Samsara Passengers is a collaboration between artists from different generations: Øneheart (19 years old), his father Leadwave (46 years old who became an ambient musician and producer with the help of his son), and composer and electronic producer Dean Korso (49 years old). The differences in their perspectives, life experiences, and musical approaches naturally shaped the album’s core idea: a journey through the different stages of life, the accumulation of experience, and the pursuit of wisdom.
Samsara. This word is associated with the spiritual concept of reincarnation, karma, nirvana and the wheel of samsara. But the focus in the album was not exactly on that.
We do not interpret rebirth in a literal sense - this concept lies beyond the limits of the known. Instead, we are fascinated by the path that every person takes: from the first heartbeat in the depths of the mother's womb (as explored in the album’s first single, “before it begins”, co-written with Medasin), through the phases of growing up, searching for oneself, struggling, winning, losing, experiencing spiritual revelations, and ultimately attempting to peer beyond the boundaries of existence as we know it.
Among the many challenges we face, there is one ultimate challenge that awaits us from the very beginning - death itself. It exists invisibly at the core of our identity from the moment we become aware of what our age truly means. This awareness defines whether we truly live or merely construct walls of safety to shield ourselves from the fears and anxieties born from a question we cannot answer.
The moment a person fully understands and accepts their own mortality - just as they accept the impermanence of all matter in the universe - they respond to this challenge. Their life blossoms with new colors; they stop running from sorrow and begin to see beauty in everything, even in loneliness and suffering. This pivotal realization is embedded in the album’s structure:
- The opening phase – A sense of primordial purity, infinite wonder at the first encounters with reality, and the emergence of the first existential questions.
- The middle phase – A process of becoming: struggles, doubts, searching for answers, wandering, and gaining spiritual insight.
- The final phase – Here, the album grows deeper, more intense, mystical, and unsettling. The moment of the unknown approaches, but as fear fades away, all that remains is acceptance - and an awe-inspiring readiness to move forward into the vast halls of the unknown.