✪ mimi's music diary index

Rainbow Bridge by Sematary: 25 June⁂

have you ever been asked the question “what’s your ideal vacation like”?? or your dream whatever, like a dream date or ideal way to spend your day or what you'd take to a deserted island and other stuff like that? it’s something cool to daydream about and just wonder exactly what you'd pick, kinda similar to thinking about how to go about rating things on a tier list. the thing about these kinds of questions is that they make you think harddd about what you really want. all of the situations you’ve ever been in, from the best to the worst and everything else, deciding what’s the best from what you experience often or not can be really hard sometimes even if you have some freebies since you can’t have everything. i think an easy pick for me would just have it be a chill day, just in a super relaxed mood or having fun with someone else watching sports or listening to music together or just talking in the same room. when you finally come up with your final picks, afterwards it feels like it’s so obvious, since really, it’s all about your favorite things that you cherish the most out of how life always seems to want to eat you alive. and then of course as you continue to go through life, maybe in a year or six months or a random period of time, your ideal day or whatever else may have a single thing that’s different, or have a ton of things that have changed, but it all comes together to make a sort of picture that’s perfect just for you, sorta just about our own nature. idk how to make this fit in more, but something i find fun is that sematary said himself in an interview that he really likes the idea of ducking off, getting high, eating pizza, and watching movies. doing all that all day just sounds amazing… there’s so many ways life sucks but that’s part of the challenge and what makes its fruits feel so great. but the parts in between are long, a relentless burning like when you use a magnifying glass to concentrate heat into a single spot: on top of your brain, a really slow burn but the intensity is killing me. and then all of your ideas of a good day disintegrate, until the next time we can try again.

i think i can say that most of what sematary is as an artist (like both his career, fanbase, influences, and other stuff like that) is mostly based on the internet. there’s not really a way to listen to sematary and get what he’s about without having some sort of connection to it. that by itself is nearly impossible to do nowadays anyway, but it’s different when it comes to artists like him. i don’t remember from who or how i found sematary or what i thought of him initially since i’ve known about him for a while now… i’m not sure if other people do this but he used to be inseparable from bladee in my head even though that’s not the case in the real world at all :p it’s probably been a couple of years since i listened to butcher house by now so this has been a long time coming but there have been a couple of moments in the meanwhile which have kinda made me think about this album in specific. i’ll just go over them briefly since they’re not really that important… i did listen to this once with my ex but he made fun of it a lot. every time i remember that moment, especially recently, it’s brought this really cool visualization of the album in my head that just expands on the album cover. i think i’d say it’s a mix between rb1 and a bit of rb3's cover with this dark violet background with sematary sitting at the end of a wooden bridge on top of a creek with the two dogs still beside him and it’s like one of those apple music covers where it’s a little animation so it just plays while the song goes. around last year, my irl also fell in love with sematary’s music and that just kept him in the back of my head. i remember seeing them just play creepin thru da woods over and over again and it was cool to see since you know it’s always nice to see people you like get into the music you like. i haven’t heard from them in a while; maybe they’re still crazy with his music, but i don’t know for sure. from this album, arson has been in rotation at random moments along with sematary’s other stuff in general. the vocals just made it so attractive! i’m not sure how to describe it but maybe you could say it grates against my brain like a cheese grater but in a good way… it’s like how people say putting passive noise in the background scratches their brain but for this it minces the brain instead.

there is a really big significance with why i mentioned how important the internet is when it comes to sematary. a large part of it is just being against society and every stupid thing that the majority of people believe in and do and how it’s affected you since it’s powerful in numbers. yeah it’s kinda obvious but if you recognize it then that’s part of why it’s so prevalent!! and also maybe kinda cringey i guess, at least the way i talk about it… it’s the way i am but like i’ve been wondering how to make it not so weird. the thing about this struggle is that you can respond to it in any way you want, as you can with any problem in the world. and you either leave it in your head or put it into play in real life in whatever way you can. sometimes you decide it’s better for the former, but other times the latter is too attractive to resist and it compels you. after so much time being alive, you’re bound to have found so many things, watched so many things, run and seen every place that you’ve been in front of, that everything that you love and hate and everything else combines into what you want to do when it comes to another fork in the road.

dreams and nightmares use what you have in your memory to amalgamate them into really weird creations and that’s one way i think you can describe rainbow bridge. i’ve never looked into how dreams work but i’m not sure if anyone really knows… one thing that i think could be really plausible though is that it uses up all of your memories, both what you do and don’t remember, as a bank. even the things that you’ve looked at for a split second can be arranged into fully developed versions of themselves in your dreams, and they can make you feel all sorts of things, replicating them exactly at life’s scale, tricking you into believing that they are happening. something i’ve thought about before though is how recent things take precedence when it comes to your brain orchestrating your dreams. this even comes down to what you were thinking or what you were watching right before you fell asleep, and i think that stuff that you think about a lot has a higher chance of being part of your dreams. what i’ve mentioned before, like being anti-society, and many other things that have the chance to stick to your brain like a new favorite song or fear of something or even really nice moments that you can’t shake off. mental illness is also a big thing that affects it, something that both directly affects how you think and also is just always there (that is kinda obvious though).

one of my favorite ideas for a future technology would be replication of your dreams into something you can replay. people saying they saw things from their dreams and then went on to create stuff afterwards is a real thing… it’s really cool, although i wish i could remember the sounds from my dreams more often. what i’ve been trying to get at is that it feels like a really brash collection of dreams, relatable and killing you inside yet maybe anthemic, made from some of the sentiments that can be amplified and enjoyed because of the internet just a few years ago… bred from being on the internet and just trying to find ways to have fun all the time, learning about all kinds of things and loving tons of movies and music and other things go into having them influence how you look at life and where you go from there, especially when it comes to times where online is the place you go to run away from the bullshit that happens in the world all day every day. the songs on here are like sludges all made of different things with little clumps peeking out of it made out of metal, or maybe instead tasty açaí bowls made from your misery and rechanneling the energy from that into something that you can proudly claim as yours. yeah, you could say it’s the same song over and over and over again, but i think even if it gets to that point, it’s like a way of creating music that lets this interpretation shine from the symbolism that can bloom from it. their voices are really deadpan, devoid of spirit and all focused on getting back at the world from where they are at mentally in the deserts of death and drugs, and repetition becomes the most comforting thing there is. pair this with the slow, brutal beatings of the beats with their ethereal glow always being applied both to the voices and instrumentals and they become gargantuan statues detailed to the exact grooves of sematary’s life and what it did to him to leave him where he was. and now you’re staring at it in the face by listening, with its look making you feel the bleakness instantly however you end up perceiving it.

i really like the touches of emo rap (not just what the songs are about, but the direction of how it feels so dreadful artistically sometimes) here since it makes it feel so much more real… yeah at times it feels like the extreme opposite of that with how insane the processing of the vocals and production just is, but realizing what he’s rapping about makes for this really cool look into a perspective that is talked about a lot but you really don’t get to have a look in their shoes very often like you get here. as the mixtape goes on, it feels like the world’s getting closer to ending, or at least that feeling that the end’s approaching looms and keeps getting closer and closer. this feeling gets more and more powerful, and overall it sort of just overpowers everything throughout the whole album. i found myself really wishing nothing was gonna interrupt me while i was listening since it was just grabbed my attention so easily… it’s an intense listen yet that intensity grapples onto me with ease. obviously the way this sounds is really divisive but the cool thing about music like this is that you really know if you like it or hate it, which sort of compels you to wanna listen to it more or, if you hate it, it builds these really big scribbles above your head like what happens in cartoons.

from what i remember over the last few years, there’s always a quality of bliss or catharsis while being deep in depression. of course it’s not the conventional meaning of those things, but instead it’s in how you get trapped in the darkness that your mind becomes stuck in, like lightbulbs in your bathroom dying over time. it reminds me a lot of how some people find death beautiful… it’s something that you don't notice until looking back, but living life under a burden like that makes it part of your nature then and you forget how to once you feel better since the secret to it was just effortless. have you ever seen people talk about how they don’t like an artist’s newer music as much as their older works because of how they’ve changed as a person? that’s one way it embodies itself… although i’d never wanna complain about that since that’s just how things go, i can understand why this is seen sometimes cause of this invisible way that change affects everything it has to do with. this project reminds me a lot of that though, and i think shotgun, one of my favorite songs, takes me back to what i used to feel a little bit. every part of how this song was made feels really close to finality, from the somber electric guitar sample that creates a black, smokey haze that stays close to the floor to their tired cadences to their lyrics as well. i think the song is like being at the tail end of the shotgun after you finally get shot by it; ofc there isn’t really any progression on this project, it’s not a concept album like a bunch of other projects i’ve listened to, but it’s like after all this time, the scenarios sematary played in his head a million times finally become reality and it feels great. maybe i’m taking the lyrics too literally but reading them just made me think of that…

a big inspiration for why sematary created the music that he did on this project and still does now is to revive the “dead” sounds of genres and scenes such as witch house which i think is really cool. from what i saw he’s really enthusiastic for this and i think it’s like also symbolically a call back to stuff about the dead in his lyrics. he talks about it all throughout the tape, but one other song that i really liked him showing his inspirations through reverence. i accidentally thought this word stemmed from revenant for a little while cause i didn’t think about it for more than a second… throughout the whole song, he has these really tired vocals which blends really well with the beat and also contrasts the rest of the album, especially the opener, slaughter house, which this song follows. while the rest of the album is sort of more commanding in tone, here sematary’s vocals are a little more reserved. it’s not that the beat really has that much energy like how i’d usually use it, cause it’s not upbeat, but like it’s more warm and drags its feet, a lot like his vocals as well. sometimes i feel kinda tempted to call this song relatable because of this quality and also some of the lyrics here… they are really really good; this is one of the more emo rap geared songs on this project and it brings out this unique kind of thinking when it comes to just what to make music about and how to go about doing it. the thing is there are some blends of sounds that just sound crazy to people. although now that i’ve heard a full mixtape of tearing the skin from different black metal songs by hand and combining it with these really hot or deep fried beats inspired by trap that elevate themselves together with the ferocity that comes from having art as a medium to pour passion into like this one, it doesn’t seem that strange to me. but if you bring it up in a conversation as a possibility to someone else, they’d probably feel some sort of confusion towards it. i think that’s one way how sematary crafted this enables it to speak to me more, and by consequence just making everyone feel much stronger about his music, whether it be positive or negative… cause the whole album is literally fueled by absolute passion!!

i did a really bad job of writing about this mixtape and i’m sorry. tbf i’m always being an idiot but recently i’ve just been wasting so much time both from worry and also from just having so much free time so i’ve been pissed at myself a lot recently too. hopefully i can do better on the next entry, as i always say… there’s something cool that i found that i wanna share as the ending though since i think it’s fitting. i found an article about the original rainbow bridge passage written by a scottish teen written a day after her first dog died. she says it was written out of compulsion – not from a previous spiritual or religious knowledge, but it was as if her dog was guiding her hands across the notebook paper, subconsciously telling her the words to describe where he went like those stories of visions people have after they died for a moment and then came back to life. i got a little emotional reading it from how compelling it was, thinking about how her original words spread anonymously across the world and also just thinking about the pets i’ve had in general, especially throughout the last few years.

our pets deserve nothing less than perfection. when we die, we commonly believe or hope that there’s some sort of afterlife that our souls can confide in, a place that we all can advance into the next stage of life whether it be reincarnation or just remaining in another place forever. it’s all about believing – that’s what the concept of the rainbow bridge is about. believing in not only ourselves but our pets and what life has in store for us in the past, present, and future, gives us food for thought in an almost unlimited way to guide our hunger for passion, purpose, and living itself. one really important thing that the article noted is that in western culture and especially christian beliefs, apparently it’s not commonly believed that pets go to the afterlife since only humans have souls, therefore denying them the opportunity to see the afterlife for themselves. believing in rainbow bridge, giving it your faith and trust that it exists and your pet will become its best self, the self you love, in a paradise the definition of perfection in harmony with every other pet waiting for their owners who will one day arrive when we shuffle off this mortal coil, is an act of believing in something against the odds itself. against the odds of everyone and everything who is against you, all the horrible events and circumstances that you once and still are in, believing that something better is beyond the horizon always is gearing yourself against whatever is next in store for you.

and believing is sort of everything when it comes to this tape. last night, while i listened to the tape one more time, i did get sort of emotional because of the article, but it lingered for longer from me realizing the beauty of it having this kind of imagery. from loving what your interests become, to shaping that into a mixture to create your own work in some way like music is an act of believing in different things. we all value different things that give us a reason to move and do the things we do, and it’s great that it’s unique since it allows each person to have the chance to fill in our own reserved spots with paint that would otherwise be left unpainted. of course some people believe in some really shit stuff, but that’s part of the drive to focus more on the act of believing and learning to utilize it closer to its best potential by the moment. the music here has the unadulterated power of sematary’s own way of believing, brewing ever since he first learned to believe and compound the teachings of life into how he wanted to communicate his message through his passion for music guided by his love for things like metal, horror movies, pills, and his friends that love doing the same things with him.

as all art is, creating rainbow bridge was like a snapshot in time for how the way he thought of life was back then; now, it’s changed in many different ways, however this depiction of that can then serve as a pillar for other people to keep in their life like a picture in a locket as something to keep in their lives, becoming the next step to change how they view stuff and believe in general. some may like it, some may hate it, it’s whatever!! as long as it has a reaction when you see it, especially one that’s strong, that comes back to both you and the author of that work, working in sync to change the way we look at life from top to bottom in ways that we take for granted as long as we live. the ultimate step, arriving at the rainbow bridge, is when how we believe reaches its fullest potential – we reunite with whoever treasures us the most, and along the way we find reasons to confide in the tranquility and peace in such ending, our heaven sent ability to create art gives us one way to share how we view it on the everlasting highway of life.

Four Pieces for Mirai by James Ferraro: 10 June⁂

there’s a lot of things that i think are "wrong" in our world as you probably do too… it's the way things are, but you kinda wish it was different. to some it’s not so bad, while to others it may be the worst thing ever – everyone thinks about things in their own different ways, so there’s not really an objectiveness of sorts that unifies what sort of goals we all want when it comes to our ideologies. but i think instead it’s more objective that there are a selection of things that we all think of as important or essential to how we live, especially those that are omnipresent throughout the world. there are things like the standards of a restaurant, local or chained, or how traffic is handled by people or by infrastructure, no matter what mode of transportation on road or path, which varies depending on where you are in alignment to a society’s values, but something that is important in every society is the internet. its usage depends on where you are, and the utility of that can change when it comes to what you think both of its usefulness and on a daily basis, but wherever you are there is some way the internet makes its presence nowadays.

y’all i wanna make my entries less in depth and serious soo please bear with me for this review cuz i have no idea what i’m doing … recently i’ve been a bit interested in the sort of sound that you probably associate with “midi”. james ferraro has never really been on my radar unfortunately, and even if he had i probably wouldn’t have gotten to him until this point… my first song i listened to was twilight pretender because of this girl i used to follow on twt who idk if i have talked about before but she introduced me to a couple of other artists like marjorie -w.c. sinclair indirectly. we never interacted ever but that doesn’t matter right now cuz i’m getting off track!!

for a final in one of my classes i made a playlist that i think went along to the tao of pooh. i just made each of them go with a principle like the uncarved block or stories in the book so i didn’t have to go through a ton of effort for it since i was really busy with other stuff too; it was fun for sure but i feel like i’m kinda bad with making playlists in general so idk!! while i looked for songs to go along with these themes, i listened to some new artists and among those was james ferraro. honestly, i forgot why i decided on this ep specifically… maybe it was cause i had looked for other music projects that used midi playback before, or something else, but i thought green hill cross was great for the playlist and so i added it. and afterwards i looked it up on rym and got really excited so i added it to my backlog and here we are… yeah i added it right after white light cause i wanted to get to it quickly and it’s a sorta short project compared to the other stuff i’ve put on here so why not??

since i had to present the playlist, for the song i chose it to represent the idea of “the great reward” in the book, which the author explains as a sort of unreachable, infinitely high bar that is commonly sought in society by people who make themselves too busy with wasting their time on the unsustainable way of life that especially plagues american society today, both through the infrastructure of cities and the rest of the country as well as just how people act towards each other. i found green hill cross a great fit for the idea cause of how well it visualized a landscape with many different things, like buildings and massive roads with a small park in its own separate corner with people making their way through everything, emulating all of the different colors and their shades through how each instrument sounded. the cheery chimes of the bells, along with the fidgety rhythm of the bright toy piano on top of everything and the smoother synths below everything providing really nice breezes along with the various samples of noise throughout the song which contrasts deeply with the rest of the song’s organic tone (maybe that’s how i’d say it; it’s a very distinct feeling but i’m not sure how to put it into words). the song’s progression itself also reflects this, and maybe for that you could say it’s how the city’s timeline from beginning to present, like showing how the average us city used to have their own expansive tram and train networks before they got rid of them all for cars. it was really cool to just hear how it sounded, and since no one was gonna listen to my playlist anyway i just decided to add whatever i wanted to it.

i sort of hate what the internet has become and the experience i have to share with everyone else now. i don’t have the best memories that one can associate with surfing the internet compared to how it was in the 90s or 00s or even the 10s cuz of how dumb i was… i always say in my mind that i live under a rock and still see the effects from that today. you could say everyone’s getting deprived of their empathy because of how easy you can just hide behind the virtual wall, but i also feel like everything’s just losing its sense. each day i think and find something new which makes me dislike a part of the world more, and this drips from my view of the internet to real life.

though i’m stuck with the internet when it comes to where i’m best at being myself... i would try to change my focus on the real world, but that just sucks too. the “drip” is a constant one, leaking like a faucet with no cover, dripping onto the minds of everyone as if it were a paintbrush after you put it into a dirty cup of water if you don’t wipe it off enough. i don’t really wanna complain about how people are in the real world cuz it’s just dreadful to talk about it but i find myself really dwelling about it sometimes and thinking of how to deal with it. i like looking at what other people think of the general state of things, whether it be on tiktok or the teachers subreddit or whatever since it’s so amusing while it sort of strikes a tiny bit of alarm in me each time i keep reading a thread on these random posts. a lot of the problems we face, whether it has to do with behavior of growing children or how people are able to participate in society (like literacy or empathy towards people, both work and social related things) being a couple of examples all have a root among others in how our digital world is always getting closer to colliding with our physical being. in some facets of society, this root is larger than others, but by this point all of them have some part of it. this tone is really cynical or pessimistic and i’ve been trying to become more optimistic overall but i’m not really sure how i can be fully optimistic when real life is going the place that it’s going.

