Listening to life requires infinite desire and infinite patience. Given time, every song has a story to tell. Here are mine. Tell me yours?
Memories, news, reviews. Old and new.
Wish. Listen.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Departures
Current album:Ágætis byrjun ("A good beginning") (U.S. release, 2001) -- Sigur Rós
I have a few early musings about this album, but I feel the need to add notes as I go...to come back to this place over and over again, as I think that there is much to be found with further exploration. Oddly, as I remember hearing these songs, a few choice memories return to me:
Amul, stating that seeing Sigur Rós live was one of the best concerts he has ever attended.
I am sure that Mishka and I spent more than one night listening to this album in the attic rooms of his old house in college. The street name is escaping me, but he lived there with the whole ragtag crew. Something tells me that our connection to this album goes back much, much earlier, to late nights spent in the dorms.
I was always struck by the fetal image on the album cover, due in part to its somewhat-deformed simplicity. It has a peaceful quality though, rather than an alarming one. I wonder out loud, as I type, who the artist was. I should definitely look that up. Ahh, there it is: Gotti Bernhöft.
This album arrived during the heyday of the postrock scene, when I was listening to a lot of postrock, à la Interpol et. al. I still refuse to be a Coldplay fan, though.
There is a lot of magical possibility in Sigur Rós’s music. For example, I knew that many of their lyrics are written in a constructed language, but I just learned tonight that people refer to it as Volenska, or in English, Hopelandic. The idea is that the lyrics focus more on melody and rhythm than on inherent meaning. I just found another interesting snippet of info, courtesy of the Lyrics Wiki: apparently, the string parts in “Starláfur” are palindromic. I knew that I liked that song for a reason...well, that and the fact that it mentions an elf for no apparent reason.
In general, it has been a long time since I actually dedicated any considerable attention to a single album. I have been motivated more by consumption than by sustained attention. That is a sad shame. I remember studying several pieces in college that became infinitely more interesting when I had to spend time with them, analyze them, or write a paper about them. I can’t wait to do that more often!
I'll be returning to my regularly scheduled program soon. There are things a'brewin'.
Current album:Ágætis byrjun ("A good beginning") (U.S. release, 2001) -- Sigur Rós
I have a few early musings about this album, but I feel the need to add notes as I go...to come back to this place over and over again, as I think that there is much to be found with further exploration. Oddly, as I remember hearing these songs, a few choice memories return to me:
Amul, stating that seeing Sigur Rós live was one of the best concerts he has ever attended.
I am sure that Mishka and I spent more than one night listening to this album in the attic rooms of his old house in college. The street name is escaping me, but he lived there with the whole ragtag crew. Something tells me that our connection to this album goes back much, much earlier, to late nights spent in the dorms.
I was always struck by the fetal image on the album cover, due in part to its somewhat-deformed simplicity. It has a peaceful quality though, rather than an alarming one. I wonder out loud, as I type, who the artist was. I should definitely look that up. Ahh, there it is: Gotti Bernhöft.
This album arrived during the heyday of the postrock scene, when I was listening to a lot of postrock, à la Interpol et. al. I still refuse to be a Coldplay fan, though.
There is a lot of magical possibility in Sigur Rós’s music. For example, I knew that many of their lyrics are written in a constructed language, but I just learned tonight that people refer to it as Volenska, or in English, Hopelandic. The idea is that the lyrics focus more on melody and rhythm than on inherent meaning. I just found another interesting snippet of info, courtesy of the Lyrics Wiki: apparently, the string parts in “Starláfur” are palindromic. I knew that I liked that song for a reason...well, that and the fact that it mentions an elf for no apparent reason.
In general, it has been a long time since I actually dedicated any considerable attention to a single album. I have been motivated more by consumption than by sustained attention. That is a sad shame. I remember studying several pieces in college that became infinitely more interesting when I had to spend time with them, analyze them, or write a paper about them. I can’t wait to do that more often!
I'll be returning to my regularly scheduled program soon. There are things a'brewin'.
![100_0153[1]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3257/3224973797_969733f02c_m.jpg)
