I had a strange thought during dinner today, when my dad put on the news (like he usually does every other business day) and talk of the Israel/Palestine thing came up... okay. Honestly we can pause here. I just wanna get it out there I don't know everything. I'm complicit in this. All I really know is feelings and, I'm not as educated as I should be. But I wanna try to get, this huge impassable feeling off my chest. So... the news is playing and all I hear is chewing and the minor shift of a chair. The first thing I thought was, and I'm not proud in saying it was : Turn it off. There was the ego in me. My brain can barely comprehend my own life, why should I try to understand any elses? What about me? This thought flashed through my head like an impulse, like when my friend raises their hand at me and I flinch and turn away. This was quickly replaced by my real conscious which had a much darker thought: Leave it on. Feel their pain. This too, I shrugged off and then filled my head with nothing. Then my mother did the strangest thing... somehow the topic of Lebanon came up and had something to do with, something. I have no clue honestly. She asks "So how far is Lebanaon from Israel?" Okay. Yeah it's not really life changing. It's not. It's a basic silly question about geography that can be easily answered. But that's the point I think. I'm sitting now wondering if I should have LAUGHED at that. I mean. Who cares. We should stand up on the table and scream " PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DYING!!". But no one does that. We sit and smile and move on and watch the news talk about cute puppies and the new local beer company made right here local! and nelly furtado's new fucking album I GUESS. I wonder how desensitized we've become to suffering. I don't know if I could actually even begin to comprehend the grief of those in Gaza. People have watched their families die. They watched their homes be bombed and watched their neighbors fall under the rumble. They've starved. That... I will never ever truly understand. I worry about grochery prices and politics and my parents and how many friends I have. How can I even begin to fathom their pain? My pain is that I do not understand my purpose.. I laugh at that now. I think. I am on this earth. I am existing and that is enough. Yet, there is still something missing. How many times have I see the face of someone on the news announcing their death? How many times did I turn back and play around with my brocoli and wonder about tomorrow? How many times can I see someone be shot before I understand what it feels like for a piece of metal to create a hole inside your body? The thought of death, of pain, of losing someone so deep to your heart is almost a fallacy to me. Those things come to me as ideas presented to me in movies. The guy gets shot and sleeps for 3 days and wakes up fine. We watch people get shot. We see blood for entertainment. We see fights to feel something. Now I'm really thinking, how did they expect anyone person in a first world country to care about this? We move back to vaping and instagram reels and sleeping. There is always the job and the missus and that baby we made together (I guess), those will always forever be more important to Average Joe then some fuck off far country full of people he's never met suffering in ways that he will never ever understand. He is okay with being the boot that smashes someone under his boot as long as there is a boot above him. Even now, I laugh at the reposting culture on instagram I've become so familiar with. Here is the deathes of thousands of people said in 3 words: THEY ARE DEAD. Period. You will never know their names. You will never eat at the same table as them. But how I wish for that. I cry thinking about that. How I'd like to take those suffering in, wrap them up in warmth and break bread with them. Ask them: "How was your day?". There is never enough understanding. There is never enough kindness. I wish there was more and more and more of it. I wish people would look out their window and see the person right beside them. Once we figure that out, maybe we can see people all over our world. It is so hard to see outside of yourself, sometimes I feel as though I understand conservatives who hate the different and the new. Change is hard, different takes time and the new will never be what you're use to . I understand the hate against transgender people , why must we try SO hard to break these walls down that have been built for thousands of years. They never think that the wall itself might be what's holding us back. Sigh. This was suppose to be about Gaza and the empathy that it comes with, but I can't help but see all these dots and connect them. Oppression exists constantly. It is so so so easy to turn your eyes away, to look at the multicoloured RGB screen and pray that it makes you a little less attached to your problems. I find it never does. Honestly, right now I'm waiting for a God to come down and tell me what to do with my life. I want him to give me a detailed instruction of some menial task I have to complete. Anything. I want to know I'm good for something. Maybe it is this. I'm not quite sure yet. Don't forget to kiss the stranger beside you on the train. Also, here is my lyrics of the day.. which maybe I will do more because some lyrics stay inside my soul forever..