right now i’m at a state where i just don’t like the idea of interacting with anyone, both on the internet and real life. of course there’s other things, but i think social media is a huge culprit of what i’ve been trying to get at. i watched a video earlier today about why the badges of football clubs have been infected by the touch of minimalism and drinking the soul out of that aspect of their identity and it reinforced the belief of it being so likened because of how pfps on social media are circular… that’s not entirely it but it’s definitely become a factor for marketing. writing about this here makes me feel bad because by the time my thoughts hit paper or the screen sometimes it just makes me realize how irrational i am sometimes. but i mean there’s things that we all don’t realize, each person a different combination of such…

the thing about social media is that the most successful are those who work best with the algorithm. for tiktok this is things such as perfection, twitter hate, and others something else of the like. this then seeps into how we behave because of how often these qualities are promoted. even if you don’t use social media much, you still see this with other people, whether they be your friends, family, associates, or strangers. your personality is partly a reflection of who you hang around with and who you value most; traces of “the internet now” are bound to be part of it, and how you react to it will always be different to how someone else reacts to it. but, the thing about it is the spread of these traces are amplified because of how widespread the internet is. and so, the traces may be small, but they compound as you see more people and how they react. your inner self reacts to it differently, but we’re all exposed to it in large amounts some way. there’s no escape from it unless you resort to living isolated for the rest of your days – but eventually your spot may be found by an excavator. so, what could we do about this? …

four pieces for mirai describes the slow death that our virtual selves have been inflicting on us, slithering through our mind and what it does to our body and soul, and very little people realize it because it becomes too easy for the inclination of this to occur. as more and more people gain ideas, the consensus morphs into a correction pen for the past for them in their mind; it acts as a poison building up as we take more steps to fuse our virtual selves with our world. first it was to create our own selves in the virtual setting, profiles that we can post parts of ourself in, and every step taken since has contributed to the further deterioration of the state of things, like how nuclear waste burns the skin moved down to a microscopic scale at a snail’s pace. except that pace grows with every head turned to the screen, motivating one’s finger to take one more key press that makes up a small piece of a fully opaque smoke cloud colored not the darkest shade of black nor an ordinary gray, but the color you see when you close your eyes – no color at all.

it takes influences from different parts of the world not just in origin but in time as well, from baroque music to medieval influences to ambient all contrived through the electronic plane and delivered as if it were a message in a bottle within a sea of sludge. in no way is it careful, with it flowing effortlessly while having so much beautiful detail in how each element’s textures are felt, quickly moving from one tone to the next set up like a bunch of nanodrone stagehands moving the instruments in and out of reach. there are little pauses in between songs at times, especially in butterfly, which makes it feel like waves are rushing onto you. i thought of it a little after a few times of listening to it and it sounded really methodical and fragmented, moving in steps like a computer program does – each step waits its turn as if not to interrupt but try to work together. or another way to describe it for every part is that it moves in slow scoops, with the hand changing in material from skin to wires thus having different intentions… this has to do more with what mirai itself is. the human way of using technology in the now is in the background of the music diluted through the transparent backdrop akin to how an insect sees the world, but how they all wanted the future to go, or how else the project would’ve been shaped otherwise as it starts in the present, is nothing to what mirai had in mind once it was handed permission to stretch however it wanted. it learned how to use its limbs and move, hand then arm, foot then leg, and with its vision being the only way it knew how to view trusting it more than anything else turned that into reality and its sounds being the sounds of this album. ferraro is popular for his perspectives in projects like far side virtual and human story 3 about the state of where we are as in automation and finding our place in a world gradually dominated by such. he’s making another case here that reverberates through the walls of this project, and that case is to replace it all with the power and reasoning of mirai’s view.

the name mirai itself is referring to a real world thing… i didn’t go over it before to not disrupt the flow (even tho it was kinda shit anyway but what can u do) so i’ll do it here. mirai is a malware that targets devices in the internet of things, primarily security cameras and routers, and makes them part of a botnet that attacks through ddosing. it gains access to these devices from a table of various factory usernames and passwords and infects the device. its code is open source, making it still alive today in a sort of way and so it has evolved over time in different variants to be used against crypto mining operations to rutgers university to dns providers and lots of other websites and things.

in this world’s story, a reflection of ours, humans turn to mirai and give it all the power to lift the burden of advancement off of our shoulders and onto mirai’s. but it becomes apparent that the only way to truly better society rather than just go from where we are, the perpetual strengthening of the chokehold that the internet’s purpose is on our necks, is to get rid of it all. every single part of the internet must go, and mirai does this by using its strategy of ddosing against the fortress of the internet, seen in a larger than life scale in remnant from beginning to relentless demolishment, to make it collapse. those who trusted mirai for its initial purpose will be the first to watch the power shift in purpose, removing the human hand and replacing it with a virtual spear. what will happen to our online selves then, changing into invisible smoke as if it were a soul of its own floating to become another form of energy now that what it was created for was fulfilled? just like how ai uses up millions of gallons of water, the calculations and the structures it produces vanishes into thin air, with its texts and words disappearing without a trace…

the first bells of green hill cross is mirai confirming each and every decision it takes, going faster than our human minds can comprehend. to the fuckers, it feels like they’re doing a great job following their orders for the next millenia, but instead they’re working for the good of the world, moving from machines’ internals to their own network within the internet to kill it from the inside. it was raised to be cheerful, and the song’s mood follows that a lot with how it’s really playful with its rhythms and just how it sounds. the word it makes me think of is oozing, like it’s easily oozing out this timbre as it’s developed firstly from human code and then gradually moves on its own, reaching boundaries beyond our grasp and taking how it looks and feels into its own hands.

it moves from this into butterfly, more uniform in composition and sort of an opposite to what came before it, changing into a darker and much more medieval influenced sound. it’s here that mirai takes the world into its own hands. the song’s progression is like the malware evolving, creating new variants and becoming stronger as humans are helpless as it has already become out of their control. this trouble only amplifies for humans, especially the creators, as they frantically put all of their robot workers to try to stop it but the botnet spreads to inside of their very own facilities and infrastructure, getting closer and attracting billions of eyes from all over the world for the goal to kill every single operation. the poison is like a cloth laced with chloroform, carefully putting everyone to sleep and forcing them to oblige with how the internet’s sins from action become part of a feedback loop constantly getting stronger; mirai shifts to remove that temptation through turning the cloth onto the internet and its vast sea of networks itself.

mirai is a song named after itself, focusing on the rigid roads of its mind. its skin sheds many times upon itself, repeating passages over and over again compounding a mist around it that shrouds the world in metallic clouds of mystery. the room of how the album sounds grows once again, giving itself permission to do so allowing it to unravel further and further, maybe into an invisible monster, one that seeks to fulfill tasks realizing that at the end it’ll be the only one left. it beholds every single fragment of information from the previous age that it sought to destroy, and this knowledge manifests itself like a singularity inside of the botnet’s mind as a collection of memory without limit – the only way to fully end it is to end mirai as well.

and then remnant is the most majestic and spacious part of the album. it approaches and stares at the end of everything – on the coast, the aforementioned fortress of the internet reinforced by the power of indulgence and greed in a holographic coat violently disassembled with parts flying in all directions before disappearing shortly after. its screams are silent, from its body exhausted beyond belief through its endless strain from being expected to do more and more and more in place of humans who have lost the ability to care.

the melody spirals upwards, walking up the stairs of an eternally tall castle, with the weather and mind troubles all gliding in and out below the main stage in the form of other instruments and synths. how the dynamics between the main bell-like melody which is really bright and then the more mellow and plucky melody right below it to where the former is easily on top of it but it doesn’t overpower the latter at all and then everything else spreads around the soundscape is so well mixed and it’s amazing!! what i’ve been describing definitely isn’t what ferraro envisioned when making his own story for this project but i think the way he went about doing things like that throughout the album, decisions which allow the sounds to work together so much better and great choices with composing and arranging everything allows me to visualize my own sort of story so well here.

in general i just admire how this project was crafted as a whole. i saw someone commenting on how it’s hard to tell if some of the instruments on probably another ferraro project were live or electronic, and here i think there’s sort of that same feeling where everything is so so refined and yet it has that simply beautiful feeling of frailty that other midi music i’ve listened to like tek lintowe has as part of its nature. these synths and other instruments that can blast these sentiments in your ears that tear me to pieces so effectively, making me fall in love with them as it becomes like an intimate feeling that one can’t describe but instead just feels like soundwaves rushing through your body while at a party where the speakers are turned up so high.

so high your brain convinces itself it’s high on a feeling… i’ve never been under the influence of anything before but i think it comes back to that idea of fragility or frailty, whichever one makes more sense to you. except when it comes to this project, the thing about mirai and how the sounds become its only voice interpreted through how it views the world that i mentioned earlier too is a high that doesn’t really make you lose focus as much as it twists your perception of the world into something at a higher level. and at this higher level, everything becomes much more simpler; maybe you follow how kandinsky saw life at an even larger scale, having your senses all combine together and allow you to change and create what you wanted so much easier now that you can just imagine it in any plane possible. then those planes can seamlessly translate into one another, bending shapes into colors and then colors into sound waves, turning the whole world into a playground where you can make anything that comes to your mind. with that power, midi music is like a sort of thing which you associate with comfort across all five senses, like your favorite textures and tastes mixed with your favorite beautiful landscapes in the world that when heard turns itself into something that inspires or is found within four pieces for mirai.

i didn't wanna leave out fossils and gulf gutters but i feel like they are their own worlds connected to the body of this project and they kinda serve as views of what the world itself looks like before and after anything happens. it reminds me a bit of daydreaming, slipping you into this state of mind where your mind is forefront in telling a story but that doesn't necessarily mean you're in control of it...

and while the sound from where we are now moves from invisible waves to audible expression, sometimes modes like this can be the best method of battle waged in a world already full of what its main enemy is. plagued is a strong word, just like hate is, but however you see it the prevalent effects of what's happened to the internet and its behaviors crawling into our own world can be described as a plague itself. as weird as it sounds, i feel like it revolves around what the deadly sins are as pillars of sorts. i’m not religious, so i’m not really sure how you’re supposed to look at them, but i feel that the worst extremes of these sins are part of this plague that the internet revolves around, allowing it to be so tempting and strong. i’m a victim of it too… there’s not really much hope for me in the real world, at least not now, but i could be doing better stuff with my life. just being alone feels like a nice solution, but that’d probably come with problems fueled by my stupid answers. that’s part of life though… and life as a whole is fueled by what you do and how you enjoy what comes after. so art has a purpose and so does being.

White Light From the Mouth of Infinity by Swans: 1 June⁂

it’s sort of surreal to be finally listening to a swans album again. i’ve been trying to follow a sort of formula with how i write my entries which has to do with talking about the actual band behind the music later on, but this thought is the one that has been really prevalent for me so i’ll change it up for this. very little bands have been as prevalent in my mind for so long as they have been… it’s almost like they’re etched into my mind the same way a tiny figure of the sun gets stuck in your vision after you stare at it for too long. i’m not sure if i could really point to a single reason why since every time i get back into thinking about them it’s for a different reason, and then their harrowing approach and style in all regards manages to keep me thinking about them for another little while. this has kinda been a year and a half in the making ever since i listened to the great annihilator and wondered what would be next in this catalogue since there’s just so much stuff to look into!! tbh i’ve listened to a couple of other albums since then which have been all over their discography back when i stopped caring about documenting that kind of stuff (ashamedly but i’d never get past one swans album in the amount of time it’d take me normally sadly lol) and of course they were all really cool for different purposes. from using their music for a couple of school projects to trying to find their longest songs to just realizing how prolific they are, there have been so many reasons to get back into them and although i’ll never really be able to submerge myself into their music in a truly meaningful way (if that makes sense i’m a little tired writing this rn), i still want to listen to the music that i’ve been laying on for the longest time.

swans have always made their presentation and delivery some method of relentlessly inflicting pain on the listener, its intensity reflecting how the pain hits them first. in different incarnations of the band as their style changed, their method of doing this also did as well, channeling itself in different forms that always challenged the boundaries and very own influences within. their evolution in their sound from their no wave beginnings to gira’s own belief that something had to change and the shift into more melodic and maudlin (new cool word i just learned!!) writing that would provide the skin of the gothic and post rock that includes this album was like a journey guided or mandated by a long rope that was daunting and filled with dark moments, and now that i think if it, in the middle of it there’d be the gradual ascent into more beautiful territory of a world which marks where the rabbit in the cover stands. as the heart serves as a stop in time, its strange appearance is a reminder of the constant bleak that still can be felt all over - like a reminder that you can’t escape it, as an act to try to scare, but that’s something that you’ve already realized many steps ago.

here’s something i wrote a week ago: these past couple of weeks have been really convoluting for me in terms of how i’ve been feeling. it’s probably cause of the simple things of not getting enough sleep, especially as it’s the last weeks of school and my procrastination got the better of me too so now i’m trying to finish everything i can in the little time i have left… from this it feels like i’m intermittently disconnecting from reality in some fashion. it’s something that’s out of my control yet still feels strangely tangible. and yeah, i’ve been feeling all sorts of other ways too from being overwhelmed and wanting it all to go away to random moments of envy to flickers of hope and positivity for the future… my negative thoughts and insecurities and stuff like that have been slowly compounding and sometimes it feels like i’m being shoved into a blender and it’s blurring the emotional pathway i’ve been taking for the last few months, making me lose control and stumble in these moments where it really would be better to get it together. this is especially true since it’s almost summertime of course!! don’t worry, i’m fine

isn’t it a bit weird how time can sometimes fix everything, but then time in a different way leads to the same sort of emotional result? i’ve been returning into a rut for the last couple of weeks again cause yeah, school is taking its toll on me, but i think it’s also just part of this natural cycle of my own emotions. i’ve been doubting myself a tonnnn for a bunch of reasons that slip out of my mind once i try to actually think about them, and i guess it’s been too long since i’ve been prone to having unhealthy thoughts so now’s a good time to start doing so…

a couple years ago, i used to go to school in this not run down per se, but more dreary part of the city that at times just filled me with dread, especially during the ugly moments when the rain and its clouds spoiled everything and made it all super grey. you could say this time in my life was just filled with dread among many other problems as well as it personified some of the peaks of the perpetual battle i’ve had with mental illness along with the grievances of just trying to live with what i had both irl and online.

i think the time i first really gained interest in this album was after around the time i got into boris and deathconsciousness. one of my irls also played a role in it since he got a lot into swans as well, but i never really followed suit except for one album since after that i just didn’t have any motivation to. during the second semester, i took this class that was about horror literature and i thought it was really interesting and one of my favorites that i had taken that year and probably for a while. it was a change in the usual broad subjects that pre-uni school teaches which in hindsight are probably insufficient for what the real world is actually about.

back then, my depression was way worse; i can’t remember for certain what it was like since the recollection of how it felt has been smudged and forced out of my brain but it had been part of a multiple years long period where it felt like there wasn’t really a way out. i had lost the ability to make friends and so really beginning around the second semester maybe? i’d restricted the majority of my time talking to people at school to talking to my teachers. and i didn’t do this very often either (i avoided talking to ppl altogether) since i figured it would’ve looked and seemed weird both to the students and teacher themselves, but i just felt like they were more understanding and tolerant of me even when i was awkward which was probably all the time. i realized later on that teachers are paid to deal with everyone including me anyways… but i’m not sure whether to view their sympathy in a negative way from there since the thing is they have empathy too and teachers do care for the students they teach and i don’t wanna look down on what they do since it’s unfathomably difficult as a profession.

during that semester, we covered a bunch of things from urban legends to older things in us history to 411 cases and a bunch more that i’ve unfortunately forgotten about as you do with most other things that you learn in school. towards the beginning of the semester though, i remember he had a lesson on how music as an art form can incite fear (with examples of different types of fear). he showed stuff like plunderphonics and murder ballads both old and newer like nick cave’s album, but the thing that struck me the most was when he showed a song from jarboe’s project sacrificial cake. he put on troll for a writing exercise at the start of class about stream-of-consciousness writing in order to eventually get a sort of small fictional story out of it by the end of the song. i’m literally giggling a little bit while i write about this cause it was so unexpected… looking back on it he really did seem the kind of guy who’d be an old sort of person who has listened to swans (for the lack of being able to come up with any better way to describe it lol). i think he was in his 50s with this long, grey beard wearing whatever he wanted depending on the day—honestly i don’t remember what he looked like, it was just more of a vibe thing. i think it’d make more sense once you got to see him in person.

it made me really happy when that happened and i wanted to ask him about it soo at the end of class i just went up to him and asked if he listened to swans. we didn't talk a lot about it at first but he did acknowledge it and it surprised him a lot that there was another person who had listened to swans, who are obviously pretty unpopular both in reach and how they have sounded throughout their entire existence. i asked him what his favorite album was and he admitted that he found the post-rock phase of swans along the lines of hypnotic and jarring (i forgot how he said it but it wasn't such in a negative way i don't think) and if he had to choose he'd say white light from the mouth of infinity since he liked the folky phase a lot more. i remember texting my friend really quickly before the next class started since the transition periods were super super short which was super annoying about it and that was a highlight for me for the next little while and it was awesome!!

and then a bit afterwards after the school day ended while i was leaving i found him again and for some reason we started talking about music again. i don't even remember why i asked him, if i had the intention of doing so, or how he put up with it, but we talked for another like ten to fifteen minutes about more stuff to get to know a little bit more. it was here that he said that he was really into industrial music and told me about a couple of the albums he liked of the umbrella of genres including streetcleaner. sadly i don't remember most of what we talked about during that second conversation but i think what i treasure the most was how i remember it sentimentally. it’s more so the circumstances that led up to where i was standing - in the middle of a poor school that i can’t even grasp the reality of within a dull world, in front of this guy so much older and wiser than me who teaches about horror that’s really captivating but not really stuff i’d remember, and every time i think of it, especially recently, it compels me to feel just a tiny bit of what he felt in that current moment as he was looking with his duffel bag tilting his body a bit talking to a stupid antisocial girl who just so happened to have heard of the same music he had gotten into many years ago. i think he mentioned that his friends were into the more extreme of metal or other music while he was sort of more mellow but still within that whole broader scene of music if that makes sense too which is one of the things that’s resonating with me as well… now that i think of it i don’t really know why someone like him would take up teaching as a career rather than doing anything else; i know that everyone has their reasons and i’m not really sure about the standard reasons why a person would wanna become a teacher or any other profession in that field, but he just strikes me as someone who wouldn’t even wanna consider doing that kind of stuff since he just seems like a guy who just moves with the flow in his life, one that i think is probably different from the “average life”, whatever that’d be, rather than having to take on the hell of teaching. at least that’s what i’d call it…

from there, i tried getting into the album multiple times but it never really stuck with me… similarly to the great annihilator, i thought it sounded great but it didn’t go past that. there was a single song that carried most of the wonder i found within the album though, and that would be will we survive? i think it’s a true example of how amazing dynamics can be in music. its explosive beginning marks the start through the booming stabs and snare shots shortly after rolling the boulder in a rigid motion akin to the earth’s revolutions, along with the progression of the supporting vocals and rash keyboards carving glowing lines in that boulder, and the way it’s done always felt on a larger-than-life scale, so huge that it was like the sound was all around me as it played. it’s super strong and i feel like it might’ve even been overwhelming at first listen but as time passed it still carried the same intensity that you could suffocate in. gira’s voice felt like something i couldn’t stop staring at in marvel with its infinite depth and really nice baritone range. like maybe you could say its figure (a silhouette or a glowing sphere or some random fantasy thing or just gira himself) walking along a tightrope as the sun rises behind, emanating this ceremonial feeling whose touch is like how extremely loud sounds ruptures the lungs and eardrums and then it burns you from inside. then this movement keeps going, and in between the verses the chorus, especially the vocals, is this key moment like it’s being held up at the summit of everything in this small reality and objects that look like instruments glow as the overall atmosphere becomes denser and closer to the person who watches. the other portion of the song after that really elevated my experience with it though… its sudden change in demeanor with the bouzoukis being the main drivers of the melody as other parts descend into the landscape from the darker guitar ambience that lets the earth-shattering drums set in a tribal pattern, to my favorite parts in the cymbals and the beautiful vocals which expand the reach of your arms and your perception. a slow and solid crescendo continues to encourage the different elements to grow and brighten what’s around the viewer and the listener, and it all creates this sky that has the sun, the moon, and their rises and falls and all of the colors that come with them along with a sparkling sky, putting on displays all the imaginable horrors to bliss that life has unleashed unto the world melted fully into encaustic paint. i revered the song a lot and still do because of its sheer brilliance and it became a staple in my head for really just what the beauty of music can be. for me it stood like a monument, its gradual ascent into a madness so magnificent that i couldn’t help but let it repeat in my head over and over again with how insane it was to me.

