In what seems like a past life I wrote about forty two records of some personal significance in what became an exploration of my own mental health; a jukebox journey into anxiety, depression, and bad punctuation. Whilst it’d be tempting to adopt Seinfeld’s “no hugging, no learning” mantra with regards to drawing any conclusions from it all, it’d also be wrong. The moral of that particular set of musical stories, in its simplest expression, was that moments are important, what we can learn from them is important, and it’s in that spirit that I thought I’d write a new series of posts.
Hugging is pretty important too but not my area of expertise.
If you’re me facing into the surreal and scary set of circumstances surrounding Covid-19 and the resulting lock down then, predictably, you make a playlist of calming, vaguely sad, mood music to bunker down with. (It’s here if you have Spotify: Late Night Lockdown). It doesn’t carry great practical purpose but that is also very ‘on brand’ for me. In the event of a full blown apocalypse I will be useful for precisely two things: picking the soundtrack and writing up a pensive, melancholic account of events punctuated with the odd self-deprecating gag.
Whilst making said playlist I found this track by Nils Frahm, previously unknown to me in any form, and it’s been pretty much a constant over the last week or so. It starts out with a softly stated bed of synths overlaid with repeating pulses of notes, like the aural cardiograph of someone sleeping as we descend with them into their dreams. Tentative, single notes echo out occasionally, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in triplets, half remembered fragments of melody. The modulations, the heart of the track, continue undisturbed, oscillating gently, infinitely. It’s hypnotic and if you close your eyes, let it seep in, then it feels transcendent, particularly from six minutes on when it consciously builds and swells and soars. In its last minute the eerie, circularity of the base rhythm is punctuated with a simple, warm piano chord progression. It lifts everything to climax and then, after the briefest, pause, the briefest snatch of silence: applause. And you’re left baffled that this glorious thing was created live, in the moment, in front of a crowd.
All of which may be like dancing to architecture. Go listen and let it spirit you away somewhere outside or inside yourself. I think it’s breathtaking.
There’s a beautifully concise review of Says by Nick Neyland in Pitchfork a few years back which you can read here. On first couple of listens I really agreed with the review’s closing remarks about the audience applause at the end of this recording: “feels like a rude interruption – a bump back to reality after being so thoroughly transported”. So much so that I poked around in vain looking for a studio version. But funnily enough that’s now one of my favourite parts of the eight minutes, a reminder of the joy and power in shared experience during this time that we’re all cut off physically from each other. There’s enraptured silence throughout the performance and then that release at the end, a collective outpouring of appreciation, the liberation of pent up emotion and tension.
All of which feels like a perfect metaphor for the most optimistic imagining of how this might all turn out. We stood in the street tonight and our community gave its own applause for the people that will get us through this – the ones with more practical purpose than me, the ones you really want come the real apocalypse.
If that’s you, then thank you.
42 @ 42 