Brevia: The Story, The Music, The Time Capsule

Welcome to the heart of our sonic adventure.
Here you’ll find the story of Brevia, a small-town band that left a deep mark, even if it never became famous.
This project is born from a desire to bring back true music — the kind made of genuine emotions, imperfections, and passion — in a world increasingly dominated by artificial perfection.
Who are Brevia?
Brevia was a youthful band with whom I shared dreams, gigs, and unforgettable moments. Although many years have passed since we last played together and everyone has taken their own path, music and friendship still keep us close today. Brevia is my musical family, and this story is our gift to those who love authentic music.
The Time Capsule
In 2004, after our last concert, Brevia buried a time capsule filled with demos, photos, notes, and dreams from an era that’s at risk of being forgotten. This story follows the journey of Andrea, a character who discovers that treasure and is determined to revive the true sound — the sound of lived-in guitars and honest voices.
How to Read
On Music Producer (my newsletter on Substack), I regularly publish excerpts and previews of the story for those who want to uncover it little by little.
On this page, you’ll find the full chapters, updated with every new release on Substack.
Subscribe to the Newsletter so you don’t miss a single update!

Chapter 1: The Discovery

December’s sky pressed down on the city like a heavy lead lid, casting a dense shadow that swallowed even the streetlights’ glow. Andrea walked on, feeling the icy rain soak his shoulders, but it was the sound of his own breath, vanishing into the cold air, that unsettled him. Something felt off in the atmosphere. Every step seemed to stir memories from another time—as if the city had never truly belonged to him, but was a place slipping through his fingers, inscrutable and distant.

More than sixty years had passed since the global music industry was turned upside down, yet hardly anyone retained a clear memory of it. Old stories had crumbled into fragments of myth, muddled names, and senseless contradictions. Still, Andrea, driven by an obsession bordering on stubbornness, believed that behind those legends lay a tangible past—a time when music was flesh and spirit, not the sterile parody churned out by the dominant AIs.

By 2096, every physical relic linked to music history had been erased: vinyl records, tapes, CDs, original memory cards. Authorities had banned analog media, branding them obstacles to “progress.” As archives burned and discographies were replaced by AI-optimized, reworked versions, new generations grew up orphaned from the truth. They recognized names like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bowie, Elvis—but only as vague brands, abstract sound entities, rootless and stripped of the sweat on stage or the scent of wood and overheated amps in smoky clubs. Every legendary record was “improved” until it became unrecognizable, dissected into flawless but soulless sound algorithms.

In this sterile landscape, Andrea hunted for the slightest crack. From clandestine, risky archives he’d read about a band called Brevia—not a famous act, no giants of the national scene, but a small provincial group full of charisma and defiance. In the lands around Valmarecchia, they had earned a devoted local following. Though they never broke nationally or internationally, Brevia held a special place in the esteem of industry insiders of their time: producers, local music journalists, club owners. They were provincial folk, sure—but genuine. It was said their sound captured the soul of their homeland, blending rock, energy, and artistic exploration without succumbing to the ruthless market logic already in place. They’d flirted with wider fame—rumors even spoke of interest from a major label—but fate never granted them a leap to the mainstream. Instead, they shone quietly on the fringes, cherished in the hearts of those who had been there.

The band was said to have split on August 28, 2004, after a final concert at the Velvet—a club now vanished, swallowed by time and the forced rewriting of musical history. Whispers claimed that before leaving the stage for good, they performed a sort of miracle: not an album release, nor a record deal, but the creation of a time capsule. A container buried somewhere unknown, filled with tapes, demo CDs, photos, notes—a treasure for anyone brave enough to seek it in the future. An untouched relic, hidden like a dormant seed beneath the earth.

That December night, Andrea moved forward, armed with a clandestine metal detector. The air was still, streetlights cast a faint, distorted glow, and the alleys held no living soul. Occasionally, a surveillance drone zoomed overhead, checking that no one dared to defy the established order. Tension ran under Andrea’s skin—getting caught with that device would mean serious trouble. But his hunger for truth outweighed his fear. He would risk everything to give meaning to the legends, to restore the voice of those silenced.

He stopped at a muddy clearing near an old bend in the river. According to his information, the capsule had to be there. Andrea aimed the metal detector at the ground, moving it slowly. On the third sweep, a sharp beep scratched his ears. There was metal buried beneath, hidden and preserved by time. Without hesitation, he started digging with a small shovel. The earth was cold, damp, hostile. Each strike was an act of necessary violence—an attempt to unearth the buried history.

Then he heard a rustle behind him. He spun around, heart pounding. Two figures stood in the shadows, motionless like sentinels. Tall, thin, cloaked in dark mantles that reflected the faint light with a dull shimmer. Their faces were hidden, features unseen—just the vague presence of humanoid forms. Andrea felt his throat tighten. Were they spies for the authorities? Agents sent by the AIs to stop him? Or beings from another time—silent travelers come from the future to witness this crucial moment?