whenever i start thinking about swans again every once in a while, whether it be for a school project or just being reminded of them by a friend or looking at random music once again, for some reason it just brings me this sort of comfort that very little music brings me in general. it’s not really the usual sort of comfort that i feel from being in bed or seeing cute things cause their music is much more grim than those things of course… but in the face of that, i still feel comfort that’s like a blanket of ease, and listening to their music reinforces that through being able to visualize the situations that are somehow relatable for me through the abstract lyricism and structures of each song. that somehow isn’t meant to convey that the ideas are too strange or unknown for me to understand or feel, but it’s like it moves through different planes of existence and reaches me in a way that’s just rare.

tbh i don’t even think about it much now, but maybe it also has to do a bit with the memory of getting into music through the communities of rym and aoty since swans are kinda huge in the dumb “/mu/core” or “rymcore” or whatever clichés that’s seen throughout especially when it comes to just looking at popular music on these websites. my friend i mentioned earlier was wayyy more active in this regard and i think it might’ve bled into me a bit when it came to my enjoyment on music rating sites and just finding music to listen to. it just felt more carefree and fun in a different way, and of course i enjoy music in a plethora of ways that have and haven’t changed since then, but the social aspect of it has changed a ton for me and it probably has to do with my experience when it comes to that. it’s not a lot of experience, since a majority of it just comes from my own thoughts, but i feel that it’s shaped how i feel about music and especially swans nonetheless.

i associate the great annihilator a lot with this album for some reason. after thinking about it for a little bit, i think it has to do with how they deal with looking at life and metaphysicality through different means. while the great annihilator looks at it through a sort of god-like approach with it being above the plane of existence, white light from the mouth of infinity has more to do with ontology and the gripes of everyday life and society, giving a human purpose to the spirituality aspect that manifests as the sun which is commonplace in the overall theme of the album. it was part of gira's effort to get better with songwriting after getting tired of both exhausting the no wave sound and the band itself attracting an idiot (like he described) male-dominated audience from that sound, and it went from the seeds he planted through the journey and rose like a beanstalk from there. the sun and its light are the first thing that reaches your eyes when you wake up and is omnipresent throughout your days and nights, a true stalker; it's a huge motif on the album, and i think here it represents various ideas with the eventuality of it being the ends of everything and anyone. its energy and very existence empowers the world to live in both its natural, twisted way, and there's thought within the album that tackles both how our world carries on and trying to get at the question of existence from a more human, grounded lens in a perspective sort of similar to the third person omniscient.

the sun itself emits most of the light needed in order for us to see; this light is then converted into electrical signals that our brain visualizes, and from there our eyes rest on our own reflection in the barren mirror, displaying the shitty image that is ourselves and fuel for self-loathing. a lot of this album is really introspective in this way and others; as the different instruments play, all with their differing vibrancy, they each stand next to the colors and patterns that we see ourselves in. we see our experiences in many art styles, from the likes of picasso to mentha nolana to keith haring to frida kahlo to angel otero to an uncountable sea of others customized to our liking in just the form of painting and drawing (as life imitates art and the art that we like influences us deeply), and in the qualities of art and their forms we naturally use their elements to try to understand what life does to us and what it does for others as it overall just works according to its own rules. questions become the main thing that linger in our head, and if we were to ask life itself why? or how? then it would understand all that is said but respond in a language that none will understand – its very own. and so, because life does its own stupid things, we turn to ourselves and our art that we see and create; the consequences of life's messing around and meddling becomes our looks inside, wondering what's wrong with us and what's wrong with how i and we view the world?

in our world, how it sounds is like an elegant translation for the bleak memories of life through music as art - beautiful and rich for the ears, but dissonant and close to home for the soul. the instrumentation on the album is really really cool!! like xiu xiu, swans have always had really exceptional production… being so so detailed is something that you’d probably expect from bands, especially those with so much experience, but i’m always still so amazed by it… it has such a large assortment of instruments used here like the aforementioned bouzouki as well as the bağlama played by skopelitis to the keyboards played by jarboe as well as her work with expanding the original ideas into an orchestral setting or the fusion of both acoustic and electric guitars using different techniques along with other parts of the music like the violin and flutes and auxiliary percussion which all make for this really dense, lush environment colored with the rainbow strokes painted by the melodies as if its sound were to be a beautiful greenhouse. one thing that’s important is that it’s really dark and takes use of deep stabs and saddles to submerge the listener and make it feel like some elements fold into the center of the soundscape while there’s still this alive stage of background elements acting as a hazy sludge. everything’s drenched in reverb, letting it sink into your body and mind at its own graceful pace. and of course i can’t forget to mention the drums played by fier on here… every part of it, especially the amazing snare rolls throughout, has this thump factor to it that is so effective in being this pummeling force in the music; as the thick musical environment plays, it’s like it simultaneously grabs onto this quality and then harnesses its own powers through the sentimental value of it all. it’s the accumulation of anger, desperation, pessimism and nihilism, and everything else adding to its overwhelming power and striking harder than any usual life form can, in turn resorting to the supernatural and metaphysical as does the pursuit of asking why? about life.

how this album sounds ranges from so many different states of mind that you can feel both combined into one and separated into each of their own depending on what you’re feeling. it feels like the sparks of starting a fire to another person’s hand, stroking your hair to a dog pulling apart a plushie’s limbs, everything and more combined into one within this beautiful combination of dark and light.

in direct contrast to the grim pessimistic themes of better than you and power & sacrifice, you know nothing takes a nihilistic approach and is all about how our purposes in life should be driven by what we value most. in my exai entry, i talked a lot about the structure if the world itself and one really important part of it is that everything that has been discovered and determined from a societal standpoint really is just subjective and created just for us and can be altered as we develop and this song really reminds me of that along with the term social construct but times a ton to spread it over everything we’ve ever made. a net of guitars and the mandolin as a centerpiece with a dark keyboard background behind creates the beginning passage of the song, with gira’s voice carving into the instrumentation with his solemn, deep voice. the stringed instruments light up the sky of the song as his voice talks about the same thing, planting a bright beam in the middle powered by the fabric of life, and then the peaks enlarge the moment with the expanse of the drums and more instruments adding to the sound, giving it enough work electrically as if it were a contraption to make it slowly spin like a music box with a carousel steadily going round and round on top. the experience itself is still tainted as both life’s forces and human made obstacles can affect what you perceive your purpose as that is a part of the overall subjective nature of how we think and what we believe in; if you let yourself, you can feel yourself sinking into the rich soil of this song which just makes you think and try to come to some sort of terms with where you are right now, spilling into the music and how it makes you feel. nihilism at face value – the core value of our existence, where we spend ages and ages existing not having any sort of meaning – seems really dreadful at least to me… but i think how this songs adds to that sort of theme with the slight chime of hope makes it so much more visceral and adds so much depth to what life can become in resistance of how others experience it which holds them and consequently us in any way.

this song isn’t really written in a way that advises you though (which i mention just cause i feel like i might’ve come off as talking about it weirdly), and instead just through a third person omniscient view like i mentioned earlier. it’s something that i learned about really recently… it’s like looking through the eyes of a narrator observing the ideas that gira is singing about here, making for these picturesque views and otherwise really sentimental scenes about how us people can deal with life. it’s customizable to anyone’s own experiences, as life can and should be as well.

after the lively ballad that is love will save you which is all about love’s power everywhere in life, failure falls down a deep hole to become a really bleak, scornful, and defeated assessment of society and what it can do to you. to me it feels like looking through a dim blue image with ripples slowly moving across every time the chorus plays the same hypnotic pattern plunging you to the depths of human emotion. from the start, it becomes a painful telling of how living in an unending cycle in a society like ours with no help for those who are at their lowest. the feeling perpetually burns and lingers, and it’s allowed to keep getting worse because of how easy it is just to get stuck in the fingers of failure at the bottom of everything. no matter which face or the appearance of whatever place you’re in, life distorts its image from the burden of living this way and failure’s intricate skin becomes the texture of everything you see. this song is probably one of swans’ darkest songs, at least from what i’ve listened to, purely because of how its monster is alive and prevalent throughout life, and the wrong staircase of steps in one’s life leads them down an endless path devoid of hope and life where this monster proliferates.

it’s much more stripped back than the rest of the songs on this album, only being comprised of a quiet tape loop of an acoustic guitar later being accompanied by another pattern played by a bass guitar in between the small sections of more of the dense instrumentation coated with chilling background vocals that are like mirages of oases in a desert. just for a second, it feels like maybe there’s a way out, or at least something to make life more tolerable and reasonable, but then it disappears with a snap of a finger, mocking you as the only thing that is left is failure’s face where that hope once was. how beautifully this song unravels itself is something that i think contrasts against the really ugly story gira’s telling in a sort of way; it punctures you mercilessly, the stabs becoming harder and quicker the more time you spend in this state, and it feels like it’s making fun of you being alone since you can’t appreciate the grim beauty of what life can create at times like you can from other points of view. it doesn’t feel the same until you’re the one feeling the wrath of whoever’s inflicting it.

the last line of the song is really striking for me too… “i can’t even elegantly bleed / out the poison blood of failure” … i think you could interpret this in many ways but i just recently realized the impact of it and it makes me think of death, whether it be suicide or any other cause from living a life without hope like what is being described in this song. it makes me think of how one’s death may not be respected as it should be, like a homeless person’s, and the people blinded by the deceitful singing of this society led by bastards which leads people down the endless path of misery can’t even imagine what it’s like or show empathy towards it unless they were down in the same place as well. and then it becomes a cycle. it’s a self-image sort of thing, but then it involves how everyone else views them as well.

it’s really tough deciding what song i like the most from this album… i still adore will we survive but from finally listening to it in full i’ve also come to love the explosive miracle of love. from beginning to end, it’s one of the most intense songs on here, and it immediately lures me in with the intro full of string instruments that keeps on getting added to as the song becomes slightly more dramatic and composed, like it’s waiting patiently for the right time to pounce!! as the song goes on, everything starts to gradually contract into a center bit by bit, and more instruments coming in like the delicate hits from the cymbals and drums and the keyboards make the sound slowly radiate further and further. gira’s voice among everything continues to get louder as the lyrics linger more and you get to have more chance to look at it, as if you’re looking at something in sleep paralysis or an asteroid collision or the trumpets in the sky; you know something’s going to happen, but you can’t do anything about it other than admire the detail of the present moment.

and then everything stops, a single pattern repeating until there’s one more strum of the guitar and all of the forces erupt, quickly spreading around and scorching the air with compelling emotion and filling your senses with vibrant stimulation when the moment finally comes. i watched an album reaction where the guy reacting to it said that the build up really wasn’t worth the wait, and although i can see why, to me i think it’s so so rewarding… it’s such a powerful moment, especially the drum work here which becomes the main driver of one of my favorite sections on the album. it channels this dynamic energy from the combination of human emotion and nature’s strength, and how commanding it sounds over the rest of the song while going in the same direction musically, along with the killer chime-like vocals and shrilling guitars brutally shining inside, culminating in this fierce and beautiful atmosphere that feels like the end of everything, depriving your senses from sheer power and only leaving behind your spirit.

what this song reminds me of the most is the mechanics that life has, like in terms of forces and what keeps it together in a structural and metaphysical sort of sense. i think this song is a lot about how strong the bond of love can be and how it can compel you to take even the most drastic measures and endure the most difficult situations to try to make the relationship last, but then just the idea of those actions of romantic pursuit and the way it's depicted in the song puts these additional layers of exploring how life works and going beyond love's powers. it comes into question a lot, at least sometimes for me... lines like the contrast between "one second in your presence (...)" and then "one second denied is a miracle of love" and "white light from a black sky is a miracle from above" to me feel really big on having to observe what life does; you have no control over it and sometimes you enjoy it and sometimes you don't, but then when love comes in, even in the most dire circumstances a way forward appears out of nowhere that you can act upon. everything that comes from taking love’s hand is a miracle of some sort, and you can take that for granted or don't, but it's strangely amazing how life works how it does. you can look at it in a twisted way and admire its lack of mercy, acting in the same fashion it does for eternity spreading pain and beauty equally in all kinds of places, and in general I think swans are a band which convey the depraved qualities of life into a sonic forms that have transformed so much over their discography yet still carry the same urges and desperation at full strength for as long as they have made music. i think everyone would use the word twisted to describe them in general, which is why i didn’t wanna use it that much, but it fits perfectly here!

when looking in the mirror, i wonder what the average person sees. i did some fake interviews for a stupid school final that i don’t really wanna talk about but while i was asking one of the interviewees about what she thought was something she noticed more than anyone else (the question i asked), she said music. in the middle of that tiny part of the conversation, i recognized that i’m far off from the average person when we were talking about personal quirks that we had and how that changed how we look at music… i don’t really take pride in the fact that i’m like that but it makes me think how differently each person views themselves from the next. most bathrooms are lined with monotonous walls and other than the shower curtains or toilet covers or whatever, your eyes lock onto the reflection in the mirror and then your mind can do whatever it wants with it. the image of you sticks in your vision and stings for a while after, and you don’t even need anything for that image to shape itself into your hardships or a depiction of your existential dread or trauma or whatever else that can just tease you; you can’t do anything about it because it just happens.

the mind is always wandering, and the directions it takes or what it stops to look at changes for everyone depending on the state it’s in or just what you value the most. there’s things that are common between people like the fear of heights or drowning but chances are there’ll always be moments where everyone else will look at you like you’re crazy and the only way you can respond is that it’s in your nature. and this happened because life or existence or whatever else you could call it forces you to be that way, just like it does to force everyone to be how they are for all of eternity. white light from the mouth of infinity just happens to be an example of that, a deep and vibrant imagination, among a thousand other words that couldn’t truly describe its magnitude, of someone’s own responses to the questions of why? life works in its twisted ways as it does.

every time i get to start this process again, i forget what the experience of listening to a new album is like… it was especially hard for this since it’s been so long since the last entry and the last two weeks of school were wayyy too busy for me lol. and besides, i wanted to make a good entry for a swans album which i think i did!! maybe :p the last time i listened to a new swans album it was with the great annihilator and that was in 2023 so it’s been a while for sure…

even though i'm not really into their music still especially when compared to how much my friend listened to them, but i think i admire them so much because of how uniquely what the themes of their albums are assembled into genuinely insane landscapes coming from the mind of gira and others and also cause of the fact that from listening to this album i've realized how thinking about life and the journey you take in it can be so horrible simply cause you're destined to endure it. after the fact, you look at it in a sort of lens where you can retell it in whatever fashion you'd like, but the experience itself has magnitudes more impact than any other memory especially when it comes to the worst feelings like being at rock bottom or envy or love. for some reason i've sort of just forgotten how to recall my past memories of laying in bed feeling worse than miserable like i used to always feel, especially during that year that was just a couple of years ago but sometimes feels like it's been forever and sometimes just three months. i could never imagine what gira has gone through to even have a tenth of a sliver of a thought to push himself to think of what it took to craft and play the sort of music that swans or his other projects have over the past fourty years, not just because i'm mentally ill and horrible at everything but cause it's just impossible to try to visualize since we can't see other people's memories and can only go off of description that just doesn't work – though for that, art serves a purpose.

sometimes i wonder how the same teacher i remember just over a year ago is doing now. i don't think he's dead or anything, at least i hope not, but those moments just pop into my head at random moments that make me feel like i'm never going to forget it out of both nostalgia and regret. this entry doesn't nearly match the same bleak energy that i adore whenever i try to relive that moment and end up being short with just a slight taste of it like the last few drops of water in a canteen, but maybe you could say it's channeled into the way i write and think about this album now that i've finally gotten to listen and write about it. life is behind how we feel about the same work of art, like white light from the mouth of infinity, and through the depictions of what is being told, however you interpret them yourself or however they make you feel, it'll always have a sort of significance that activates one of life's many forces, the act of feeling. and then after, the act of believing among many other things strikes you, and swans is really good at giving reason for that, whether it be about the things and people, old and young, i've encountered that have to do with it or the form that the art takes however it sees fit.