Gold hair in the sunlight
My light in the dawn
If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard
I'd work 'til I'm sore
Someday I'll be
Like the man on the screen
It's been three years and somewhat. I've grown... I've changed. I came back to this though for whatever reason. I yearned to talk to no one. To cast my net into the water and hope I get some little fishies. The idea that this exists and anyone anywhere can somehow find this is.. I don't know? I feel like I can be more honest. There's so many eyes they all kinda mean nothing??? Haha idk. Honestly I only showed maybe 2 people this website? They defnitely don't remember how to GET here. SO. Really this is like a super private diary that I hope one RANDOM person stumbles across and can maybe understand the most intimate parts of myself and my brain without ever having met me. I plan to do more album reviews DEFINITELY. I've had a couple in mind. I came up with this theme of "songs I had became obsessed with but never listened to the whole album" . I really wanted to go back and actually listen LISTEN LISTEN. To hear what the artist is trying to tell me and what I notice about their songwriting. UGH. I'm over new things new music new content every 0.2 seconds. I want to look back on what I've loved, and understand WHY i've loved it. Why did this call to me? What about it sings? I also want to post my art. my music. I want an ends to a mean and if that means the end in on a website no one will read... I'm okay with those ends. also. here is a sketch page i've done recently. makes me kinda.. idk. i really like haikus. In all my art.. I feel the most proud of my sketches. So much "I" here. Sorry. I guess that's what this website is tho.. it's my I. My I... YOU KNOW? I've realized.. no one is reading this and was waiting for an update on THIS website. But I thought maybe this would be good for. The barriers between these different points in my life and the music I was listening to. I mean obviously you can gather context clues just by looking at the date... but I like to have a prelude before we get into the REAL story. My favourite intro ever still .. I mean I guess not INTRO. But chapter one of the handmaid's tale. I vividly remember reading this in class and being so amazed at how well Atwood paints this picture in your brain. The whole chapter is less than a page long but it's basically a small flavourful sample of the ingenious word play and imagery and double entendre that is used throughout the whole book. Words that describe the mental state of our main character and introduce us to the cruel world she is living in. The private descriptions of longing and indulgence compared to the sterile environment she is currently in. God. I reread it just now and it does pack a punch. I love the use of the word "afterimage". That basically sums up all of the main characters mental struggle. All the afterimages of her past intruding into her somewhat poor assimlation into a society that barely accepts her. Ooops. I got a little distracted. I'm sorry. Everyone's read the HANDMAID'S TALE. I just have a soft fondness for it. It was basically that "book in highschool that made me fall even MORE in love with reading and also made me start anaylzing literature outside of classwork". So I kinda do hold it dear to my heart. Anyways. Expect some awesome album reviews soon. Maybe some weird music. Maybe art. Maybe an essay or two. Maybe just ramblings. I feel more productive TYPING than I ever had writing something down. Darn. Wish I was born a little earlier just so I could yearn for the fountain pen and not the keyboard. BUT YOU CAN'T TYPE AS FAST AS YOU CAN WRITE CURSIVE BABY!!!!!!!!!
another Soft Lipa album.. i had to. after listening to his other album "Lotion". i put on this debut album and fell in love. a breath of fresh air in the summer to listen to something like this. like popping a mint in my mouth. its humid and very hot here so listening to this album felt almost as if i could balance out the physical heat by being mentally chilled. the whole album just reminds me of the winter. tinkling bells and grand piano ballad samples with poppy drums. crinklings of bags and laughter from casual conversation. nostalgic samples of horns with the echoing sounds of a quiet bell. listening to this album on a hot hot summers day is just the same as finding a refreshing drink of water and just that feeling of, replenishment and restoration. flutes making another debut in a Soft Lipa album. every sample in this album has a purpose in it's song. honestly the lack of rapping is quiet nice. just listening to beats and loops with dapples of conversation over them and tonedowned bars. the lack of Soft Lipa rapping in most of the songs actually makes it quiet nice. it's not even like the loops are missing anything from them, they are complete on their own. but without Soft Lipas raps it's easier to just go into a meditative mode and fall into his soft loops. all of these songs are just so... chill. just a perfect album to put on when your in your room and the AC isn't working anymore. and you need anything, literally anything to distract you from the heat that summer gives you. this is the album to rebute against the heat, just a refreshingly cold album.
i love nick drake, and hearing about his story always makes me so much more emotional about his music. listening to fruit tree i always get so emotional.
Fruit tree
Fruit tree
Open your eyes to another year
They will know that you were here
when you are gone
it gets me everytime. the sadness and the emotions i feel from him singing fruit tree always gets me. the fact his whole career no one listened to him, and as he died his music started to become famous is so bittersweet. he determined his own fate. this album feels like a tree, five leaves left. humbly standing guard at the top of a nice grassy hill. waiting for someone to sit under it again, to see its worth. something about nick drake just makes me feel so limited and so human but so present at the same time. i know im here and i know im gonna lie with the dust someday, but im still here and im still breathing. something something about the fragility and beauty of life. how this certain moment is over, then it is, and its gone. i wish i could cry to this album with its acoustics and violins and light singing voices. but i just sit. and i stare. i feel almost as if listening to this album sucks the tears of out my eyes and places them into the songs. just the lightness of the songs. its like im grounded in the earth but scared that any moment i lose control and fly into the clouds. i dont know. i just love this album so much. stranger, i love it more than Pink Moon. Pink Moon is dreamy and depressing while this album holds a different sort of more grounded air to it. and i enjoy that more. despite constantly thinking and hoping ill be in the clouds, im still here. and my feet are still in the soil. which is probably why i feel so much more love for this album. just a deeper bond to these songs.