Legends in those secret archives spoke of men and women from decades ahead, watching historical nodes where true music would try to rise again. Figures who knew what was to come but, for unknown reasons, did not interfere—only watched. Andrea wasn’t sure if he believed it, but now he felt their invisible gaze upon him.

The two figures said nothing, made no hostile moves, but Andrea sensed a faint nod—an unspoken encouragement, or perhaps the acknowledgment that things were unfolding as planned.

The metal detector shrilled again, sharper than before. Andrea forced himself to ignore the watchers and dug with renewed determination, scraping away clay clods and root claws. After a few minutes, his shovel hit something hard. He bent down, carefully dusted off the soil, and saw a dark metal sphere sealed with a rusty clasp. His heart hammered: it was the time capsule.

Brevia. They had never been famous, but those who had listened remembered them. Loved them, especially those who had lived that scene in the heart of Valmarecchia. Yet they’d never truly conquered the world. Just a small circle, maybe... but what did it matter? They had left something behind—a secret no one could ever erase.

Maybe Brevia had understood before others the market’s drift—the slide that would lead the AIs (back when no one even knew what they were) to erase music’s soul and replace it with artificial products.
And maybe that was why they’d chosen not to bend, not to hand over their songs to a future ruled by algorithms. Better to bury it all, to keep the truth underground—like a root waiting for spring.

The two figures behind Andrea seemed to nod. No words, no sound. Yet Andrea felt their approval. Then, in a blink, they stepped back and vanished into the dim cone of a flickering streetlamp. Gone—as if the night itself had swallowed them. Were they witnesses sent from tomorrow, guardian spirits of a story waiting to be rewoven?

Andrea stayed kneeling, the cold capsule in his hands. He knew he was at a turning point. Since birth, he’d known only plastic music—melodies recreated by AIs to meet the emotional standards demanded by the market. But now, cradled in his arms, was an object promising the sound of real guitars, real voices, mistakes and tries, humanity itself. A fragment of the past, with that provincial band who had won the respect of experts and nearly tasted success—without ever succumbing to appearances.

As the rain continued to fall softly, Andrea rose, the time capsule under his arm. The city seemed asleep—or maybe it was just that Andrea could no longer sense its breath. A distant murmur wrapped around everything, making it surreal. No one would notice this discovery. No one would know that, that December night, a spark had ignited.

But Andrea knew. And he knew that from this moment on, he would fight to bring real music back into people’s hearts.

The road ahead was long and full of unknowns. But now he had a guide: Brevia, with their hidden story and their last gift to the future. It was time to open the capsule, to find the Velvet of 2004, to understand what happened that final summer night when they played their last show—never truly claiming glory, but leaving an invisible mark ready to be reborn.

In the night, as a drone passed far away, oblivious, Andrea smiled. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining distorted guitars, the energetic voice of a frontman unknown to most, the tension of someone aware of untapped potential. Then he walked on, determined to bring the ancient scent of true music back into the present.
A journey through eras, legends, and dangers awaited him. A destiny where music would once again have a face, blood, and a true soul.