Brown Sugar by D'Angelo: 9 May⁂

life can feel like the overwhelming of a thousand vehicles driving on a single intersection at once while you’re the lone pedestrian just waiting and keeping track of the cars to find a way to get to the next street eventually. sometimes you just wanna relax from everything; life is always prone to being distracted with the next thing that swings by, and that involvement spreads to you and becomes yet another thing that tugs at your attention endlessly, whether that be the business of work or creativity or being in your own head… whatever it is, you just wanna get away from it all and relax somehow. so, in the place where all of your distractions also live and breathe and work, you find a place to stay. a bar, a club, somewhere you and others can just focus on yourselves and the much more rewarding task of getting to know someone that catches your interest. once you think about it, it seems a little weird, right? in the place that concentrates all your worries and distractions, in the middle of everything, like the eye of a big bad storm, are places where you can just let you and your body and mind show their best efforts for once and strive to just find and have fun. and when you get there, maybe it’s not just the establishments, but the block and places around them that alleviate the moodiness and encourages bringing your best to the game of company.

life picks you up and shakes you whenever it feels like it. it’s obvious to anyone that so much can change in short amounts of time, but you really don’t get to feel it or comprehend the scale of things until you realize it happens to you… and even then, you have to wait for it to come again to truly replicate and understand the true experience. random things can happen that create or break or mend or change things like relationships, and what makes these things occur can be in your hands or the opposite. but it feels like there’s a sort of path to everything, you know? something i’ve realized recently is that everything that you feel compelled to work on or look at or whatever is fueled by a sense of love, which takes many different forms and places of origin. the passion i have for things has many parts, sort of like the rainbow light that comes out of a prism, and one thing that love has a lot to do with is people, whether that be friends or spite or whatever else… and something that life does is play around with feelings at will. right now though, i wanna focus on personal relationships and stuff. ya it’s a super broad and universal theme, but there’s a lot of ways to express it and some ways an artist’s expertise can help their storytelling be relatable to us, like it’s speaking to us in a way that no other music or artist has, like it’s on the same wavelength. it’s also just cause i don’t think i’ve really been writing about music that deals with this kind of stuff soo why not try to expand on it now?? :P

while reading an article about brown sugar written for the australian abc (the album titled track), one of the interviewees, a hip-hop artist called dobby, was talking about his appreciation for the album and he used the word camaraderie as one way to describe what the hook of the song meant to him, which stuck out to me. it was really captivating seeing it and learning about its use; even though maybe it really isn’t that big of a deal to learn new words, there’s a lot of wonder in learning in general, and i think learning of this kind is just something cool since it’s a way to add depth into thinking and describing. the thing that made this significant to me though is how it was said along with black love and black partnership and black joy. to have unity in a large group of people who have been oppressed for a really long time is essential to revitalizing and giving energy and hope to a future with newfound freedoms, despite there still being many who choose to live in hate instead of love. i think that every black person throughout many generations shares many experiences that leave an impact on them, and from that there’s a mutual trust created between them that gives a cause to stand together in a plethora of ways in order to achieve great things, against the odds of those against them, no matter how long it takes.

and because of this, i’m glad that it was brought up in an artistic context because this is just one of the many ways of expression that camaraderie can be used to work towards. it means a lot to me too!! art can be a way of communicating many things, like activism or social consciousness or grievances or emotions and many more – it’s obvious but it’s so amazing since it’s an extension of words and thought that amplify the effect that something has on a person and then makes its spread and continuation as part of further ideas greater.

coming back to love, another thing that i’ve mentioned is how it as a catalyst for wanting to create art is always such a beautiful thing. i tweeted a small thing about this topic like a week ago; i said something along the lines of “there’s so much beauty in things made from love” and this is really another thing that many take for granted but it’s so important to realize how great of a driver love can be. different techniques and precautions, things you like the most, and whose personalities are depicted in the objects that are made and built upon in art in ways that mean something have significance to the creator that can then have their own significance in each person’s point of view, whether that be similar or different to the author’s perspective. what i’m trying to get at is that love is an immense act of caring about what the love is going towards! and it’s so important because it brings an artist’s vision to fruition in a natural way. to me, the personification of the lack of love in something feels cold and barren… having it is sort of like having a fuzzy feeling, a feeling where it feels purposeful. there’s so many directions you can take which sprout from your and others’ discoveries and lives. you just have to put in effort some way to realize that and then use the knowledge to take your next steps forward. this is what love for something motivates you do to. and that effort shows you care, compelling you to care about how you go about the process of beginning and taking care of art and how you treat it, your efforts, yourself afterwards.

now i wanna talk about why i chose this album as my next entry. i was originally gonna listen to music but then i decided against it… but i still wanted to listen to some music made by black ppl. i realized (probably over a month ago by now) that i haven’t really showed any love to black music on my diary and i wanted to try to at least do something about that so i tried to think about albums to listen to. when i went to the dmv for an appointment my mom had at the beginning of april, i listened to mercy mercy me for the first time and i thought it was amazing!! the multiple layers of pianos and their patterns became a vision of peace of seeing nature firsthand, the choir in the background lifting your spirits, acting as the personification of the plants breathing out oxygen and the animals living on their own. the snare is so poppy and fresh here; it sounds like a lot of things and i think it could symbolize a lot of things, like bubbles popping or the ticking of a huge clock. throughout the whole song, the bass lays underneath, but it can’t be ignored as its depth makes the song’s sound more expansive. maybe for this, it could be processes within the earth or feeling the terrain beneath supplementing this song’s journey observing nature. halfway through the track, the saxophone wails expressive and is really fluid with its melody. it sounds amazing along with the choir and strings swelling from the background and becoming more prominent as well; a somewhat small detail that’s used throughout the song are the bells which i absolutely love just cause of their calm and bright sound. when i used to play percussion for a little bit i loved hearing them even though it was sorta hard to play since there was so much you could do with using them as a way to decorate a composition, from being really strong to being sparkly like in the back of a woodwind driven section. the whole song just feels so pristine with how it was composed and it was so well crafted both musically and lyrically!!

hearing stuff that is so timeless even half a century later is just so mind-blowing to me… along with this song, one thing from the 1970s that i thought was still so relevant in the world was this book i read called deschooling society by ivan illich. this was back when i wanted to read stuff like flyboy in the buttermilk to see how i could improve my writing when it comes to stuff like my entries (and i still wanna do that but that’s gonna be later on…) it talked all about his critiques of public institutions like the school system and how they didn’t encourage the act of learning in a healthy and prosperous way, but instead the widespread belief of schooling built on obedience and the impossible goal of standardizing education for everyone.

one of the things that stuck out to me a lot was how he described what the thought was a better system of education for everyone. it was based on finding a peer who was interested in learning or discussing the same topic of you, no matter their background… and even from the word peer, you can probably guess that it reminds me a lot of how this is one of the many things that you can do on the internet today. i think that this was written with in person meetings in mind, but now we’ve even gotten to the point where we can hold these meetings on the internet through digital mediums like messaging and video conferencing services. being able to talk about stuff like this, where the future is emphasized as some way we can better what we have in the present especially if what the present is at the moment seems to be unsustainable in the long run, i think shows a lot of bravery foremost!! in the face of contemporary society, people can be so stubborn, ignorant intentionally or not, or scared because it takes bravery to challenge the ideas that have a lot of power like the school system or things like actually being aware of and taking care of the environment. to be honest i’m part of the problem too just cause i’m always scared to do anything… but reflection of the views in society and trying to come up with change is so important, and someone has to step up to try to stand for change eventually cause there’s always room for improvement in something.

after i listened to that song more times in the coming days, i realized that i barely knew anything about soul music in general and i guess that is what mainly compelled me to try to find a soul album that i really wanted to listen to. to be honest, i had the answer right in front of me!! but what made me choose a neo-soul album and skip its ancestor altogether? i think it was actually cause of didn't cha know by erykah badu… i don’t remember when exactly i first listened to it, but it was so infectious with how sizzly the cymbals, how sharp the snare was, and how beautifully the background vocals flowed and complemented her singing. the other melodic elements like the piano and deep bass were really soothing with how the pattern was constant throughout. from there i just looked for albums of the same genre to listen to. i didn’t wanna listen to any of the highest charting albums just cause they already were so popular… something i’ve thought about recently is about how after an album gets so many reviews and awareness, especially if it is super old like what's going on, i fear that writing an entry about it may be somewhat futile since a lot of what comes to mind has been said lots of times already, and i don’t wanna write that stuff for the umpteenth time since we already know about it and don’t have to put it into words especially when i don't really have anything new to bring to the table and it'll probably have been said much better when i'm finished anyway. i do try to make my entries unique in terms of how i’m writing it since i’m trying to write it from a personal perspective which includes other stuff i’ve been interested in, but i think it’s mostly an audience sort of thing since ofc i’m still listening to really popular albums, just not the most popular ones yet though…

additionally, as i’ve said i’ve been trying to work on how i describe and bring things up when it comes to writing about the significance to me of the music i listen to; even though i did say i kinda wanna stray away from writing about super popular music, i think that it is important to me as someone who likes both music and writing and is actually going to take on a role in journalism soon. i really like digging into more obscure works and music, and it’s fun to try to make sense of it as it floats around in my head because of whatever makes it unique. but i do also feel like it would be great for me to experience these more universally loved albums for a variety of reasons. there’s lots of resources like articles for me to look deeper into the artist and their music which encourages deeper connections and bring more topics of discussion, and it holds a frame of reference and foundation for many, allowing you to use what you know and the experience you’ve gained for things later on… these well known projects are influences for many, so you can use what you know to go off of when looking into works both of the same genre or category and others that are alike in different ways.

this isn’t to say that well known albums are better and i should prioritize studying them as if they will benefit me more of anything… some of my favorite entries that i feel have helped me improve the most haven’t all been about really popular albums (like asalto navideño and exai), although most of these entries have been of at least somewhat popular projects. what i’m thinking with this idea is that maybe i could look into these albums as a good way to build my knowledge about more common or broad and beloved genres since a lot of influence of future movements and sounds in music stem from classic, well known music. and from there, i can do the same and branch into other more obscure projects or further into a genre. this may seem like a really silly analogy, but it’s as if i would listen to beethoven’s symphonies if i had gained an initial interest in music and then i’d dive into more works, experimentation, and style whenever i’d feel ready.

i didn’t really get into slowcore as a genre in my last entry since i really just wanted to focus on red house painters and their unique sound. however, i felt that it’d be fun to look into neo-soul and try to get to know its sound more, and that’s exactly what i set out to do!! i really liked how it came out when it came to writing about madchester on my going blank again entry, so i wanna try doing it again here!!

the sound of neo-soul (calling it this for a reason i’ll mention later) was birthed with the goal of getting soul and funk up to speed both in spirit and in tune – in other words, making a contemporary soul using elements of that genre mixed with other singer-songwriter elements. along with that, though, it drew a ton of inspiration from hardcore hip hop as well, which along with r&b were the two most popular genres of black music in the early 90s. the themes that neo-soul was about included social consciousness as a whole, examining parts of society like racism and poverty, along with other parts of life like relationships and culture. these themes became prevalent within the genre largely because of ideologies having to do with black nationalism and thus expressing their views and beliefs of the society they grew up in. it’s like a genuine continuation of soul! hence the “neo”, i guess…

like last time, i found a “reputable” playlist, which was the neo-soul essentials playlist i found on apple music and just transferred to spotify. i really wanted to find another npr world cafe playlist but from the little searching i did there wasn’t really one like the madchester one. so i listened to the whole thing!! the thing about this playlist was that it was over 7 hours long though… if this was two years ago i probably would have listened to it all in one sitting but unfortunately i didn’t get to do that :/ instead though, i just put it in my daily rotation throughout the week and made my way through it until i finished it in order the first time. originally i really wanted to at least listen to a chunk of it while walking downtown, but the only time i went there, it was just a day or two before the huge flood and it was super windy at the time so i couldn't really do anything i wanted to.

like i did with madchester, i wanna describe the common elements of this genre’s sound that i noticed the most while i listened. it probably won’t be as good as it was last time but i can try!! as mentioned earlier, each song has a hip-hop beat as its main instrumental, with all kinds of instruments and styles in play, both live and electronic. something i wanna mention is that i watched a video about neo-soul in general which had a major focus on the soulquarians. the soulquarians and those associated with them were a huge force within the genre whom j dilla and d’angelo were part of. i’m not gonna get too much into it since it’d be cool to write about more extensively another time like on a mama's gun entry, a donuts entry, or another project of the like, but i thought it’d be cool to note since i learned a bit about them while trying to look into brown sugar :P producers like j dilla would go on to experiment and further push the sound of things like the beats of neo-soul, testing things that had to do with the rhythm like rushing the snare and crafting rhythms that few could imagine and even less could actually master playing. in contrast to elements coming from hardcore hip hop, the beat became the backdrop for the mellow singing in a sort of juxtaposition when compared to both the usual critical feelings of the former genre and its more minimal style of production. the vocals in neo-soul also diverge from how they sound in soul, with the lyrics being articulated differently along with the rhythm of the instruments and their pitches changing a lot more despite the relaxed tempo and overall more laid-back singing. they are lifted up through a bunch of different means whether that be the glowing embrace of choirs layered underneath either in sync with the main vocals or turning into a stream of voices along with the melody to (i believe) their own counter melodies; both are exemplified on put your records on and it’s probably done like this more often than not. there’s a lot of focus on the vocals and their effect since it’s like you’re building things to help support it better. the bass also establishes itself as a fundamental part of the genre’s sound with its prominent placement making it feel like there’s waves beneath your feet deep in the ground from its groovy and resonant sound and technique. a good example of this is on keep on movin', which has this repeating rhythm that is placed to where it’s not something that draws your attention immediately, but once you do start paying attention, it’s sort of rewarding and addicting to do so since it adds to the song in a careful, calculated way.

both the organ and the piano are used a lot in the composition of neo-soul songs; they can be either used separately or both can be used in the same instrumentation. because of the way the organ was made, including the pipes, it sounds sort of airy(?) and always has depth because they are always suspended. meanwhile piano sounds just like… well, a piano :p the piano’s sound is wider while the organ’s is more concentrated; maybe you could say the former is more brash or just rough than the latter, which just sounds cleaner and gentle, although using the word brash seems a bit harsh, but it’s what came to mind. a cool thing to note is that some neo-soul artists like d’angelo were inspired by their love for gospel, using elements of such not just with instruments like the organ but also others that have to do with the music itself like the theme of spirituality seen in soul and r&b. and another thing to note is sometimes songs would use digital instruments like synths and drum kits along with the live instruments, which d’angelo actually did a lot with his prowess in playing a variety of instruments both digital like his electric keyboard and acoustic instruments like most others used on the album.

i appreciate all of the choices the playlist gave me, and it’s great to listen to as well, but omg i really should stay away from listening to so many songs from now on… i do have a couple of favorite songs that i wanna talk about though!! one of my favorites was pretty wings by maxwell. the songs on this playlist range a lot in when they were made, and this one is a song that was made later on in 2009. right from the start, you can hear how important synths have become in neo-soul at this time, with them both carefully playing a part in setting the tone by playing brightly at the beginning as well as creating ambience throughout the song as smooth pads that take multiple forms. the super groovy bass brings everything closer like a sort of fog, above the cymbals and sharp drums and calps that embody the hip-hop inspiration (although these elements were more reserved than usual), and then above these things there’s a bunch of live instruments like the trumpet and sax that mix together with this confident sound most prominently along with the other assortment of instruments, even a tuba that shines most at the end where there’s this beautiful section that caps everything off from maxwell’s last singing.

my other favorite song on the playlist would be (lay your head on my) pillow by tony! toni! toné! this one was made on the other side of the spectrum in terms of when it was created, which was in 1993 :p i find this one to have more complexity than pretty wings and it works well!! it goes at a patient, relaxed pace, as if you’re in shotgun of a convertible while the singing rolls on through a starry urban night. flamboyant i think is a way to describe the instrumentation, and not in a humorous way but because of its expressiveness… the guitars have the sweetness of fruit or the allure of a cocktail, them adding their own flare creating their own melodies through strumming in reciprocation to the singing melody which comes back a bunch of times and is an absolute earworm. along with the main vocals, there are a lot of auxiliary vocals along with the main melody responding to the singing, representing the shine to the stars in a beautiful night sky. the drum and cymbal foundation here is still sharp, with the cymbals popping in a circular rhythm like cars and people passing by in the background, and the bass is somehow even more groovy and deep, moving from a staccato note to another effortlessly encircling everything else like the enjoyment you feel from being with someone you like. and i didn’t talk about this with pretty wings but there’s also a lot going on with the vocals too, with there being a lot of chorus parts and little auxiliary clips accompanying the main singing to cap everything off amazingly. everything in the song works together to lift each other up in unity, camaraderie, and of course love, making for a beautiful embodiment of these things.

these two songs among various others were songs that i instantly began to love after my first listen. nearly 20 years apart, both songs still express the fresh sound of neo-soul amazingly… well maybe you could say it’s not so fresh after that long but it still resonates with a lot of and yeah they have lots of things in common, and they share the same kind of subject matter (these songs do, i mean), but they’re about different parts of relationships, like different periods of time – one of fun and one of heartbreak. the way these topics are so well thought out and reimagined in beautiful ways… music made by all kinds of people, including black people, always have some sort of depth not within the song itself but in assessing its creation and what it’s all about and how it came to be, since music comes from the heart and their heart is you. the author is represented in the music, their processes or ways of coping or mannerisms or wants and many more thoughts seen in life and in fiction, and no matter the mood there’s steps behind creating art in general that when walked backwards lead to the life of someone and their emotions – the life of the person or people behind the art.

when it comes to neo-soul, i probably wouldn’t call the album an extension of the genre when it’s an early work and fundamental to the genre itself. one thing that i wanna note too when it comes to the cultural impact this album had is that it paved the way for the new kind of sound that the genre brings, but it wasn’t supposed to be labelled as being part of the genre itself. none of the really popular and influential figures used or coined the term “neo-soul” and it instead was d’angelo’s manager, kedar massenberg, who coined it as a marketing tactic. d’angelo even went on to denounce the labelling of his music as such while talking about his own evolution in music, instead distinctly calling brown sugar black music. i’ll probably keep calling it a genre to avoid being too pretentious about it, but i think it’s an interesting thing to know since sometimes the categorization of music to genres does kinda limit its perception… the way i see this is with the analogy that exclusively relying on categorization makes the art seem like it’s a mix between multiple factory flavors, like pepsi and some brand of ice cream, rather than it being its own flavor which has its influences but isn’t exclusively the product of two previously made things into one if that makes sense.

like a ton of songs of the same genre, if i had to describe this album in one word, it would probably be smooth. i mentioned this earlier but d’angelo actually was able to play a ton of different instruments, which he used to make up most of the instrumentation with live instruments. coming back to this, even though it isn’t necessarily “an extension of neo-soul”, however, it very much was an extension of multiple different genres like some parts of soul that you can hear along with other genres like gospel and funk added into the soup of music that he made. soul and funk were already on their way out by this time, so when a combination of these things like piano along with a sort of mellow hip-hop appearance when it comes to the drums, it was a sort of grand revitalization, painting on a new canvas and using lots of inspiration from elements of the old. (sorry i use this analogy a lot in my entries it just fits everything so much…)

brown sugar is a great microcosm of everything that goes on in relationships, from all the ups and downs to the different places to be and things to do and everything else in between. it’s super catchy, full of rhythm and patience with vibrant instrumentation coming together to make amazing replicas of what goes on in real life, as if you’re being put into the scenarios d’angelo lays out and now you’re asked “what would you do?” while the music gives you some advice that you find within these experiences. one thing that sticks out to me is just how masterful it sounds… like everything falls into place so well, every instrument’s purpose makes so much sense, i think it’s insane for a debut!! everything is covered in a chill, even a bit comedic tone at times like on shit, damn, motherfucker which is about a man killing his wife and the guy she cheated on him for after he found them in bed. crazy, right?? Uo.oU i love it though!! speaking of lyricism, his way with words, to simply put it, goes with the atmosphere of the songs and is just crafted so vividly. once the instruments get you to start listening in closer, like an enticing riff that starts a song off, he gets you to stay with the words to back it up.

i think that this album is a demonstration of the power and spirit that neo soul carried on to have. some cite this album as the beginning of the genre’s sound, and it does sorta feel that way. it feels like a test drive for experimentation of this mixture of genres, something that was played around with a lot in the studio until it sounded just right. it’s reserved not in a way that makes it feel unconfident, but as if it was just a taste of what artists would create from this album’s influence. it’s more so like teasing and holding its potential back, instead channeling that potential through the progression of the genre as more music was made :p

another world of a subject you find here is what i talked about earlier with black love and camaraderie. music is something that unites people, and i think you could argue it’s the thing that unites the most people out of any art form… from work songs and blues music to soul and disco, all of these have united people and made them want to become their best person in some way in association with others who enjoy the music with them. and everyone enjoys this liberty, as they should, but i think black music especially is really important since it is a medium embodying the feelings of black people through their lens and reimagining however they want. you can see this a lot with brown sugar too where it shares many experiences that relate to many black people made by a black person, and from that and also because of how well it’s crafted you see it played in random places, clubs to bedrooms and everywhere in between. and in those settings, people are brought together and collaborate for a common cause like partying and having fun as well as finding a better understanding of the world and the people they meet and see.