a wave of nostalgia pours over me listening to this album. bright sunny days riding my bike listening to music on my little ipod. i finally revisited this album after a while and its like looking at an poloroid yellowed out from time, or hearing your grandparents speak of the past. fondness and nostalgia for a past you've never even experienced. the raw voices and songs that are sung are just, normal people singing. no professional trainers or pitch correction. people smiling and laughing while singing. voice cracks and everything. the recordings are amazing on this album, with the piano pieces as well. not only is this an album with songs but a story which im listening to. just an ambience, a suttle one, that tells me about the softer, and quieter moments in lift.
the sunny day where no one is home and you sing softly in the backyard. or the moments filled with life, singing together with other people and laughing and smiling. listening to kagayaki i just am sitting in a sunny place, the trees shading me quietly. i've listened to a lot of different albums and each one takes me somewhere, some story that the artist is showing me. resting in this album it's almost like i'm taken into a ghibli movie.
an album that expresses this much emotions without actually saying anything at all is amazing to me. when i found kagayaki i was just entraced, and lulled into place that has been long gone. rememebering memories that aren't mine. piano tunes which remind me of dazy sunsets. places with flutes surrounded by giggling and laughing. birds chirping harmonies together. kids babbling about who knows what. accordions and quiet voices singing together. everytime i listen to this album i can feel the flood of emotions behind each song, every one of them bringing memories to a past. a past that slowly and quietly faded away as time passed. just sit in peace and listening to this album, forever.
i've always loved acoustic. something about it was so natural to me and so earthly. this album is beautfiul. eternal. the first time i listened to it i cried, just a little bit. Emma Junaro's voice is longing and loving. it feels like shes speaking directly to me. singing in my bedroom as i listen to this album. the music is just so grounded in the earth but it feels like her voice is taking me elsewhere. lifting me up. the guitar playing and her voice meld wonderfully together with long breathless passages of her voice with a simple strumming of a guitar and bass. some songs include a panpipe playing in the background, a signature of Bolivian music. the whole album is undoubtly folk. yet something about the music strays from the realms of folk. something, otherly i suppose. i guess listening to an album like this at 3 am while delirious can make you feel that way. the acoustics are so, earthly, so folky. just. there. but when Emma sings, her voice takes me somewhere. like a place before the earth was the earth. its just. beautiful.
what a wonderful little album. just delighful plant noises to listen to. theres something about this album that makes me feel as if i were a plant, in the leaves and in the stems. each song is just a ditty and pretty as the next. synth noises and sounds that sound like i've heard them before but are completly new. this album recently resurged into music culture in 2019, before that people barely knew about it and you could only get the vinyl from a plant store in LA.
this album feels as if it was made for the plants. made for the sake of being made. each song filled with a strange love. "Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if hes not really noticed, just like a houseplant".
listening to this when my friend when she was high and i was talking about the contiunation of our small lives seems so surreal now. that experience made me feel love for this album and how we would both get quiet for the tiniest second then... just talk about how beautiful the song sounds. the album flowed our conversation about the earth and about living small lives. this album is connected. its not a lonely album. all the plants are singing in this album, in harmony with each other. plantasia loves loving. its quite amazing how many different noises and sounds are made with just a Moog.
a lovely album. reminding me of how the grass sings and moves when im not looking. about the earth and about connection.
i was looking through my old playlists on spotify and found an artist i used to listen to all the time Soft Lipa. when i was younger i listened to a Thai rap playlist on repeat my cousin showed me. this introduced me to Soft Lipa. i listened to his album "moonlight" on repeat as a 12 year old. his music was so easy to just swing your head to. the rap he raps over jazz samples makes you wanna groove. the samples in this album are great as well. Soft Lipa takes different samples and gives them their own rhythm and beat. its hypnotizing to listen to. in his raps he weaves between speaking in chinese to speaking english and its great to hear how well it works together in the music. there is definitly a great jazz influence in this album as well.
in songs like Start It Underground a piano jazz sample plays in the background of his rapping as well as a saxophone sprinkled into the song. to hear the meld of his raps with these harmonic instruments just gives me absolute joy in listening to it. in other songs like Hot Bath a xylophone and saxophone take stage in the background and both of the instruments timbre fit perfectly in with the song. Hit The Rhyme includes a nice jazzy flute in the background aswell with some nice finger snapping.
