Showing posts with label Stereofox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stereofox. Show all posts

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Seers - Quit Me

When in relationship I'm not much of a:
"What are we going to do today, dear?"
or
"But I've got nothing to wear!!" person.
In that regard, I'm more like my cat:

If I like you
I'll let you share my space
I'll let you do your stuff
and will go about doing mine
and then, once in a while (and sometimes in lots and lots of quite short whiles), I'll come to see how you are doing and show how am I
thus creating an opportunity for us to play.

Playing is good. I like to play.

All things considered this could qualify as quite unobtrusive relationship style
but, considering small quantity of mind readers among us,
it can also be interpreted as uninvolved
and so it often is.

Seers promo picture from Soundcloud.


About a month ago
I stumbled upon a wonderful song - Quit Me by Seers - while browsing my favorite music portal Stereofox "wares"
and I fell paralyzed by its beauty.
I played it a hundred times, immediately, on the spot,
and then I went and searched the interwebs for more detail;
I found Seers soundcloud page
but lyrics were nowhere to be found (!).
So I used Seers Facebook page reference to contact the band and ask them kindly for lyrics
since I'm a stickler for checking out if I hear them correctly
and they were so kind to provide me with them.

I intended to write about the song here but the song is so awesome
and so intimately visual
I just could not choose the words to describe this vast emotion storm it causes inside me.

Until now.

Let me usher you in.

The lights are low,
the static air, the sudden silence
tones that say it all,
a tendency to slow your breathing
before you take it in
and no-one knows 'cos no-one's noticed
but i notice it all

I love how this song is smartly designed. I love gentle, reverberating strings before it begins, exposing the setting. I love the sound of inhaling with "before you take it in" and the slight sadness in the vocal while saying "I notice it all" - like a butterfly taking off from a flower and then flying over a wonderful, terrifying yet beautiful, chasm that opens with this sudden revelation.

and when you're sleeping
i see this honesty
it says you'll quit me
says you'll go one day
and yet this feeling:
the sweet uncertainty
it's got this beauty

I love how this realization - "You'll quit me" - is spread out before us; the gradual recognition of the signs of relationship end and also recognition of uncertainty of that situation; one that does not always consist only of temporal uncertainty but frequently is also ingrained with knowledge that by changing the circumstance we change the outcomes. And that also comes with a price.

the music ends
and with it went a stolen moment
scent that lingers on,
intoxicates so unfamiliar
suddenly sparks it off
and they all know 'cos they're all watching
us dance into the smoke


I love how this part melds together the personal (private, let's say) and inescapable environmental
(public, social) and mimics the muddled picture we get while lurking into somebody's private life. It is so easy to pass judgement on somebody else's life since to all not directly involved relationship dissolutions are just scenes, like from a movie, with fake smoke and invisible = unexisting parts.


yeah when you're sleeping,
your body's honesty
it says you'll quit me
says you'll go one day
and yet this feeling
the sweet uncertainty
it's got this beauty


I love how in this last part they sing first the first chorus, the one with "i see this honesty" and then the second one: "your body's honesty" so it will not be unsaid, unacknowledged (!), where this realization comes from. And although sleeping body might seem an unreliable witness it is easy to see that this picture is just a beautiful, poetic synecdoche of a totality of quitting partner's behavior.



Sometimes we realize following a relationship that the other party has just slept right through it.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Use of Music in Mental Architecture



Since time is short and I have giant bundle of different interests I’m always on the lookout for raising my efficacy standard and streamlining information sources so I can check many things with as little time spent as possible.

So this is my latest and most glorious find: Stereofox!

Stereofox is music portal by music lovers and enthusiasts covering sizeable span of genres but in concise and down-to-the point manner, not spamming the audience with excess multimedia but giving the opportunity to taste the recommendations simply and immediately. Since my first and foremost love is Post-rock here I have found a kindred spirit in “ivo” whose recommendations and preferences I came to trust immensely as well as enjoy his personal remarks.

Another thing I love about Stereofox is social media side that they keep up-to date and interesting all the while not being overwhelmingly affluent.

Some time ago I listened through Stereofox Collective Post-rock vol 1 and I fell madly in love with Mental Architects.

Photo taken from Mental Architects Last.fm page


Celebrations is so great an album I’ve listened to it every single day since I discovered it here on Stereofox on June 4th. For me this is the spiritual successor to Mirrored by Battles because I could not stomach Gloss Drop and there just was not math rock I liked since Mirrored even with all my beloved Japanese post-rockers counted in. So this is like a ointment for my hurt and battered soul lately; it holds just enough predictability (being MATH rock) so technically is in a way “anticipated” (as opposed to stressful by means of surprise) and also enough imagination to cross the threshold into experience that transcends auditory and uses emotional to build visual, sensuous, visceral.

My favorite song from the album is Once Again We Meet At Last and Mental Architects also have beautiful new video you can check here on YouTube: