Runaway Totem is a progressive Italian band of long standing, which was formed in 1988 in Riva del Garda (TN) after an accurate project by Cahal de Betel (Roberto Gottardi) e Mimir de Bennu (René Modena). The Elements which compose Runaway Totem have taken possession of different people and musicians over the time. It is important to understand that their interchange was not due to human conflicts, but rather Runaway Totem’s will.
Each Element, each event, is functional for Runaway Totem’s purpose. As a consequence, when an Element leaves, it is because its function in that place and time has come to an end. So, the Element goes back to its place of origin, whereas the person that hosted it cannot do anything but follow the course of these events and move away from the group. Runaway Totem’s music unravels between rock and prog, experimentation and psychedelics, electronics and avant-garde, diplophonical Voices, surreal Chorales and acoustic instruments, creating a sort of palette of sonorous colours, which are used to describe our modern society. ‘Escape from Totem’ is the programmatic refusal of any kind of idol without it to be understood as an abjuration of religiosity as a vital breath, a spiritual research of a connection with superior worlds, which can be explored and then represented. In fact, Runaway Totem has the precise purpose to stimulate reflexions, deep observations with a mystic and ascensional character. But how? Through a universal language that, similarly to the mathematics, all people can understand: the music. Starting from its own symbol, taken from an ancient tradition, Runaway Totem talks about temporality, dynamism, oppositions which, as in the case of the Yin and the Yang, complete each other describing a perfect harmony of the Whole. In it the dichotomies, of which the modern way of thinking is full, find a different resolution revealing the necessity the one has with respect to the other. Dark and light, life and death.