the last few songs have always probably been my favorite part of the album as it leads up to the triumphant closer higher, and one of my favorite songs on the album, cruisin', comes from here. it just sounds so rich, like condensed milk… the song starts with a shakers, the bass, and the string instruments that line up the skyline in the background throughout the song. d’angelo plays this really nice melody on the piano that keeps the pace while he’s singing and other voices sing with him at times like fireflies, and among the omnipresent bass there’s a sea of other instruments like the trumpet and sleigh bells that you hear during the chorus.

this song is super intricate… it’s a cover of the smokey robinson song of the same name, which was really popular itself too, and it’s amazing to see the reimagination of it into the more contemporary style of soul mixed with other things that d’angelo envisioned here. on this song there’s one of favorite examples of word play in the album, specifically the lyrics “music was made for love / cruisin’ is made for love”, which just make me think a lot about what people take away from lyrics that they really like. i always feel kinda dumb when i look lyrics up cause it’s hard for me to find out what the author is trying to say, even if it’s something really simple i kinda just don’t get it until after a while… for me, i was thinking something more complex but i forgot it, and now i’m thinking that one way you could think about it is something simple. i thought the distinction between was in the first line and is in the second was interesting, and since music is always in the past tense while we’re always in the present tense, i think it has something to do with how love is different for everyone but there’s thing that overlap for people, and this is talking about that overlap… those two lines were written for a purpose back when smokey robinson did in 1978, but i wonder if they mean something different in d’angelo’s eyes as the instrumentation transformed as well. or maybe some lyrics like these lines are meant to just be admired for how good they sound up front? you could make a case for both, but either way it’s really interesting!!

the next song i wanna write about is alright, the track that follows the opener in brown sugar. it begins with a small psychedelic string of notes from a guitar that carefully carries on playing throughout the song becoming part of its reserved but powerful backdrop. while the guitar makes its sounds like it’s bobbing its head back and forth, the whole song has this laid-back tone, from the sleigh bells again sprinkling the song to the keyboard that softly weaves in and out to add resonance to the melody, and even the bass and drums are sort of toned down here as the former sounds a bit muddied while the bass, still being the driving force it is, underlines the whole song including d’angelo’s voice which is as sweet and embracing as it always is. the chorus is also a huge highlight of the song too though, with it also being used a lot with the call-and-response technique along with creating this velvety harmony especially in the chorus while the main vocals are going at the same time that is so catchy! its composition is amazing, and with that what it’s about is amazing too… though it’s really simple, it’s just what the song is named after. it’s like it’s trying to get you back up to speed and after any rough time and remind you that it’ll be alright; although it’s about making up in a relationship, really it can be an anthem for people of anytime when they need to be reminded of such thing.

the way it’s so chill is what makes it sound so good to me… the rhythm itself is the embodiment of the word “chill” and so smooth, while the instruments are laid out in the sound like they’re just hanging out having a good time, and it does such a great job with being so evocative in just a romantic feel good manner while still being really precise with where the sound goes and how it all works together. and all of this it reminds me a lot of black love like i’ve talked about earlier!! love is complex and has so many different compartments to it, so many emotions and decisions, but i think at the root of everything even in the very best moments it’s important to try to keep your cool and remember that everything will be alright.

the last song i wanna talk about is higher, the closer to the album. d’angelo’s prowess in gospel shines here a lot… how it’s arranged reminds me a lot of it and not to mention the whole song is largely about christian love itself. it arrives with a tender intro that sounds like the anticipation before the big moment with a huge spotlight shining on it comes and then 4 huge booms before the cymbals close and everything falls into place in sharp attire. for the rest of the instrumentation, this is probably one of the most simple in terms of what’s in main focus… a highlight of the song is the organ which delivers its zappy notes in the terrain of the song in sync with the bass, something that’s prevalent in the album too but is especially important in gospel music which is why it’s really cool to hear it here. and then there’s the unique part of the song in the snapping that reinforces the sort of basking in the sun that the song feels like on top of the calculated drums and most of the other instruments. though obviouslyy what really steals the show are the truly choir-like vocals, which has this beautiful falsetto melody that no other song on the album could even come close to. to me it even sounds like they’re specifically in a semi-circle formation with the main d’angelo vocals in the middle and each person in the choir lighting up differently. it sounds so exhilarating!!

as an article i read about the album pointed out, all of d’angelo’s influences can be traced within the structure of the song, mixing r&b and soul among other genres that are seen in this experimental sound eventually with even more powerful elements not only musically but spiritually as well. religious music like gospel is a part of it that is really interesting and awesome to me because of how significant it is as a medium to communicate that kind of stuff. i think at a certain point, your experiences with faith sort of compel you to wanna pay back to whomever you believe in or the things you do while you’re seeking for the remedy that can only be found in spirit, and art like gospel music is a way to do this. this song is a beautiful representation of this kind of music, culminating in this super vibrant and well blended show of all the parts of the walk of life that d’angelo has experienced in musical form; i wrote earlier that these last few songs were my absolute favorite stretch of the album and this is nothing sort of an amazing and masterful way to end the album!!

i feel really bad for not being able to get this entry out for so long… and even then, i do feel like what i wrote probably isn’t enough to comprehend just how big this album is since really i think it goes beyond my understanding and i’m serious about that!! if you are looking for an album or just some amazing black music to get into in general, then i’d honestly implore you to look into this since it’s such a good album especially for the best times in life, but really you could think about this anytime since it’s like a living record of an assortment of different experiences from life.

Early Demos '91/'92 by Red House Painters: 30 March⁂

i celebrated my birthday on the 23rd! as you can imagine, it was just met with minimal celebrations from anyone outside of family, and that’s something that i don’t really mind as there’s not really a whole lot to be celebrated on days like these, at least for me… the last party i went to was a friend’s back in october, hosted at this huge mall. we walked around and did things like play in a scavenger hunt his mom organized for all of us and go to the local arcade. i rarely got to meet my friends in person, even when we all went to the same school together, and when we were separated from each other a couple of years ago, that likelihood became even smaller. so, as we grew more distant, first in person and then online, eventually reducing contact to a single friend and a couple of texts every month or more, i gradually retreated back to my room, doing most things solitarily since it brought me the most comfort by then.

being a girl who always lived in solitude ( a solitude girl :p ) has just become something of nature to me. there’s always a distinct warmth in that isolation that makes it bearable, enticing, and even preferable to the sort of busy afternoons where i stay with my mom and the rest of my family to keep them company. alone, in the time that’s allotted for me i can use for whatever i want that i have the ability to do in my room. it’s an intimate place, somewhere both my deepest and most normal thoughts and most of my favorite work and stuff takes place and originates in – intimate in the way that feels like home, a home where it feels useless to spend my free time outside of. after a while, it gets to a point where you start to find memories in your room nostalgic. nostalgia is a really powerful thing, a universal reason for longing as memories go from being a pillar of learning and reiteration to their secondary, much more felt purpose. a lot of music is about wishing that things could be the same as they were, and even though as of recently i’ve been trying to let go of these things sometimes you just can’t help but think about it.

i think for an emotional experience to stay with you, you have to press the right combination of buttons and make the right choices in that time to get something resounding out of it. “right” in this context wouldn’t mean correct, as there are a thousand different ways an emotion can develop and life is too unpredictable to decide on a long term thing that would be best from such a miniscule but still impactful contribution; it just means a way to get to the bank of that thousand ways.

when it comes to listening to an artist or a band’s music after i’ve listened to a release, demos are one of my favorite things to look forward to. i’ve always enjoyed seeing how the similarities shine and the many differences made for this song that, you could say, you feel like you’ve heard before, but in a different wavelength or a different world. normally demos only release through deluxes of albums or the spare lucky circumstances of them being released elsewhere, whether they be on social media or the album release themselves, but this album is fully compromised of demos… but i don’t think you can really call this an album anyway :p

red house painters has always been a fascinating band to me. their sound is really the main reason why; i remember when i first listened to rollercoaster, how it was sort of a pain to listen to. i don’t mean pain so much in an emotionally grating or laborious way, but it was more like i was pushing against a bike up a steep hill, and among the environment and sky were blurry, futile attempts to take my mind off of what i was doing, burdened by the physical and mental exhaustion of the weight, leaving me with empty cobbles of the failure of recollection that seemed to be otherwise easily attainable.

when i listened again, my mind was more refreshed since i listened to it the first time when i was really tired. i never get to have my sleep influence my listening experience (even for albums where it would’ve been cool to try, like time machines) just cause when i get sleepy i don’t feel like doing anything except being on my phone and sleeping… so i believe that was the main reason why it felt so jarring the first time, and once i did try again it became clearer and i enjoyed it more. as usual, after that i decided to move on and i didn’t think much of it until around a year later in september when i went into a little phase with the band. it started with medicine bottle, a relentless song full of the pouring of a single note of emotion, a single thousand meter high wave of the rush of a million emotions like fiber wires spanning the atlantic ocean. it was like looking into a second mind, with mark’s voice being the second mouth and starting to move with the ignition and fuel of resentment…

afterwards, i did relisten to rollercoaster and even listened to down colorful hills a couple of times… the album’s title track was another song that i was sort of crazy with; i won’t write much more about the songs themselves since they are both on this bootleg as well, albeit in a slightly different form just being slightly sped up. but i really liked that change honestly!! on this, it feels time’s slowing down when i listen to them, taking up 20 of the total about 90 minute runtime. i honestly thought the first disc of the album was longer than the second, but when i tested it out they were the same length :p they’re both songs that i still really like though, and funnily enough (this goes for most songs i like listening to), changing their pitch even slightly makes for a really interesting experience that breathes life into it in a really simple way. in hindsight, the phase wasn’t as huge and i didn’t listen to as much of their music as i had thought, but i thought about it for a second and then realized that’s sort of what makes it stick with me more… most of the playtime i had took place in a week or two, and really having a phase (i think you could call it being fixated on their music too) of listening to a specific band or artist’s music is really rare for me. all of it was sort of surreal too – it was like they clicked all of a sudden, after barely thinking about them for such a long time… their emotional impact still resonates with me. it’s slight, but it radiates and stings like fallout and it captivated me a lottt back then and it still does now.

listening to this album hit me hardest on my birthday. it’s not like what the songs are about relate to my birthday in any way, but instead i feel like it’s the overall melancholy feeling and the borrowing of each of these themes throughout. it feels like empathy; i’m not really an empathetic person (cuz i’m autistic), but music makes me feel things! sure, most of the feeling comes from just how good the music is to listen to and so i feel really good, but music that’s most profound always has the best chance of making me feel along with it while i’m listening. and the borrowing of these subjects kinda are like when faint memories that you treasure or maybe resent pop into your head randomly.

i feel like “faint memories” is a good way to describe this project. some of these you develop more than others, like how some songs on here are more fleshed out than others such as strawberry hill being a full song on rollercoaster that sounds completely different than it does on here while a million + 8 things was reused as an instrumental somewhere. meanwhile, you leave some others to rot, maybe cause you don’t like them anymore or maybe the best window of opportunity has left, so there’s not much point in continuing the dream of whatever it previously was. this is seen in songs such as headsore, which apparently was never repurposed in anyway. as a whole, however, all of these melodies have originated from a sort of emotional importance in your mind. they all mean something to you, not like the passing people or buildings in the background of your daily perspective but the things that you encounter in that same field of view. what you regularly go to and do can qualify as this, as well – but these are special things you may experience once or twice and want to feel again but don’t get to do so. they become memories the weight of a feather, but the significance of your pillow.

the lower quality of some of these recordings is something that you notice from the first listen. it gradually fades away as you get used to it, becoming less important after each listen, but every time i notice it again i realize that it adds to the music as well, intentional choice or not. i think the best way to go about explaining this is just to try to describe it in a couple of different ways :p one way i’d describe it is that it sounds and feels like older tvs and cameras and other tech. it reminds me a bit of watching movies on this tv my aunt gave us a few years ago. i’m not really sure what the technology is called, but both the tv and the music have the comforting static humming in the background, which yeahh is really characteristic of older music like this, but it’s just abnormal to me on here since it’s so much more prevalent cause these are just demos that probably were ripped from random places at random times…

another way you could describe this is like your voice being the only thing that you know is intact in a world where everything else is disfigured and distant from what you know. so, these songs are then a way of both journaling thoughts about the forced isolation that all the difference brings, leaving you unsure what to do, and a little bit of wondering what’s next for you… except you don’t really have much energy to think about that since the state that everything’s in feels so irreversible that it just feels useless to try to come up with any solution, so instead you just try to make the best out of what you have and continue what’s left of life from there.

also, as a result of the lower quality, the bass sort of fills the sound and resonates more in a fuzzy and messy way. it was a bit weird to hear it at first, but i got used to it and i feel like it’s a cool addition to what it sounds like, even if it’s slight. it feels kinda boomy, like just the shockwaves of an explosion, making it a little bit darker than normal – an orange lightbulb dying out and dimming itself in a room surrounded by the brown color of the wood walls of an attic or an old room.

though really, what it reminds me of most is how while you’re sweeping, sometimes there's little parts of dust and other little things left on the floor if you do it kinda weirdly. this is why it’s good to thoroughly sweep to ensure you don’t miss anything like that ( ofc :p ), but at some point you get so tired of everything that this sort of just becomes insignificant cause it really doesn’t seem like a huge deal, and the dust then accumulates quietly. whether you call this lazy or not is up to you; it’s a tendency that comes into play out of nowhere, unable to go away as a symptom of depression just cause of how easily it is to put things off. sadness has many faces, and what happens in scenarios like this is one of them: the messy outcomes that result from how malleable your mind is, murkiness from its susceptibility. both audio and visual forms of recording are able to deteriorate easily, so easily it’s as if the force of time itself was tearing it apart slowly… i’m not sure if that happened to some of these recordings, or if they just weren’t preserved that well or whatever, what i wanna say is that the music itself takes the shape of what it has been written to represent by its maker, and the way i think of this that early demos is a recreation of the depressing thoughts and the way life lives around mark and alike some of the thoughts that others feel as well, like me :p

to start talking about songs, unkle jo sort of stole the show for me when it comes to thinking about this bootleg. its simple downcast melody with the usual sopping amounts of reverb in both the instrumental and the vocals make for this amazing backbone that’s really infectious to me. i hadn’t realized this until now, but the selection of instruments that this band uses is really interesting as well. i meann it isn’t really that special compared to even some of the other music i’ve listened to in the last couple of months, but keeping that set of instruments used primitive and then filling in the gaps from there was done so well here, especially in this song. it feels effortlessly ethereal to me, like something that only comes to you in a reality you visualize for a second before it disintegrates just as quickly as it came. mark’s vocal performance here is also honestly one of my favorites in the whole discography i’ve listened to so far. it just feels sort of fragile and desperate which just makes it feel all the more personal. it strikes me as just wanting to share sorrows not particularly with someone, but really just wanting some sort of therapy or closure out of it in a way that you don’t expect but would make sense once it hits you. tbhh this sort of tone is something that’s pretty usual in a lot of what i’ve heard from this band, but that’s probably one of the reasons i like them a lot :p

having a dependency on a single person in your family when it comes to just living life can be really sucky. i feel like the connections and emotions felt whenever you’re just with family is really profound even compared to your friends or colleagues or others who you may like or dislike… most likely, they hold a huge presence with you throughout your childhood, and since these are years of development, what you feel about them holds a strong significance in how you develop and what you become. even if you just stop caring about your family before you move out (like i’ve mostly been trying to do), some sort of influence is still seen in you and a lot of that depends on what you wanna inherit or just what sticks with you from those years, and having just a specific person that you really liked in your family and maybe wanna do well in life for becomes a sort of goal in the back of your head that you strive for, whether it’s really a big thing or not.

another song i liked a lot was the lord kill the pain demo on the second disc. the release version of this was on rhp’s debut album, down colorful hill, and initially when i listened, i didn’t think much of it. one distinct feature that i remembered from that song back then was the guitar layer that was quiet but superposed everything else and moved along with the melody. listening back, it feels a lot like it’s a sort of mist lingering among the rest of the sounds maybe like a sort of poison that added to the song’s heavy and bitter feel; after this, though, i’m not sure if i even wanna go back to the released version :p something i found kinda weird is that most of the songs here do have at least a couple of noticeable changes, but the rest of the songs from down colorful hill which i mentioned earlier (medicine bottle / album titled) that are on here i can’t really tell any major differences to their album versions other than the change in pitch… i did like it a lot but i just found that fact a bit odd. but this version of lord kill the pain was really different and i actually prefer it a lot more!! to start, the composition feels a lot more open and the guitar rhythm especially gives me this feeling that i know that i’ve felt before when i’ve listened to music but i can’t really put a finger on how to describe it. it’s like a mix of euphoria and bittersweet, what the beauty in the feelings of depression feels like. something i’ve thought about is that there’s a sense of magnificence in wanting to die, maybe just cause of the spiritual significance of death? it’s something that i don’t really think about much nor probably would want to… there’s some people that are fascinated by death, maybe being compelled because of one thing or another against their will or not, and it’s really something interesting cause it can take the form of so many things and realize itself in so many places.

even though i didn’t mind the layer of guitar in the album version, i feel like this new, slightly drawn back approach makes it wayy more personal and i guess heartfelt, kinda like making it harder for you to look away but at the same time it’s something that you wanna hear and work on since it’s so essential to you. something that i also like about this whole project is that everything is higher pitched than a lot of the music i’ve heard from this band. ya i’ve talked about this a couple of times already, but i think they make these songs more lively and fit them really well, especially the parts where mark really sings and his voice hits the most for me. a lot of the reason why i like this song so much is cause of the lyrics too. on down colorful hill, this was really surprising to hear for me since it was different from the rest of the songs on there as it was simply more upbeat while still having the same mood of lyricism that’s seen throughout the rest of the album. here, the lyrics are the same, and it carries that sort of energy on early demos too, although i feel like more songs on here are less gloomy and draggy on average. i think a lot of the reason why is just cause it’s so relatable to how i used to feel; hatred was something that i felt for every little bad thing that i went through and it was hard to just control my emotions and not want everyone else to go away forever so i could navigate life my own way… and i meann i still feel like i’d wanna go off the grid sometimes, but i don’t wanna do it out of hatred anymore, since feeling that constantly might honestly be worse than being sad all the time (that also kinda adds to the sadness as well tho). it’s not good to just want everything to disappear, since that’s pretty much impossible, but this song’s set in this little world where these thoughts rock back and forth and they’re all toxic thoughts that you wanna think about cause nothing else makes sense to you. i only realized this was written ironically after some commentators pointed it while i was looking for this song on youtube and honestly it makes a lot of sense cause it’s making fun of this part of depression and it’s done really well but at the same time it adds these layers of shame both cause of the subject matter and knowing that these thoughts are really dumb but you just can’t stop it.

i think the last song i’ll write about is million + 8 things. this is one of the more popular demos on this project among those who have heard it; it’s really really daydreamy and that by itself makes it stand alone among the rest of the songs. i’ve seen people wonder about how and where this could fit on either down colorful hill or rollercoaster, and it’s fun to think about that along with other songs like headsore and waterkill (which i’d like to say are great too!!), but i feel like this is so different from everything else that it’s a bit to see this on the latter and even more so on the former :p at the same time though, i'm not sure if either album's sound was really fleshed out yet, soo i think this song could've definitely had a different fate in another timeline, and besides that doesn’t mean i don’t think it’s cool of course!! i thought it was really sweet and calm and i liked what it was about; really, it’s very simple, just about journaling about someone and that special subduing feeling that makes you think about them all the time, and i admire it for its simplicity cause it’s also different in the way that it’s not very sad but bittersweet and sort of endearing. of course, most of rhp’s songs are just wayy sadder than this so i liked that difference as well U^ ^U i remember when i used to write in a diary a long time ago, just writing about the dumb things that happened in my life and stuff like that… it was fun but also a pain to write in since it became painful to write so much after a while. now, i really just like to keep stuff in my head most of the time. i definitely wouldn’t call this journaling, since i’m not keeping anything on record by writing it down (which kinda sucks tbhh), but it’s fun since i can bounce around in my thoughts really quickly and ofc i can just do it whenever i want. sometimes it’s fun to just be in your head since you can just gravitate around a topic you’re obsessed with and think what seems like a million thoughts about it and those develop more and more as you go on, sort of like writing a story or going on a continuous path. it can be a pain to be stuck in your thoughts too, but that’s just part of life – something i’m now willing to embrace after what i’ve gone through!

i saw a youtube comment about how this bootleg feels like something that’d be rumored but never be released or found and it really does feel that way at times… it feels like a huge grail, filled with so much interesting material that adds a lot to the world of rhp in terms of perspective which i love. there aren’t many things that are considered lost or unknown that i’d really wanna listen to or try to find, but having some sort of remembrance that is about them and sprouts memories about all kinds of things i think is really important in general since from anything something can be gained and built. and i think that’s one of the many cool, magical things about human nature; both the development and the finality of things can contribute to how we are, through our thoughts and experiences with those things which vary a lot between each person, even and especially in the worst of them. listening to rhp takes me back a little bit to those distant but familiar times, both those i remember and others which maybe didn’t even exist at all, and they take these things and apply them to a land more enjoyable, which is an embodiment in music whose beginnings are shown here.

