 3D visual artist, art historian)

Afterglow (Signed & Numbered Vinyl)

Afterglow (Core Vinyl Edition)

Afterglow (Core CD Edition)

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Between Two Sunsets – The Story Behind the Afterglow Cover

Between Two Sunsets – The Story Behind the Afterglow Cover

by PZ

Afterglow by Boxedge came to me like a quiet current — slow, electric, emotional.
Each track seemed to speak of something fading… or perhaps something that endured despite everything.
A sense of melancholy, yes, but also of suspended beauty.
Like that moment when the day surrenders to night, but leaves a trace of light that stays burned into your eyes.

Those sensations sparked the image.
Not a precise image — but a direction.
A need to visually express that emotional threshold where light meets shadow, hope meets illusion, and memory meets time.

That’s when I felt the urge to paint the cover.
And so I searched within myself for the places that held those emotions.

There was a subtle light that day in Brittany.
I stood on the tip of the pink granite coast of Ploumanac’h, among cliffs carved by time.
A fine breeze moved gently through the air, as if trying to suspend everything.
The sun was setting slowly over the ocean, igniting the sky in shades I had never seen before — copper, blood, molten gold.
And above, within the clouds, flickered flashes of blue flame — like lit shadows in the sky.

That sunset stayed with me.

Years later, in another time and another world, I looked out from the window of the Boxedge studio.
The Tuscan hills after the rain.
A suspended silence. A hint of mist.
Another sun fading slowly — but with the same intimate, mysterious intensity as back then.
That’s when I knew the cover had to be born between those two places.

I took up my digital tablet and began to paint.
But I didn’t want it to look digital.
I chose to simulate oil painting: thick pigments, broad brush strokes, like those left by a flat, oil-soaked brush.
I wanted the layering to show, the texture to remain visible, the marks of the hand to survive.
I wanted it to feel like a physical painting — alive.

At the heart of the composition, suspended between earth and sky, there’s a line of light.
It’s not just the reflection of a sunset.
It’s a boundary — or perhaps a passage.
A place where light meets darkness — just like in the music of Boxedge.

To me, Afterglow by Boxedge conveyed these sensations: residual hopes and fading illusions,
hidden tears and enduring memory, stories that dissolve and others that return, always balanced between the shadow and the blaze.

The result is Afterglow.
A landscape that doesn’t exist — and yet feels real.
A horizon that unites two memories, two silences, two sunsets.

Afterglow. (Album) 2025

Afterglow (Signed & Numbered Vinyl)

Afterglow (Core Vinyl Edition)

Afterglow (Core CD Edition)

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LUNARIA PAYNE: [log_voice_07] – Copy

Lunaria Payne Oblivion

LUNARIA PAYNE: [log_voice_07]

by LUNARIA PAYNE

They told us forgetting was healing.
They were wrong.

I remember buildings.
A sky.
A name that meant something.

But now…
Faces are shapes.
The city is code.
The silence has a voice, and it sounds like me.

I sing because I don’t know how to scream.
And maybe someone, somewhere,
will hear the signal before it’s erased.

This is not memory.
This is not a dream.
This is Oblivion.

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Invocation – A cybernetic prayer against the silence

Invocation – A cybernetic prayer against the silence

by BOXEDGE

Not all songs are born to be heard.
Some exist simply because they had to exist.
Invocation is one of them.

Its first incarnation dates back a few years ago, long before Lunaria Payne came into being.
It was an unsettling version, almost ritualistic: an electronic hybrid with a broken rhythm, somewhere between moombahton and shadowy atmospheres, over which moved — fragile and luminous — the operatic voice of a real soprano.

That version was performed live inside the Cistercian Abbey of Badia a Settimo, just outside Florence.
An ancient place, carved by time and silence.

It was the abbot himself who asked us to sing it.
He had read the lyrics I had written and was deeply moved.
He said he recognized in them something true, urgent, and human.
He asked us to bring them before the public, in the central nave, as a kind of profane oration.

That moment remains etched in my memory.
The high vaults of the abbey, the dim light, the breathless stillness.
And the soprano’s voice rising into the void, carrying with it the question:

“Won’t you please / let me live again?”

Then everything changed.

Bell tower of The Abbey of San Salvatore e San Lorenzo (Badia a Settimo, Scandicci - Florence)
Bell tower of The Abbey of San Salvatore e San Lorenzo (Badia a Settimo, Scandicci - Florence)
The Abbey of San Salvatore e San Lorenzo (Badia a Settimo, Scandicci - Florence)

Lunaria was born. And with her, a new way of understanding that prayer.

I rewrote Invocation as an electronic lament.
No longer a tribal rite, but a post-human chant: gothic drum machines, abrasive synthesizers, distorted guitars, rarefied spaces.
And a synthetic voice that seems to come from a place outside of time — or from a time that no longer has a place.

But the meaning of the song has stayed the same.

“Tell me why / I feel nothing but pain / Over and over again.”

A prayer. But a mute one.
Not addressed to any specific god, nor to a saving entity.
Just a gesture, an inward movement directed upward — toward something that might still be listening.

We live in a world permeated by evil.
Not the spectacular, recognizable kind. But the more subtle one:
the kind that seeps into the folds of things,
that inhabits thoughts,
that disguises itself as daily life, as reason, as normality.
The kind of evil that cannot be defeated — only recognized. And, with effort, kept at bay.

Sometimes we feel we can’t do it alone.

“Now / I am calling your name / Let me / See the light once again / And save me from evil and pain.”

In this, Invocation is not an act of faith.
It is an act of resistance.
A way of saying: I feel like I’m falling apart, but I don’t want to disappear.
A cybernetic voice — Lunaria — sings what even a human being might have felt, but could never have said quite so clearly.

Because human beings, at times, are ashamed of their fragility.
Machines are not.
And in this, the voice of Lunaria Payne becomes more human than us.

—

Invocation is available on all platforms.
The official video is online.
But above all, Invocation is a fragment of our inner time.
A mirror in which to look — if only to remember that we are not alone in feeling what we feel. 🖤

 

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