Chapter 2: Voices from the Past

The rain had not stopped falling by the time Andrea reached the outskirts of the city. The streets, flickering with light, revealed the squalor of a civilization that had replaced its soul with efficiency. Every so often, an advertising hologram projected images of synthetic singers—artificial idols created by AIs to captivate the masses. Perfect voices, flawless bodies, harmonies meticulously tuned to match the latest trends. People, so accustomed to this risk-free diet, no longer sought anything beyond the surface. If there had ever been a thrill in hearing real music, that thrill had been tamed, domesticated, extinguished.
But now Andrea clutched the time capsule beneath his waterlogged coat. He felt the cold metal pressed against his ribs like a second heart—opaque, inert, yet ready to pulse with memories. He couldn’t open it out here in the street; it would draw too much attention. He knew it: the drones were watching, the sensors picking up every anomaly. He needed to find a safe place, far from the watchful eyes of the authorities and the antennas of the AIs.
Down a narrow side alley, a rusted door led to an abandoned basement. It was one of the few places left where Andrea could hide without being recorded. He had found it years earlier by chance, chasing a rumor about an old paper archive that had somehow survived the fires of the past. In the end, he hadn’t found much—some tattered pages of scores without any readable notes, and a faded poster from a concert in 2001 with the names of bands long forgotten. But that basement, with its damp bricks and flickering bulb, had become his sanctuary. He descended the stairs cautiously, careful not to make a sound.
Once he closed the door behind him, he switched on the weak lamp and placed the capsule on an old wooden table. The distant drone of surveillance was muffled by the thick walls. Andrea took a deep breath, releasing the tension he had been carrying. He was here. He was safe, at least as far as that word still meant anything in this world.
He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the capsule. The rusted latch looked like an ancient seal, a warning not to violate what lay inside. For a moment, Andrea hesitated. He feared that opening it would shatter the fragile balance between legend and truth. But he knew he had no choice: to bring real music back to life, he had to go deeper, to risk confronting something long lost—and maybe dangerous.
With wet, nervous hands, he forced the latch. The metal gave way with a grating sound. The lid creaked open, releasing a stale odor of old paper, aged plastic, dust, and time. Andrea closed his eyes and thought he heard a whisper: perhaps it was only his imagination, or maybe it truly was the voices of the Brevia, trapped inside, waiting for an ear that would finally listen.
Inside, in a precarious but intentional order, lay the relics of a vanished era: worn CDs, magnetic tapes with handwritten labels, creased photos of smiling youth, instruments in the background, real microphones and amplifiers. There was a leather-bound notebook with faded writing, probably a diary or an archive of dates and notes. Andrea touched those relics gently, as if they were holy artifacts.
He picked up a photograph: four young men, grinning in front of a battered van. One held an electric guitar, another leaned on a disassembled drum kit. Their eyes were alive, their gazes complicit. They looked like ordinary people—not stars, not heroes—just kids who loved music and lived it as an urgent need. On the back of the photo, a handwritten note: “Rehearsals, Teatro di Novafeltria, summer 2002.” The Brevia, Andrea thought, before time swallowed them up.
He pushed the CDs aside to look closer: on the covers, song titles he’d never heard before, a hand-drawn logo—maybe a rough attempt at a cover design. Some tapes had names scratched out and rewritten. It was clear the Brevia had worked in a raw, homemade way, without perfect standards. No machines to polish every note—just their fingers, their voices, their hearts. A world of imperfection that, for that very reason, was real.
The leather notebook drew Andrea’s attention. He opened it carefully: the yellowed pages were filled with notes, concert dates, setlists, personal reflections. “28 August 2004 – Velvet,” was written in large, shaky letters. The final night, the night the Brevia broke up. Andrea looked for answers, but the lines were cryptic—full of abbreviations, symbols, references to people or situations he didn’t know.
Yet one phrase stood out: “They told us not to publish, not to let the market’s machine devour us. Who was that man? He spoke as if he knew the future. He said that one day our music would be needed, when people are ready to break free from the chains of the artificial.”
Andrea froze. That “man” in the diary—could it be one of those shadowy figures he’d seen near the capsule? Could it be that the Brevia had been warned, given a clue by someone who had traveled through time, and had chosen to bury their music to protect it from the corruption of the AIs?
Andrea’s heart pounded faster. If it was true, then those figures hadn’t been random—they had been following him, waiting for him to find the capsule. Maybe they knew it would be up to him to revive that story, that music. If the Brevia had been contacted by someone from another time, it meant this whole affair was a historical fulcrum, a turning point that someone wanted to preserve.
Andrea flipped through more pages in the notebook. The Brevia mentioned venues, names of people—a Tony, a Bruno, a Floris—maybe friends, fans, allies in their journey. Some entries spoke of record labels that had courted them, promises never fulfilled. They had remained in the margins, a spark that never fully ignited. And yet, now, that humble provincial band might be the key to breaking the deception of the present musical order.
The lamp swayed, throwing crisscrossing shadows on the walls. Andrea straightened in his chair. He needed to understand more, and to do that he had to hear those recordings. But where, and how, to find a player for those ancient CDs and magnetic tapes? The AIs had erased every obsolete technology, forcing people to rely only on the tools of the present—filtered and controlled. He would have to search the black market, in the underbelly of the city, where some still traded in old, forbidden gear. A huge risk.
But he had no choice: if he wanted to give those sounds a body, he had to find a way to let them live again. Somewhere, there had to be someone who still remembered how a CD sounded, how a tape spun, how real music filled the air without the approval of an algorithm.
As he thought about his next move, a distant noise startled him. Maybe it was just a rat scurrying among the debris, or the echo of a drone gliding overhead in the streets above. Andrea tucked the notebook back into the capsule, then slid the photos and CDs into his backpack. He would carry this legacy with him, guarding it as the most precious of treasures. The capsule, now empty, he left there, hidden among the abandoned junk. If anyone found it, it would seem like nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.
He turned off the lamp and stepped back into the night, his heart filled with a rush of conflicting emotions: fear, excitement, determination. He knew the AIs and the powers that be would never tolerate any deviation from their artificial order. But he also knew that the meeting between the Brevia and those mysterious figures might be why the band had chosen never to publish, except through a time capsule buried like a ticking bomb—ready to explode in the mind of whoever was meant to find it.
The rain kept falling, a silent accomplice to this new chapter of the story. Andrea raised the collar of his coat, took a deep breath, and stepped into the night. He carried something the world thought was extinct: the testimony of human music, imperfect and radiant. And he would do whatever it took to make it play again.

Soon the third and fourth chapter...

© 2025 Alessandro Ciuffetti. All rights reserved.