Time Machines by Time Machines: 10 March⁂

i’ve gotten my hands on a couple of research papers about cybernetic and generative music that i plan to start reading soon. it’s for a couple of albums that are down the road which i’ve been looking forward to looking into since like the start of the year… throughout the past couple of entries, i’ve been trying to find ways to just make my writing better, as people often do and probably should xP and while some of the different techniques i’ve tried out like differences in grammar and changes in the outlook of what i’m listening to, i think learning more about what what i’m listening to is about and the inspiration behind it, if i can get a grasp of it, is probably one of the best things i can do.

to be honest i probably won’t do that much for this album since admittedly, i’ve been super lazy lately UT~TU but i think it’d be a huge help in general, especially when it comes to creativity. what i mean by this isn’t necessarily that i’m gonna be looking into the artist or band themselves and their music and stuff, but that i want to look into more of the subject matter or into the album’s composition and conditions as i kinda hinted at previously. whenever i write my entries, i want to focus on writing about things that come from my imagination as a sort of log for the things that what i listen to makes me think as a writing exercise. even though i am currently working on my ability to write about real world things seriously in academia, actually writing critically about things stresses me out sometimes, which is why i wanted to do something else when it came to writing about music. i will admit too that i make sure to warn people who come by to read my stuff to be wary about how they feel about my writing, since i mostly just write stuff on a whim and cause i don’t really like the negativity that comes from music communities… i’ve been trying to tune all that negative energy out as of recently. y’all shouldn’t even get mad at me for these anyway!! there’s always something better to get mad at anyway lol…

but that’s not really what i wanna focus on right now!! there’s some reasons in particular why i’m choosing to be interested in academic sources (most commonly papers) instead of larger forms of literature like books. ya you can probably tell that it’s cause it’s been getting harder for me to read books as of recent; early works has had a tremendous impact how i go about my daily life, but i’ve barely been able to read it just cause of my tendencies like usualll :/ however there’s more than that, since it would be silly to go from something that requires deep thought to stuff that could seem more boring just “cause” of that… after all, when’s the last time you’ve read a thesis?? well, i think something that draws me to them is their vulnerability compared to other things that people write, i guess as in emotionally.

of course, theses are written based on what you are studying in university, and this can be a really really lengthy thing which allows for the observation of the breadth of your understanding about what you’re studying as well as your technical ability to comprehend, analyze, and find conclusion about whatever you’re looking into. in addition to that, just writing about something that is as important to you as what you’re majoring in would at least make me want to make sure i get everything right, and i think you could probably notice this as well if you look into it hard enough. academic writing is probably something you think of as a really deadpan medium of writing despite its importance (hence probably its ability to communicate information), but there still will be all kinds of quirks that you find within each person’s style of writing, some that you gravitate towards more than others.

and i think the curiosity that comes from the way that vulnerability makes me feel the same way i feel when thinking about different albums to look into. art is your place where you can express vulnerability in many different ways, both explicitly and when it comes to how the artist creates the art. it’s this sort of visceral feeling that can be difficult to point to when you look at something, and this feeling is extraordinarily relatable. after your first view and reaction to what you found, it sticks in your head and you ponder it for a while, maybe finding meaning to what you saw, connections to other things that you feel are close in resemblance or structure to this art, or maybe instead you get even more of an incentive to look deeper into what it truly means, whether that be through the artist and their perspectives or the creation of your own interpretation.

time machines is an album that incited this kind of reaction i’m talking about, sprouting just from its presentation and my curiosity growing as time passed on. coil is a band that i think is well known on rym, but i never really looked into them prior to this album. i have written in my diaries about how much i’ve loved album covers in the past, finding them really interesting since i think that they are an essential part of the creative responsibility and tasks that come with making an album. even though i don’t really like to talk about them much, since i feel like it’s a topic that becomes kind of a low hanging fruit to mention when i want to talk about the music (i don’t mean to be disrespectful about it, but that’s just how i feel), time machine’s cover was unique in that it was especially important in making me really want to listen to this album.

for albums with so little tracks, like this one, i stay away from listening to the material since listening to so much of the album in one preview would kind of ruin the element of surprise for me :P also, even though i am kinda driven by my “journey” into discovering new drone music, and this album was likewise unique in the way that it was primarily categorized on rym as “drone” and just drone, which is something that you don’t really see often… that definitely wasn’t everything that i thought about. i had this album on my backlog since the start of the year, considering pushing it back further as i listened to other things and found new albums to be interested in, but every time i saw the album’s name on there, or i thought about it, the first thing that my mind went to was its cover. it’s super imposing – a single infinitely dark and empty ellipse in the center of an empty, beige landscape that to me looks like sandpaper, envisioning an invisible roughness that comes from the endurance, possibly it running over all of your skin at once. and it’s true that the first thing that came to my mind when i saw the cover was a black hole, or maybe a void, but maybe instead it’s the imagination of deception, with the coat of a thousand ugly feelings blended with the slightest touch of roughness from outside in the otherwise lack of texture but instead a gradient that makes its burn too easy to feel. here, you can feel vulnerability itself as well. it’s in both the messaging, the feelings of creation that the illustrator condenses onto a single canvas, invisible yet so visible if you can find what it is, but also in terms of feeling; vulnerability is a strong strength, and a strong weakness. vulnerability is flexible, and that can help your best interests, but what if this flexibility ends up being too much to endure, and too easy to manipulate into the worst of things?

this album is many things: strange, elusively so; relentless, confined by the limits of the its fuzzy potency; the embodiment of reshaping both reality and fiction to create a grotesque recreation of the highest magnitude of isolation and despair in sonic form, something so simple to chew yet so onerous to digestive; or maybe hypnotic, maybe enough so that it can tantalize your desires, sweeting reducing you to a single frequency. it does all of these things at once, and you feel the accumulation, but you only realize it one step at a time since the process is beyond comprehension (you feel one thing but taste another). it’s a kind of radiation that is more than physically harming, kind in the way that it doesn’t let you feel these things, but instead its versions of purgatory that are infinitely thick notes that span a touch longer than the entirety of time itself, their dissonance and the songs being overall containers of them. it’s unable to be dissected into different parts with how distorted and mixed every element of it is, instead just being a soup of things that’s so cold it itself goes into a cycle of scorch and frost from the exhibition of hyper and hypothermia; but all of these things you can’t tell if you’re for or against it, as your emotions are rendered useless and replaced with the translation of the materials into mental signals, freely rearranging you without orchestrating a single thing, because this is itself.

maybe it’s like the total yield of a string of characters which have no meaning at face value or a painting which has a thousand meanings using familiar pictures that suggest just one, but in any way it can be described, i think this album is pretty astounding in its entirety. i remember hesitating for a little while before i started listening to the album for the first time because i had no idea what it would even be like… drone is such a versatile genre with every texture you could think and forget welcome, and even with the descriptors on rym i probably still wouldn’t have gotten close to the actual sound without listening first. even though its staticity throughout may underwhelm some people (i wouldn’t call it simple but it’s not the most beautiful or complex sound either, qualities that are more conventional to focus on), it was something that brought me in from the start. obviouslyy drone as a genre is very repetitive, and i think this album is a great showing of how lengthy that repetition could be and how it could be utilized, with its dynamics that are as brutal yet graceful as a replica of a feather’s descent, but it’s done in a way that i’ve never heard and feel like i’ll never heard again, but i can’t put a finger on how and i think that it fits this album a lot.

i don’t think i could remember a time where i could say music or anything else in life was hypnotic in some sort of way, since i mostly just feel the same feelings of things getting stuck in my head that i may enjoy or not and then it’s super amusing to listen to but then it wears off after a little while and the cycle repeats. or maybe there’s not much of a reaction from it. even in other drone music i can’t really say i’d describe it as such, since i think i’d more so just describe it as consciously moving along the flow of a stream instead. but i think time machines is different in the way that it is the first thing that genuinely felt hypnotic to me; in this regard, i think instead of moving along the stream it’d be more like becoming the stream itself, or becoming one with it. i don’t always feel this every time i listen to the album, but if i get a chance to get really into it then it’s super super effective with that. maybe hypnosis is like the structure of one thing fluidly breaking apart and then melding itself together into thoughts using a replica of the coating of your usual thoughts. it replaces itself into something familiar, something easy to grasp with a nearly infinite amount of possibilities in what could be encoded into the thoughts.

telepathine was a song that reeled me into the album’s landscape in an instant. i think a good way it connects with the name “time machines” itself is that it – and really the rest of the album – captures the emotional whiplash behind the travel that seemingly has nothing to it because of how easy it is, and how it shrinks down the passage of time itself into a miniscule rolled pathway that can be traversed in a blink of an eye. in (media), imaginations of time machines are mostly portrayed to function in a very short time; maybe this is for watchability’s sake or some do believe that a real time machine would function that way, but a large question about this process is how it would affect the space it inhabits and the person who is using the technology, and how those two will end up after the process is done. i think this could be like an interpretation of the pouring of the energy that is transferred in said process then encoded into the format of sound from another format, whatever that may be. ( and from this, one question that could be posed is if emotions are energy at all and can be “translated” as such? they begin from the plane of your mind which i’m not sure could be considered energy or matter at all but then it contributes to actual transfers of such, so i’m not sure what you could call it… )

doet/hecate continues the sound of bleakness with a constant repetition that kinda sounds like mechanical croaking. it does feel like somewhat of a continuation of the previous song, but it’s as if some of telepathine was split into multiple bandwidths and it diverged further until it desperately enveloped what was in its path. all of these songs warrant description in the form of personification in some way, except i’m not really sure what the silhouette of its sound would look like, instead just treating it as a foreign object or one even without a look. or even without a sign or an object, however that would work, with their effects being without a way to attribute them, without a plausible source or explanation. its limbs are still able to reach you, but there’s no beginning to them, no gradient to signal change in product.

and with this, i think that these patterns have the ability to take whatever form they’d like at any strength they’d like, using the more than liquid consistency of emotions to its advantage as both a sort of spiritual fueling and a thing to fidget with to its liking. you could say that the length of these songs are extreme and i probably wouldn’t disagree with that but i don’t think it’s to the detriment of the album since it becomes this really captivating experience which toys with the human ability of attention itself and i think is a huge reason why it is able to be as hypnotic and shape your perception as much as it can. it goes beyond stopping at how much someone could possibly care, making for an experiment of how long could go by with a tone, something so simple and such a tiny building block of other songs and playing with the mind the slightest bit and going beyond that to see what happens.

afterwards comes 5-meo-dmt and i instantly knew this was going to be my favorite track as i heard the careful ascent into the rapid phasing of the music’s waves begin to sound… honestlyy i think this is the track that takes the longest to get into its minutes-long core despite its length – each song has this but there’s not really much build up that leads to it, unlike this song. the first thing i thought of was the descriptor of crystalline, as its structure felt extremely rigid and smooth, maintaining the trope of suspending a single idea into the hands of infinity and making its progression one with itself. i forgot to mention this earlier, but another thing that this album does differently is that it utilizes the binaural playing field a lot, allowing the music to spin around and play at whatever parts it wants to create even more intimidation and immersiveness from their placement. i will admit that in music, this is taken into account a lot since artists will mix parts of the music to play in different parts of the surrounding space of sound (the imagination of such), like slightly to the left or to the right, or exclusively one of those sides. however, time machines relies on this heavily and it goes full force when it comes to using this, which is shown as the tones fearlessly rotate and bend around the listener countless times to add another layer of emotional manipulation and disorientation, teasing you as it jestingly and intentionally (plays with) your increasingly malleable brain.

the gargantuan closer psilocybin ( i like to call this one indolol too cause of just how i find that kinda cute xP ) to me is an amazing depiction of negative, lengthy feelings like dread and exasperation rolled into a line of music that solemnly explains its existence to you in a meticulous manner that you can easily understand but can’t comprehend how it’s doing so in the first place. it is the last moments before the end of your journey, the meeting with these higher than supernatural, extradimensional beings that are beginning their last phase with you – not with your life, but with your mind and soul, forever changing your being in familiar ways that are attained through impossible means.

the song is composed of two phases, the second compounding on the first and somehow becoming even more frightening than before. a deep swath of stark teeth pulsating in an exigent manner, changing the result of each of the album’s feedback loops with the same rusty framework that will be the one to use for the next million years, encouraging the amplification and flourishing of the larger and smaller effects that make it worse and worse as you experience it more and more. it persists and ends, not with an immediate alteration of the outside or anything else but you, or even you in a normal sense, but subtly changing things about you that are not easily perceptible, at a level above chemical but before the logic of different realities and objects themselves. both the song’s fabric and you beg simultaneously, one unconsciously and the other knowingly, one desperately and the one in control, in a useless attempt to deceive because it has already accomplished what it has wanted to accomplish, only further developing all it’s ever wanted with the time it has left with you.

something obvious that i realized early on is that all of the songs are named after different psychedelics… it was later on that i realized that each song was designed to be like a reimagination of their effects as well, but unfortunately i don’t have the experience to give an answer on how well they represent them or the ability to listen while under their influence Uu.uU however, something i think that’s cool is that these songs could be the closest thing that someone could get to experiencing these effects without actually consuming them… their excellence in reconstructing the hypnotic properties, as if they extracted them from the psychedelics themselves and put them in the music’s formula, is really effective in emulating these emotions. the songs are much more mysterious, full of hallucinations that derail from what they truly are, and many other things that give you a vague pointer but nothing more to what is going to happen when you listen and what will come after. i think this is probably similar to their real life experience too, a nearly indescribable, unique experience that comes with the unlimited ability to toy with the mind in ways that not a single person could think to do.

i imagined describing time machines was gonna be difficult, and i’ve been thinking about better ways to write in my diary, soo instead of majorly trying to describe what it sounds like, i just wrote what came to my mind instead. that’s kinda why it seems to meander a tonnn, but i think that these encapsulate some of the being of the music in an authentic way as well, although they are probably still not very well written, but that’s okay :P it’s kinda like telling a story in real time, and so are the songs, however the progression of the story and of the thoughts become really distorted and go in all sorts of directions, so you have to pick one since that seems to be the right option and continue from there. you use the general idea you have in your head about whatever you’re thinking about, and you keep building on that, just like any other story, but it just gets messier and weirder and there isn’t really a decent ending in sight so you just stop where you are – or at least you should.

