Aladin's Magic Carpet



This musical composition is inspired by Lord Dunsany's "The Fall of Babbulkund."

I said: "I will arise now and see Babbulkund, City of Marvel. She is of one age with the earth; the stars are her sisters. Pharaohs of the old time coming conquering from Araby first saw her, a solitary mountain in the desert, and cut the mountain into towers and terraces. "
                                                       --Lord Dunsany, "The Fall of Babbulkund."

© 2025 Valhjim & Luca Ascari (all rights reserved).

Babbulkund

Glass Castles
Lyrics and Music: Ron Wrolson
Arrangement, Instrumentaion, and Recording Engineering: Ron Wrolson
Published by ZenSongs Music - ©2024

I Watch the tube with an empty gaze,
to get the morning news in a foggy haze.
It’s a dumpster fire, this political maze.
But, who’s to say how I spend my days?
Because wiser men are running off the rails,
And who prevails when the system fails?
When no one’s on the up and up!
The whole damn thing’s corrupt.

Our fearless leader dying on the vine,
The sparkle fades, Who’s next in line?
She takes the stage, hard to gauge,
Reading lines from a hidden page.
And the paradox, of this coming age of Aquarius . . .
Seems so strange.

The world keeps getting meaner,
Good will is running lean.
There’s too much sun, too little oil
to feed the bad machine.

Still, the Trust Fund Babies get their overdose,
of political pills from the media hosts,
as they set their sites, gettin’ real close
to the Occidental Kill.
How tall they stand on promise,
How brittle in their strength.
The tawdry work of witless fools
will go to any length,
to serve a pact with masters
whose reach exceeds its grasp.

Glass Castles glitter in the sun.
The works of all the ages
now raveling undone.
How tall they stood in majesty,
Now hollow in the spine.
Transparency, their superpower,
exposes their web of lies.

(Guitar solo)

Glass Castles glitter in the sun.
The works of all the ages
now raveling undone.
How tall they stood in majesty,
Now hollow in the spine.
Transparency, their superpower,
exposes their web of lies.

Glass Castles*

RIVULETS
in five breaths of unfolding awareness
by Valhjim

I. THE ORIGIN (Silence Before Sound)
Water flows, not to be heard, but felt.
Reversed guitar chords surge gently—waves drawn back into the sea.
Each chord grows in intensity, disappears into its own shadow.
High note (single, crystalline) emerges like starlight—
only to vanish.
This is presence, not melody.

Mode: Song of the Rivulet
Pulse: Water Stream
Play with restraint; leave space for the silence to speak.

II. EARTHWALK (Pulse of the Body)
Acoustic guitar strolls with simple intention.
Bass —solid, grounded.
Slide guitar sings long lines: no rush, only breath and wind on bare skin.
The rivulet sings on—sound as flow, presence, spirit.
Synth pad shimmers quietly, like the rain drizzle in a cool afternoon.

Mode: Dorian / Pentatonic overlays
Pulse: slow and steady—leisurely, nonchalant.
Each note settles like raindrops on leaves of trees.

III. SPIRIT IN MOTION (Chorus of Currents)
Guitar loop—the form of the stream;
a mantra of change in stillness, soft and circular.
Bass rises in octave pulses, then walks along with grace: heartbeat.
Saxophone enters as voice of the present—mindfulness.

IV. REFLECTIONS IN AIR (Fragments of Form)
Percussion scatters like stones skipping across a pond.
Guitar chords break into arpeggios—falling, floating.
Reversed chord swells return—this time, breathier, like exhaled prayer.
A flute motif glides in—solitary, weightless, like a feather in the breeze.
It does not lead—it invites.

Mode: Aeolian / suspended harmonies
Pulse: implied, not enforced
Dynamics: from whisper to rising hush

V. SILENCE SPEAKS (Between Notes)
Guitar pattern loops between two notes: A and Ab—
a dance of one small step forward, one step backwards in a loop.
Sound clusters rise—like birds breaking into consciousness.5
Jazz guitar phrases emerge, intertwined with  saxophone motifs—
echoes of one another.
Voices recede, absorbed into long slide of guitar pulse.
The mystery interval—minor second—lingers, dissolves in the distance.

Mode: Mystery space built by A and Ab
Pulse: That of the body-mind unity; the sounds of nature and spirit.
Feel: meditative, the peace that defieth understanding.
***************

Valhjim—synthesizers, samplers, guitars, slide, found clusters of sound.

Buy "Rivulets" on Bandcamp:
https://valhjim.bandcamp.com/track/rivulets
****************

© 2025 Valhjim. All rights reserved. Original music by Valhjim.