Immunity by Jon Hopkins: 25 February⁂

after writing and spending so much time with exai, at this point moving on to the next entry feels kinda difficult to do. the second half of the school year is something that i’ve noticed is exceedingly quicker than the first half… i haven’t thought about what makes it so – maybe because the start of sports leagues is the slowest part, or the trouble of getting used to the swing of things in school again, or maybe the change in seasons to fall and to winter slow down time, or a bunch of other things… whatever it is, waiting for the right time in the right conditions, in these conditions, isn’t really the best option for me since i’m so damn lazy!! so that’s kinda why i’ve been wanting to push myself for this entry, along with some other things :P

there’s not really much of a backstory about my discovery of this album… i do remember that i found it in this hugeee playlist that had all kinds of different music that i found searching for studying music. but that was a while ago, and i listened to open eye signal once, and i didn’t really think much of it – of course, it was still nice, but i barely remembered what it sounded like, and so i didn’t feel like i wanted to check out the album in the future. however, the reason why i’m checking this out is because of my last review. prior to choosing exai, i had actually chosen and listened to immunity for around a couple of days before i decided that i didn’t feel like listening to it then; besides, i found out that a copy of exai was coming to the library as it was listed in the library’s database, but i couldn’t check it out at the time. i was wayy more curious about that album soo i ended up prioritizing that album instead, promising myself to return to immunity after i was done with exai.

soo i’ll start here… it is really cool!! every song (thematically and literally) leads into one another and it makes for this experience that you could describe in a bunch of different ways but i think what this album kind of goes for is a sort of intimate feeling. the songs light up with the same atmosphere that stuff like orange streetlights bring at night, or really a lot of environments filled with dim artificial light. at its core, the music is tender, but it’s structured so elaborately with so many things clicking and connecting with each other, which is seen in how the music just feels and breathes. strings of yarn keep the music together, and if you try to touch the yarn itself it will be soft. however, what you touch is just one tiny piece of the gargantuan machines of the music, larger than any wall or canvas than can attempt to withstand the sound’s picturing. one thing i admire a lot is how meticulously constructed and drawn out each movement are, as the songs themselves and the changes in dynamic within each song, and how immediately obvious this realization is. it feels as if each buzz and each instrument and each chunk of music were planned to have a purpose, contributing patiently to what comes next. you really can’t ignore the amount of detail and polish that can be heard here… it all sounds so clean and refined. at times the music can get emotional, whether it be savage, frail, or restless, but it’s all so dignified that it manages to control these within the structure of itself while also being able to elicit these emotions in a stronger way. this level of creation from what seems like so little makes for a novel experience that i can’t think of anything to relate to, it really is great!

but the thing about all this is that it just doesn’t really captivate me that much. it’s not that it’s not interesting by itself, since there’s so many great things that can be said about the album, but all it boils down to is that i don’t feel anything when i listen to it. every environment i’ve tried it in, whether it be in deep concentration like my school’s library reading a book along with it, to listening while working or in the background of random games, it’s not really had much impact on what i was thinking or how it was feeling at the time. it wasn’t even like it annoyed me at times either, since its company was really nice and it was good to listen to, but it just stops at that for me… and while i do admire music that sounds good to listen to, i base a lot of my rating and general enjoyment of music on emotions and how it makes me feel. for me to truly enjoy music, it has to pique my interest in sound and feeling. it’s a shame cause another thing i really like about immunity in general is that the whole composure of the album feels so gripping, yet i guess that grip doesn’t really fit me as well as it does for others. it isn’t the album’s fault nor is it detrimental to the actual material of the album itself; it really is just a me thing UT~TU

however, like every album i listen to, there was an overall like theme that i thought of that goes along with the music. while thinking of things to write about, i also did write a couple of notes down like i did for exai as well, and i think my favorite thing was that this album makes me think of the remaking of a creation and a destruction of a world made from nothing. visualizing this depends on how you think of the creation of a world itself, whether it be something material like a big bang for example or something else truly from nothing. this world is then rearranged and then unarranged, which is represented in the music’s progression and dynamics. every element is tangible and is used or not used in however fashion is shown on the songs. these particles are tangible yet they seem to run out of your hands whenever you keep them in for too… when they do so, like grains of sand blown by wind, they aren’t rearranged, but instead just disappear. this kinda ties with some of the stuff i talked about philosophically before (form, arrangement of propositions, etc. etc.) but it is much more materially focused than logically so. to be honestt it was a fun exercise thinking about what binds reality together metaphorically, which then translates into physical binds and links and stuff, really for the fact that it encompasses everything and i hadn’t thought to think of the world from such a miniscule, invisible perspective… i think i always just think materialistically or maybe spiritually more of the time, which makes sense but it definitely is important to look from a “literal” lens as well!!

one of my favorite songs from immunity is open eye signal, the song that fully sets the scene after the opener that leans a lot into next. what i like the most about this song is how easily it can reel you in with the slow and dramatic rises and falls throughout, especially in the centerpiece synth which has this really catchy rhythm. you can tell that it’s a slow burner, but it’s like that burner’s already up at a scorching temperature and it just keeps getting hotter. this is a bit of a silly analogy, but whenever i listen to this it feels like the drums, kicks, and static (sizzles) are all like the pops and heat of the song, and then the synths are like the steam that comes out :P like i said earlier, this album is super gripping, and this song exemplifies it… it feels so tense and so tight that it feels like it could grab you in a chokehold and you’d instantly faint. but even though it’s so rigid, it still flows effortlessly and so easily, through your ears and through your mind!! it is such a compelling song, built and arranged in seemingly such a simple yet effective way, with so many different parts to the crystallized form of this song you could take a look at a section of it and notice a plethora of different things that both are individual and work with before and after in the music.

the other track i wanna talk about is sun harmonics, which is the descent before the tender outro that is immunity. i’ve mentioned how excellent the stripped down production is executed on this album a couple of times, but i’d say it shines the most here. it feels like you can see the song and how it slowly develops, but the song’s image spans the entire dimension you’re now floating in, giving color, texture, and substance through just one complex medium. through this, you can hear the song at the same time as well, but it’s the only thing you can sense – the only thing you can feel and touch. for the music itself, the pads continually change in texture, but it feels as if they all have the same direction and are pursuing the same thing. it’s irresistible, so well done and compelling!! i hadn’t really heard of microhouse before listening to this album since i just hadn’t really looked into much house at all, but i think it’s really innovative and interesting since it’s just another way of challenging yourself through making a general style of music using different materials. it’s like using a certain framework or type of framework to create something at a different scale or with different materials. as funny as it sounds, it kinda reminds me of doing little experiments like building a tower out of spaghetti in school… although that can be a replica sometimes but i think it fits too since you’re trying to use the same architectural principles to build something that can stand up. the entirety of this entry has been kinda silly honestlyy but that’s kinda what i want at times as well since i don’t wanna be serious and pretentious all the time you know?? :P

immunity is yet another great album that i’ve found on my journey of finding cool music to read and just relax to. i’ve listened to structures from silence a bunch of times recently and it’s reminded me a lot of why i’m so interested in this little “mission” even though i’m not really committing to it or anything… i’m just going through my backlog right now :p as for my enjoyment of the album, it wouldn’t be fair to say that i think it’s hopkin’s fault to any capacity that i didn’t like it as much as i’d hoped i did, because that’s not true at all!! it’s definitely a great album, an unmistakble force that uses its resources and runtime well, and it’s great that many other people see that too, it just hasn’t really clicked with me emotionally. but it may do so in the future, and it would be cool if it did, cause liking all kinds of stuff is cool! U^ ^U

Icedancer by Bladee: 16 January⁂

winter has always been my favorite season of the year. while i’ve never really put much thought into the initial question, seeing as i kinda relegate it to being unimportant because of it being a very drawn out process the earth goes through all year every year (maybe wrongly so), i still think my answer to it makes sense for who i am and have been. i like the cold a lot more than the heat, especially their extremes; the festivities and things that go on and i’ve enjoyed throughout my life like school (it keeps me busy but i don’t like it anymore); the excuse to stay inside more and the potential for snow days, like what’s happening right now with the huge snow storm that came in at the beginning of this week… i just feel like it has fit me a lot more than any other season throughout my life. of course, as of recently maybe i could reconsider if another season fits me more, maybe because of how i love the breezes of fall or how i can’t stand hot chocolate (i just can’t drink hot beverages in general U>_<U) – examples of how malleable people are as they grow older – but i feel that no matter what, winter fits me more than any other season does.

after writing my entry on asalto navideño, i was looking forward to finally writing my first entry on a rap project, but it took me a tiny bit to decide which one i was gonna take on first. most of the music i’ve discovered over the past at least year has been from me browsing rateyourmusic or maybe finding other albums that people like who have found them probably because of rym as well… while you can definitely find tons of rap and hip hop projects on there and i’ve rated some and found some others, i’ve been wayy more into rock and drone stuff. discovering lots of cool rock music like invisible and sprain last year was really awesome and i can’t deny that it’s helped me massively and has had a positive effect on me, i haven’t really shared the same love as i have with some of the other rap stuff i’ve found during the year. i still listen to a lot of it, ranging from genres like chicago drill to some plugg, and i started off listening to a tonnn of digicore and of course i’ve recently fell in love with tek lintowe (hopefully i can get to balance eventually), but beautiful guitars have taken my world by storm and i don’t think i’ve really written much about rap projects on rym… so i wanna at least mend that a little!! since i still do have some rock, jazz, droney, and some other stuff i’m looking towards writing about as well, i’m not gonna be able to really have a streak of rap projects ( this is the umbrella term i’ll use for this entry since idk what would be better) i write about and look into, but this year, along with a lot of things, i wanna work on that since there’s lots of cool projects that i don’t wanna leave waiting! :>

since it’s the wintertime, i figured it would be a great time to listen to icedancer. i’ve never really been all that festive to be honest, or even really cared much about the seasons to where i use it to help me with what i wanna work on next, but i figured since i already did something festive, i continue with the theme of snow since it would be fun! alsooo on the anniversary of the mixtape, a bunch of insta accounts including the trash island label’s account might’ve teased the release of an icedancer cd… i found out about it when a tweet by @dailybladee on twitter just had the picture of the apparently never before seen ( i think :o ) cd that was shown on the trash island post. i freaked out a little because it looked super cool and i really just like the whole presentation of the mixtape so it getting a cd release for the first time would actually be really cool!! when it comes to collecting cds, one of the main reasons why it’s not larger than it is right now is that most of the ones i buy are projects that i actually like or have at least listened to. my first cd, melt my eyez see your future by denzel curry was an exception to this, and while it was a really cool experience to listen to an album i didn’t know about for the first time on a cd player, i’m admittedly really stingy with my money and so if i ended up not liking the album, i would’ve been sad xP because of this, whenever i find out that an artist is going to release physical music (or at least teases it), i really wanna listen to the music itself before i buy it!! of course, i can’t remember the last time i actually went through with this, but the photo of the icedancer cd was another reason why i wanted to get to it!!

bladee of course has been someone that i’ve known for a little while now… i can’t exactly remember how or when i first learned about him, but i’m pretty sure i remember who introduced me to him. i’ve talked about her once or twice on my diaries before since she definitely had a huge role in changing my music taste by introducing me to soulseek and gatekeeping (i don’t rly do this anymore tho) and there were some artists that she liked a lot that we both talked about like octi and others i found out about indirectly like tek, but the artist that was probably the most popular would be bladee. it was really fun talking to her about music! i remember we both talked about artists that she listened to a lot and ones that i listened to a lot, and i think we definitely did exchange a decent amount of music with each other, but back then i was still bad with following through with listening to the projects that my friends recommended to me and this included bladee. i remember that she mentioned crest a few times, and from what i can remember i tried to listen to it a little bit but i guess i didn’t like the album which was a shame but it doesn’t really surprise me since things have changed a tonnnn from then to now.

around a year later, i listened to 333 on my first listening diary back in 2023 and it was awesome!! although i knew it was gonna b different from bladee’s sound both before and after, it still impressed me a lot!! after that though, i didn’t really listen to much more bladee until recently. first i started listening to a couple of songs from icedancer. okk was the first song i listened to and it kinda set the mood for what icedancer was gonna sound like. there were a lot of things to like about the song and i don’t rly remember specifically what really sold it to me but i think hearing a tougher version of bladee along with the production, especially how much reverb it had which sounded really nice, made me like it a lot and it became kind of a rotational song for me.

i also really just liked his flow… i always knew that bladee could be good with flow as i learned on both 333 and of course on be nice 2 me, but okk was on another level and i just couldn’t get it out of my head!! this was probably likee two months ago by now but i remember listening to it while i was on a field trip at this art museum downtown and i remember just walking around while this song was on and it was just great!! i really like listening to rap/hip-hop stuff while just going through my daily life since it honestly lifts my spirits up and helps me focus and wanna finish what i’m doing… i remember doing it the most while doing school work but rly i like listening to it anywhere. i’ve never really wondered why it works so well… i’ve listened to a ton of different genres of music while at school ( even noise cuz i wanted to experience what it was like xP ) and of course i think ambient works the best but i really like listening to stuff like plugg and trap and it’s a close second which surprises me a little bit but i think it’s rly cool!

and then waster was the main song that actually compelled me to wanna listen to icedancer. i first heard a snippet of the song cause of this twitter account i saw on my timeline that (probably) posted a “waster wednesday” video every wednesday that had this biking on ice video in the background and i thought the song sounded amazinggg soo i listened to it for the first time and it rly was amazing!! the higher vocals and slightly faster pace while it had this rly ethereal vibe made it super addictive… i think it was here when i realized that i absolutely loved the electronic drum kits that are used for the production on these tracks, both waster and okk. their crispness and velocity was so pleasant to listen to and their patterns emphasized both the beat and bladee’s vocals and it really elevated the listening experience in a way that i haven’t felt in a while. after listening to it probably 40 times, i decided that it was finally time to give the album a listen!

at its essence, icedancer is nothing short of sensational. i can’t stop listening to it!!! to be honest i think rap projects are the most universally replayable at least for me from the music i listen to since a lot of the stuff i listen to depends a lot on how i’m feeling. some genres and sounds just are harder for me to listen to at times but it’s something about these projects that just make it easier to listen to more of the time… to be honestt icedancer is rly unique as well though and rap can take any form as seen with projects like death grips and bedwetter and stuff. the production here is soo amazing it rly exceeded any expectations i could’ve thought of especially with how good the songs i listened to before the album were with that!! i didn’t rly have any expectations but i was blown away by how masterfully the beats were created… the melodies make the songs both fun and stoic and are absolutely ear candy, the way the elements of the beat progress make for this really nice formula (somewhat) that’s super catchy, and everything being drenched in reverb just makes it all stick in your head more. there’s a really nice balance between sharper and more delicate sounds as well throughout both in bladee’s approach and delivery and the beats. a few use piano samples which is cool and some other are kinda like journeys with how dynamic the beats are at times, like on close and topman… but all of them have some quality that make them stand out a lot more positively from most of the other rap projects i’ve listened to in recent memory. it’s soo flashy and electric while also giving these feelings of focus and introspectivity with how many different parts of life are talked about and conveyed through the music :o

something that i really like about rap projects that’s essential is the lyricism. to be honest i’m rly bad with paying attention to lyrics and actually having a feel of how good they are but for this i was looking forward to changing that since i wanted to see how good bladee was when it came to this. i don’t really remember much from 333 but i remember liking some of the flow and other stuff on that album and i was hoping that it would be better here and it again was crazy how good it was!! while 333 was more relaxed on the directness of the flow which i think was a good decision since of course it went production was much more soft, it was kind of a 180 for icedancer… the flow just goes harder with more pace and it’s more cohesive with how every line fits in one after another. probably not the best explanation but i just really really like how good the flow is on this project!! this is kind of a minor thing and may seem a bit silly but when i listen to rap projects i really like noticing the references in the lyrics to other things like tv shows and other people. it’s a really cool way to add more flair and fun to the song as a whole with how they are implemented and stuff!! a lot of the time i don’t get the references (cuz i’m dumb) soo i have to look them up or i just miss them in general but i think that’s still really cool cause it’s kinda like a subtle way for artists to let people know more about them since i think a lot of the time the best references will come from stuff they enjoy and are able to mention while writing their lyrics about whatever they want :P

another thing that i wanna talk about that’s seen throughout the album is features. this in general on rap projects is another way of creative expression that i don’t really encounter much in a lot of the other music i listen to… i think it’s more prominent in mainstream music (mostly pop / rap) but i don’t rly listen to that much soo it’s more rare for me :P i think the more artistic albums like rock, drone, and other genres of projects that i listen to don’t really have features because the way the music is created by the author is supposed to exclusively show a unique vision or multiple visions throughout the project in a consistent way. due to this, the author(s) work towards realizing this themselves and there’s not really much of a need for having details made externally unless it is in the author’s interest of doing so… but something that’s cool about rap projects is that in addition to the music, the lyrics and the different deliveries and styles that come from features help flesh another manner of expression that’s not seen everywhere in music. this all might seem like a reach or just doesn’t make sense or something, but i feel like “more artistic” albums, like the types and genres of projects that i’m thinking of made by artists or bands that deal with more delicate or intricate sounds and subjects, are kinda inherently introverted if they were to be personified, while rap projects are more extroverted and open, if that makes sense! of course, this can be untrue for some of either, as music is infinitely fluid, but i say this cause i think icedancer is a project that kinda fits the “extrovert” way of creation.

rap projects having other people, either actually on the song or behind the scenes to enhance the experience and create new connections, can be such a cool part of an album and i think that it’s something that icedancer does well too. yung lean, cartier’god, and thaiboy digital are all featured on this mixtape and of course their parts sound really good!! it was cool to listen to more of each of them, especially cartier god and thaiboy since i haven’t listened to their music before. interludes are a common thing seen on a lot of albums and while most of them are cool but not really that notable, which makes sense since they’re not really meant to be anyway. i wanted to mention cartier’god icedancer rly quickly though since it’s just really unique in the way that it’s just an amazing interlude… that’s it. his voice itself sounds amazing and the smooth flow and vibes of the song and the production work great with each other… it’s so simple but it works so well and it’s in a really good spot on the album too. it’s a great addition that feels both like an awesome bell and whistle and something that makes the continuity of the project stronger at the same time :P

to move on to my favorite songs, the first one i wanna write about is frosty the snowman. earlier i mentioned how a couple of songs on here sound like journeys made from bladee’s dreams and different life experiences merging together into usually the most mellow songs on the mixtape, and this is my favorite realization of that :P i say it cause one thing i thought about this track is that the parts where the pass filters are used in the beat made me think of an image of running through a valley full of snow with tons of hills to climb and run on. i absolutely luv pass filters (i think that’s what they are called anyway!!) in beats cause they can be really fun… from being used really quickly a few times like in kind of a sweeping motion to a more broad usage as a way to start or end a song by reducing the sound palette to a certain range, there’s a lot of ways filters are used in rap songs, and it’s safe to say i really liked how they were used here :>

i really liked the vocals on this song as well; i think the song is a lot about seclusion among other things and i thought using frosty the snowman as part of the lyricism was nice… it kinda contributes to the human aspect to his music which i’ve come to really like. the nods to frosty like the line “change shape for me, i know you hate on me” are cute too!! frosty the snowman himself is kinda fantasy but he’s also kinda a guy and the connections between the character and this song are cool to think about… i don’t really wanna get into it too much since i’ll probably look even dumber than i probably look right now but bladee talking about just being by himself using frosty the snowman as an allegory of sorts since he was designed to be kind of a temporary friend since he melts away cause of the heat in the spring was so well done. of course, an album called icedancer is kinda supposed to be like for the winter season from the start but the inclusion of this song as a whole sells it a lot more for me since i really like this song and it adds a lot to the winter / even holiday spirit which is awesome!!

since i wrote a lot about features, i wanted to make sure i wrote about a song that had a feature. originally i was gonna write about side by side which is another good song and i thought thaiboy’s feature on it was great ( and the fact that he played it at his wedding was so sweet!! :o ), but now i’m gonna write about inside out. i know a tiny bit more about yung lean since i’ve listened to a couple of his songs and i was also introduced to him by my friend but i never got to him which doesn’t surprise me but it’s still not cool!! i think she recommended me unknown memory which will be the album that i listen to when i get into yung lean… which i’m not sure when i will do so but i definitely wanna look more into drain gang eventually!

but anywayy the reason why i wanted to write about this song instead is rly just cause the lyrics are really cute! when i looked at the lyrics for the first time, which was actually just a little bit ago as of writing this, i realized that they are hopeful and really sweet too. here, bladee talks about the things he’d do for his s/o, like staying up at night and fighting and defending her from whomever to make her smile. i think @dailybladee posted a tweet that had a much more recent picture of bladee with his girlfriend and remembering it now when i’m learning about what’s actually being said during the song makes it even sweeter U^ ^U i remember being eager and really wanting to do whatever i could to make my s/o happy… it’s so cool to see bladee make a happy love song in general!! and yung lean’s verse is really nice too. it fits so well in the middle of the song with how good his voice sounds it matches the mood of the song a lot!! the lyrics for his verse as well are really nice; the fact that he mentioned sunsets since the whole symbolism behind them is awesome and his verse in general is just very thoughtful and optimistic about the future which is awesome too. the whole song kinda reminds me of hype and i think both bladee and lean do really well with it since they do just have that vibe at times when i listen to their songs. i’d also to quickly mention that as always the production is great on this as well; the idea behind the hype feeling i get from this track is kinda primarily because of the beat. something that i wanted to mention when talking about frosty the snowman that i forgot to write about is that i really love how the simpler production is still so effective. i wouldn’t really describe it as basic, since at times that word’s just used to degrade things, so maybe like stripped back or something?? all of the essentials are there, like the pads and other synths to drive the melody, the bass to add more depth to the song, of course the snares, cymbals, and kicks are integral, and the little things like the triangle strikes to have a bit more flavor in the song, and they all are controlled and used so well to where every beat is great to listen to and they’re able to both reciprocate and create the feelings of the songs, which is why i feel how i feel about the song and in turn how the song makes me feel!!