Rivulets

A Perfect Day
Valhjim


I wake up to birdsong and rose skies—
the breeze cool, the day still opening
like a flower. 

The dew of dawn still in the air, and 
the scent of last night's rain on damp earth
and the bark of trees. The sun shows 

a friendly face, indisposed apparently
to scorch the world today. 

I  take a sip of coffee and play a sequence
of notes on the keyboard.—a perfect melody
to blossom like the day. 

All is well. I am content. 

**********
Valhjim: guitars and synths.
Martin Miers: drums.

© 2025 Valhjim. All rights reserved. Original music by Valhjim.

A Perfect Day — Valhjim w/Martin Miers

"Desert Sands"
Valhjim

Sultry night in the desert,
the heat of the sun is gone,
and myriad stars are visible
in the boundless dome of the sky

the wind tells its tales of long ago,
of caravans and sultans and a girl
with long hair and fair face
weaving stories for a man in the night;

perhaps somebody is telling 
our stories in the night somewhere—

tales equally magic and fantastic
like the tales the girl tells the sultan. 

***************

Valhjim: guitar, synthesizers, samplers.
Martin Miers: drums.

**************
© 2025 Valhjim. All rights reserved. Original music by Valhjim.

Desert Sands — Valhjim w/Martin Miers

Laniakea

HAIKU MUSIC CHALLENGE

Naviarhaiku 603

insect tremolo
soberingly cools the heat
of farmland roads

Kogetsu Eguchi (1825-1867) was a Japanese poet active in the late Edo period. Together with Kazan Watanabe, he authored the haiku book Tōke shunchō.

Haiku by Kogetsu Eguchi

Picture by Luca Ercolani
 

Submission deadline: 30th July 2025
To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

Equilibrium (naviarhaiku603)

In collaboration with Francess Harris. She played the piano composition and I did the composition of the orchestral arrangement. Thank you for listening and enjoy. Any comment is appreciated always.

Collaboration Timothy McGuire / Francess Harris

The Enchanted Hour

The Enchanted Hour (feat. Fr. Harris)

"October Day"
Valhjim

This October day, my thoughts 
scatter like dead leaves

over grey cement, chased
by a careless cold wind 
in this uncertainty of being

Tomorrow, the Day of the Dead
will descend upon the land

to remind us of our mortality.

*************
©© 2025 Valhjim. All rights reserved. Original music by Valhjim.

October Day

Lyrics and Music by Jim Valero--(C) Jim Valero, 2018 (all rights reserved).


GUENEVERE

He could no longer hear the swan song
in her eyes, 
nor see the fires of ungratified desire 
that oftentimes darkened the hazel 
of her eyes, as she looked at him, presiding 
over gallant knights and gracious ladies 
at the Table Round.

Now the silken images grafted on her skin
were fading out—the secret music of her sighs 
seemed but distant whisperings
in an alien tongue.

Could he still remember that clear September 
morn when she came to him, an unripe yet 
enchanted thing—long-tressed and tender 
under azure skies, eyes agleam with magnetic 
dreams? 

She had not loved him yet with that fiery
passion that would only come but later, 
when she had grown into womanhood
under his hands—

Had he not made her a woman after all? 
had she not blossomed on his skin, 
perfect and full, like some rich 
luxuriant fruit from paradise, 
and all the starry skies sparkling 
over Camelot in the soft-feathered night? 

But that had been long ago, before the ceaseless
jousting, and the dull processions from faraway lands 
engrossed his fancy, robbed him of his youthful heart
so long ago

Now his talk was like the talk of those who came 
to greet great King Arthur, famous knights, 
and fake upstarts looking for promotion, 
ladies “in distress,” who sat like peacocks 
at the Table Round

now there was no poetry to inflame 
the morning mist with visionary gleams 
as in the days that were

long ago, long ago, long ago

Lyrics and Music by Jim Valero

—© Jim Valero, 2018.

Winnevere

Valhjim is a music composer with an eclectic approach to different genres: rock, pop, folk, New Age, and experimental electronic music. Greatly driven by imagination and poetic imagery, he combines multiple instrumental textures to fire the imagination of his listeners. 

His more experimental ambience and electronic music is built with layers of suggestive sound textures, rhythms, and melodic lines that stir the imagination into suggestive imagery and worlds unseen, true architectures of sound that open up limitless spaces to explore. Often Valhjim's melodies sail through genre thresholds, crossing over from one genre to another, from neo classcal to electronic, or from jazz to rock or new age.