i don’t really like to write much about the intro to an album since it obviously always is really good and i like to talk about some other tracks that i think are underrated, but i can’t help myself from talking about smartwater since it’s just too good!! this song has a tonnn of things going on and it throws them all at you at once in the span of two and a half minutes that feels all too short. it’s like how time seems to go a lot faster when you’re not paying attention to it… it’s a really unique feeling that not even convoluted songs i can remember can emulate quite like this song can. at the same time, the song is actually really thoughtful, and it sets this mood of wanting to be hopeful and look towards towards the future while also being blunt at the same time. i think the genre of tweets that show lyrics from songs (like the genius pictures) are really cool and it actually helps me appreciate bladee more because once i actually looked at what he’s saying, it made me appreciate him both as a musician and a person more. i’ve written about it a bunch already, but what really compelled me was seeing a picture with the line “if you stand for nothing, what would you fall for?”... it surprised me a lot when i first saw it and it made me wonder more about the intricacy of his songwriting and i realized that he’s just crazy good at it :P it kinda goes back as well to the simple fact that i really should try to pay more attention to the music that i listen to.

i also wanted to write about waster since it definitely is one of my favorite tracks on icedancer, but i didn’t want to write too much about it since i talked about it earlier and to put it shortly its brilliance shines more once you listen to it and i’m unsure if i can really describe how so even if i actually write about it at length. waster makes me think of really bright lights. the fact that everything is high pitched also gives me this heavenly feeling… at the same time, it makes me think of a strong autumn breeze blowing against you. this song just makes me think about and feel lots of things; it has this both electronic and very relatable and life-like sound that manages to feel like it combines the best from both worlds in an unprecedented way. it’s so catchy and sticks in my head so easily!! i really think this is an amazing staple, both of this mixtape and of bladee’s discography in general and finding it and immersing myself in it reminds me of how i felt when i found some of my other favorite songs from rap projects and artists. addictive could definitely be a way to describe it, it’s really great to think about and i’m happy this was what convinced me to look into icedancer :>

because of how much i’ve written already, i don’t really wanna get too deeply into other songs on here, but i wanted to show some love to the second side of the mixtape since other than waster i didn’t extensively write about this side at all. it’s probably apparent that i prefer the first half over the other ( the first 5 tracks are literally just hit after hit after hit lol xP ) but there’s still some really good material here too!! dg jeans and feel like are shorter songs soo i don’t really wanna go on a whole tangent about them but the instant transition between the two was super unexpected when i first listened but i absolutely loved it too cause the change in rhythm just makes so much sense. it goes from this kinda spacey beat to a more lofty one and the choice to do this was such a good one since it kinda hits you hard but it’s not jarring at all, it just instantly moves from one to the other.

i also wanted to write a little bit about for nothing and anything since this is one of my favorite two track segments on the mixtape. i don’t really talk about closers a lot (ya this is kinda like a closer to the album even though silent boy is right after) but i thought these two were too good to pass up mentioning. i’ve been trying to not talk about it a lot since i didn’t wanna use it as a sort of explanation too much but the prod on anything is just super wintry. it’s so calm and the high synths remind me of actual christmas songs, more so from cartoons than anything else. i thought this song was really cute too cause of its lyrics, especially the lines of “it’s so cold, it’s so cold / it’s the coldest night” and “bad adrenaline, oh, they just say anything / just know they'd do anything to be in the spot you're in” i think about the latter a lot cause it sticks in my head since it makes me think about my life a lot. this is another example of how this mixtape’s actually helped me realize how interesting and good bladee’s discography is, and i think it’s great how sweet he can be at times. i also really like for nothing cause it’s one of the more straightforward songs on here and his flow is really smooth. the beat is also cool… it’s kinda hard to remember if guitars are even used anywhere else on the mixtape, but they’re used really nicely here and compliment the more energetic tone this song has. what the song itself is about kinda reminds me of when people say they do whatever their mind tells them to, like quinn had as her spotify bio for a while, since it’s just about not really feeling fulfillment or having a set purpose in life. it’s a pain to feel like this but thankfully i haven’t felt it in a while!! even though there really isn’t a universal set goal or purpose, that just means you can dictate what you wanna do in life however you want, even if it feels like you can’t attain it right now, just like how i felt and kinda still do sometimes :P

honestly, icedancer is a project that by all regards just feels revolutionary. everything here just comes together to make for a really great project, both in listening experience and its general expertise and process of creation!! i like looking into more well known releases since ofcc i wanna know why people like them a lot and i’m happy to have looked into more of bladee’s music since his music is just rly interesting and drain gang and the community around it (including the twitter accounts like yung lean brasil and dailybladee stuff) are fun to come across every once in a while xP icedancer is iconic, sensational, addictive, and every other cool thing you could call it!! i understand why so many ppl on the internet like it now and i’m happy that i do U^ ^U

Asalto Navideño by Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, and
Yomo Toro: 3 January⁂

something that’s become rly apparent to me throughout the past couple of months is that i’m quite frankly rly ignorant on a lot of things that i should know more about. most of the time, it’s not intentional, since i just have a habit of sticking to the same things and having a hard time with keeping up with other things that i don’t really have an interest in or just thing i guess you can say i take for granted or i don’t notice much in my daily life, but i’ve been wanting to work on that since even though ignorance is bliss, as the phrase goes… i don’t wanna be ignorant!! one thing i’ve admittedly been rly ignorant about is my heritage… my family is puerto rican, but i was born and raised for my entire life in louisville, and because of that i’ve just been more adjusted to the american setting and a lot less knowledgeable about my family’s culture and what it’s like to just be puerto rican and stuff. sure, we eat puerto rican food at home, i always make sure to talk in spanish at home ( both for ease of communication and for practice so i maintain my fluency xP ), and a few other things, but i definitely could be better with knowing other things about what it’s like to be puerto rican.

for starters, my mom has asked me rly basic things about puerto rico sometimes, like who their president is, who some famous celebrities who are from there / are puerto rican as well are, and other trivia stuff that a native / person who descended from a native / anyone like the first two who’s not dumb lik me should easily be able to answer… most of the time, i remember struggling to even come up with an answer to the question; the first time my mom asked me if i knew who the president and the first lady of puerto rico were, i think i just told her i had no idea and she made fun of me a bit for it U>_<U ( the way my mom makes fun of me is okay thoo it’s in a friendly way and i don’t blame her for doing so xP ). she knew i had an interest in learning stuff about other countries and just general geography but she found it funny that i didn’t know anything about the place where she came from and in hindsight that definitely is very silly of me!! tbh i didn’t really look into these other countries either, but the fact that i just didn’t bother to look into puerto rico at all was not cool… sure, everyone has gaps in their knowledge about their favorite places or their native places and stuff like that (i don’t rly know much about louisville either honestly, but i’ve been wanting to for a little while as well!!), but it’s different for me since i just didn’t know anything! :>

so, in my quest to slowly start getting better with learning more about lots of different things and being less ignorant, i decided to do something that goes with the holiday season!! now, i know that this entry will probably be published at least a week after christmas ends, and i’m not even sure if people are feeling festive anymore, but i don’t care since i knew this was gonna be late anyway…

a couple of weeks ago, my mom told me about jibara while we were in the car going somewhere. my mom and i always just talk randomly in the car, mostly cuz she just says stuff to me or asks me something, and i respond and we go from there. but i was interested about jibara, since you know how much i luv music, and i asked her what it was, and she put it on for me in the car for a little bit and i thought it actually was really cool!! later on, i listened to a couple of jibara songs from this playlist i found; i haven’t gotten through much yet, but i guess i found canto a borínquen interesting, maybe cuz of the cover or the name or the fact willie colon took part in making it, but whatever it was, i kept it in my liked songs and left it for the holiday season since i didn’t feel like working on my charmed entry at the moment :P

i honestly don’t think i listened to canto a borínquen that much, especially compared to a song like charmed, but it still remained in my mind because of a different reason. i like my spanish class both cause it’s easy and cause of my teacher. she’s really nice and we’ve talked a little bit throughout the semester, with us even sharing a couple of music recommendations between each other! like the loser i am, a majority of the people i’ve talked at school has been with my teachers… they can afford to hear me run on about silly things (mostly music) that most other people don’t care about, since they get paid for it anwyay UT~TU but that doesn’t matter right nowww… since i wanted to do something special for the last class of the semester, and since it was the last class she was gonna be my teacher since she was rotating to another class for the next semester, i decided to make a playlist for her to put on in the background full of spanish songs and she thought it was a cool idea and along with a bunch of other of my fav spanish songs, i put canto a borínquen on there. i thought it was a really cool pick and even though i’m not really good at making playlists nor do i make them often, i think i did a decent enough job!! not that i mattered anyway since there probably wasn’t anyone listening to the playlist… xP

i haven’t really had much experience with salsa. it’s something that, of course, i’ve heard a bunch since i grew up with a puerto rican family, made by artists like willie colón and jerry rivera, but my family also just listens to other music a lot more of the time. my mom loves reggaeton, and my grandparents mostly listen to christian music (majorly latin pop), so i don’t really know much salsa music or know any salsa musicians. not to mention that i also have been listening to my own music for a long while now… as you can tell, a lot of it is caused by my aforementioned ignorance, but i also just haven’t really had as much exposure to it. for the longest time, i didn’t go out of my way to ignore what my parents listened to, but i mostly just was going down a very different path, with very different mediums to find new music through, so it was obvious that i wasn’t really gonna know much about what my parents listened to. over the years, i’ve picked up a few artists that i’ve hear in the background over the years and actually started to listen to them, like aventura and bad bunny, and it’s been really cool since i’ve come to find music that, originally of course sounded good to me, with more depth to me than ever before. it shows me more about why my parents like them so much and allows me to appreciate my upbringing a lot more in a way that’s special to me, which is really nice!!

however, salsa is something that i haven’t looked into much until now, and with listening to asalto navideño, i thought it would’ve been a great first experience with salsa made by the greats willie colón and héctor lavoe, along with yomo toro!! i don’t think you could ever go wrong with colón; from what i’ve heard, his music is really good, both from the songs i’ve listened to and his ratings on rym, and i thought now would be a great time to try to tackle another thing i’ve been struggling with, since the new year is upon us, while doing it through a medium that i love… music!! U^ ^U

first thing i wanna write a bit more about regarding the music itself is canto a borínquen, which was the song that introduced me to this album. i have listened to a couple other songs that colón has made, like triste y vacía, and i’ve also already written about how the salsa genre itself has been in the background of my life - albeit, not very often - but, i still have yet to actually dive into a salsa album and see what’s so good about the music. the first thing about salsa that i’d probably think about is likely how important trumpets are… trumpets are a really cool instrument and i don’t think that a lot of the mainstream or even a lot of the music i listen to nowadays make use of it. it makes sense, since it’s definitely not the most universal instrument to use as its tone especially is more rough than say, a saxophone or something, but it still definitely is a versatile instrument that can take part in creating really vibrant and awesome soundscapes that other instruments may not be as effective in shaping. i think the way the trumpet took the lead in this song was something that convinced me a lot in wanting to look more into salsa, as it’s just so amazing to listen to how eager and enthusiastic the melody sounds. how the cuatro is then layered to where it kinda reminds me of sprinkles on a cake, yet they still bring so much energy and brilliance to the song, was something i just realized and it’s really cool how it’s done, especially on here.

then, of course, i have to mention the percussion, but it’s not drums this time!! i absolutely love all kinds of percussion… when i was in the school band a couple years ago, i stuck to percussion, and it was really fun being able to look at and learn how to play all of these different instruments that add so much support and even drive songs. the percussion instrument i like the most here are the congos. congos are an instrument that i rarely hear in the songs that i listen to, which is fine as well since there are places where they are not as well suited as others, but i think they are still really versatile as well and i really like their sound and pace. even though they are kinda always in the background for me, they still seem like an essential part of the song and they have their own flavor of impact on the song that i can’t remember hearing in a ton of the music i primarily listen to. it feels as if every part of the song feels like their own separate channels but when put together, they are extraordinarily cohesive in a way that is unique to salsa, and i think this is one of the things that makes the genre so attractive and makes me wanna keep coming back and listening to it.

it makes me think of how the compositions of songs are visualized at times, where there’s these 2d and 3d diagrams of spheres in a certain space. i think in a lot of music, the drums are the foundation, acting like a floor to everything and is where everything is built on. other times, that definitely isn’t the case, as songs can be led by other instruments or conventional drums can just not be needed for it at all, but for songs like this, and maybe this could make sense as a way to describe the genre of salsa, but it feels more like a different kind of shape where there is no certain foundation, but instead it’s like a pentagon or a hexagon or a square. every point can be connected to another in a straight line and while the music doesn’t come crashing down if you take a specific side out since there’s no specific foundation that everything is built of that each separate instrument builds off of in the music, everything still works together so well, and the lack of a specific foundation possibly makes it all work together even better since instead of each part of the music just being connected to different joints of the composition of the music, it’s all arranged in a roundabout way where everything has a more circular and closer connection to each other than they would if it was arranged with a specific foundation. this might seem likee kinda crazy, but i hope it makes sense to at least someone xP

another song that i really liked would be traigo la salsa. from first listen, i absolutely loved this song cause it just captures the cheerful vibe that i love about the genre so well!! my favorite part of the song would definitely be soneros… the first verse is really cool because of just how they sound, and the lyrics are written really well. even though they are pretty simple, from the vocalizations at the start to it sounding kinda like a christmas carol about spice, they are just really really fun and that’s what makes them really nice to listen to for me! i also like how from there, after lavoe starts singing, they change to a more supportive role in the song, but they still have that same emotion and energy that they had from the beginning. this along with how good lavoe’s singing as well makes it even better.

when i listened to this in the car for the first time, which was still before the new year began, i instantly fell in love with it, and it actually made me feel even better and really hopeful for the next year!! it’s rare for me to feel emotions when i listen to music, and even though it’s easier for me when i listen to new music, it was different for me this time since it felt really unique and heartfelt which i was happy about :> another percussion instrument i’d like to quickly talk about is the maracas!! i think they are something that’s seen in a lot of salsa music, and it’s something that i like hearing here a lot. they do take on more of a background role, but i think it’s great at supplementing and shaping how the music sounds. it has really nice rhythm that along with the congos work well to overall make the song more fresh and pick up the pace in a way that would definitely be more difficult if only one or the other were in the song. i don’t really do it much, but it’s really cool to learn more about the structures of genres sometimes and look into the roles of each instrument and stuff like that!! that’s something that i could try learning more about this year as well… xP

pescao is the start of the second volume of asalto navideño and i’d say that it’s probably my favorite song on the compilation!! to be honesttt i think the second half of the project is better than the first by a noticeable amount, and this is a really cool way to start it off. i noticed that there’s a distinct shift in style that separates the first half from the second… maybe it’s just cause the cuatro is deeper and so is the trumpet at the start of the song or maybe how they both start playing at the beginning makes it different?? i’m not rly sure :P

but basicallyy this song is split into half from a standard salsa segment to the second half getting rid of the trumpets and instead you can primarily hear a whistle, maracas, and some bells!! i’m not sure if they are bells, but they kinda sound like them :P they really remind me of flashing christmas lights, where they each light up at their different times and they light up the room a ton. something i forgot to mention and look into before was the bass that you can hear throughout the songs also, but it’s something that i most notice in the second half of pescao. even though i think bass melodies are a lot simpler than other string instruments’ parts are in songs, they still definitely are important since they are an instrument that have the ability to drive the rhythm and i think it sounds really nice here too! with the lack of trumpet on this part, i find myself really resonating with how the bass kinda feels like it’s hugging both my ears and the song itself, maybe like a yarn coat or a sweater that feels really nice :o i think it’s really cool how much you can hear the bass throughout salsa music, at least how much it’s used throughout the album, but it stood out so much here that i just had to talk about it since it would be really silly of me to just let it pass by me!! :P

the last song i’ll write about is doña santos… i absolutely love this song cause it’s another really simple one yet it’s still so fun to listen to!! it’s all about dinner on christmas day and even though i don’t really eat much ever even if it’s during a special time like christmas ( which is a shame tbhh :< ) i still like eating foods during themm since the cooking is always really good!! i especially love arroz con gandules, which is one of my fav dishes ever; it’s a staple of puerto rican food and my parents make it a lot since it goes with a lot of things like meat and stuff :P i don’t really eat pork a lot but it tastes good as well!! this song honestly makes me happy to listen to since it’s great to just embrace the fun spirit of the song cause of how good the christmas food can be. what makes it better is that the cuatro especially shines on this song with how much more involved and free it is compared to the rest of the album and the trumpets sound even more joyful and loud here which is just so cool to hear since with the volume the tone changes as well!!

i also really like how prominent the piano is on the intermissions throughout the song… i find it interesting that the piano is something that is used a lot throughout the album, since it’s definitely not something that i’d think of a lot when thinking about the music or salsa in general, yet it actually fits really well here. how it’s used kinda reminds me of how jazz uses the piano as well, yet in contrast to jazz where it’s integral to the music, it takes more of a background role here. but, a lot of the time, you’ll hear it not just in this song, but in throughout the album as well where it goes along with the melody, which adds some more depth to the music. it’s cool to me how universal and versatile the piano is, more so than even guitars and the more standard instruments are… you can find them anywhere, whether it be the craziest to calmest of genres and sounds, and this is a great example of how cool the piano is!! i’m no pianist, but i still recognize its greatness nonetheless U^ ^U

i know that i am super super late to the holiday season by now but the goodness of this album really just makes me not care about it anymore xP i don’t think i’ve done something creative for the holiday season (like art and stuff) in at least a long time so it was nice to be able to do something for that since i wanted to get involved with the holiday spirit this year!! next holiday season when i get even more involved (you’ll see…) i hope to still be writing in my diary and write another holiday themed entry or at least make some art or something since that would be awesome!! alsoo it would definitely be cool to look into some more puerto rican music, whether it be by colón and lavoe or by someone else! to be honest, i already have an album in mind that i think would be cool to write about someday!! it’s a shame that more people on rym don’t look into puerto rican music… colón and lavoe are the only know that i know that are remotely well known and even then i don’t think they are that popular. bad bunny is the only other artist i can think of that is kinda well known on there but he’s crazyyy popular so that doesn’t surprise me. they are definitely missing out!!! :P