the whole album is very laid back with the lofi drums and gritty samples. it just makes me feel like im the coolest person in the room for listening to it. the whole thing album is just one great song after another. humming along to this album is the easiest thing in the world. just sitting with my headphones and bumping to song after song.
now that school is slowly ending i can sit down in my backyard when it's bright and hot and listen to albums. that is exactly what i did today. i was looking through my ipod and came across some of the albums i recently downloaded, i came across this album and just started playing it. immeditatly im thrown into this etheral damp cave. samples of water dropping and long humming synths fill my ears the entire time. its as if the earth was speaking to me through the warm soil.
the whole time i was listening i stared up at the sky. i felt as if my body would come out of me. the synths and samples in this album are amazing. the ambience and the world this album shows me make me feel like ive know myself since the beginning of time. its something infinite.
im not sure where i even found this album from or how i downloaded it but it seems to be a cut verison from the complete album. each track giving me a view in what is supposedly a 7 hour album. instead, each hour was cut down to 7 - 15 minutes. and despite this i was entraced by the noises and textures this album provided. in "hour 1" of the album there is the sounds of animals, waves crashing and a deep humming. each track gives me a place to explore, a moving and breathing place yet never going anywhere. its strange to say that but listening to the album it makes sense.
this album was based off of Robert Rich's live concerts or "sleep concerts". long concerts where Robert would play ambient noises to a crowd over a few hours or even longer. this is why this album feels in a sense, real. the whole point was to try and replicate something that Robert did on stage, that has a metamorphosis as the hours past. as the tracks continue things slowly but surely change. sounds breath and unfurl and noises build up until they change into something completly different. i can feel the life and the energy that was breathed into this album and the effort it must have taken to create a 7 hour album. each track shows me new life, a new ecosystem to explore.
its easy to slip in and out of this album, hearing the trees breath one moment then suddenly not even realizing they are there. to listen to this album i think you would need an open space, or if you dont have that an open mind. something that you can fill. a space to leave room for.
that way you can let the sounds and noises of this album enter whether you realize it or not. as i was reading the description for this album i think it sumns it up perfectly. "Deep and sonorous, mysterious and diffuse, liquid and hypnogogic."
NOTE : i've translated some of the song names because they are written in chinese characters and i dont think that works on here. sorry if the google translations don't make sense to anyone who can speak chinese or read the characters!
i love my little airport. ive been listening to this duo for a while and enjoyed alot of their earlier albums and my favourite being the ok thing to do on sunday afternoon is to toddle in the zoo. after listening to softer, more ambient and detached music this album was like being struck back to earth. the way Nicole sings on this album is so strange and warm. there are many songs where in the beginning she just talks behind some instruments playing. it feels as if you are looking into the life of these duo people. expressing themselves however they wish.
in their 5th song "The Male God and Kobrick" its simply a piano, drums and Nicole talking. which i find strange and calming to listen to. her voice and the instruments meld together in a strange and beautiful way. the songs are upbeat and bright. poppy drums and vocals make you feel like chewing bubble gum and drinking soda. the songs have a twinge of innocence and lightheartedness to them, something which is a constant on the whole album. in many songs there are the sound of bells or accordians in the background. the timbre of these instruments makes the songs feel quite childish and cute.
usually in an album you'd find maybe seven to ten songs but this album has around fifteen. but the tracks are short, ranging from one to two minutes. the song lyrics are simple and simply just talk about life. drifting away from hong kong, a friend cheating on their wife and living in Kyoto. each of the songs touches on something different.
i really wish i could understand chinese instead of having to translate the lyrics. but i could imagine someone talking about this stuff during their smoke break at work. living life and being confused, making music to reflect how you feel. this twee album takes me back to the 2010s and how strange it must have been to try and navigate your life as someone in your 20s. i can imagine being older and going to work on my bike listening to this album. being small in a big world. thats what this album feels like.
this album is very connected. listening to this album without actually listening to the music makes it feels like you're listening to the same drone over and over again. its simply noise in the background. but if you sit down and actually listen to this album you get transported this this other world. its like staring in the abyss. your mind is trying to fill in the gaps for all the empty spots in the album.
which is why when i listened to it all the way through i felt strange. like my mind didn't know what to make of all this empty space. i couldn't create any stories from this album, the songs were just as is. they exist without a need to latch on to anything else. its complete, and its beautiful. when you listen to some songs on the album like Water Copyit's a very transient experience.
this album rests on simplicity. which, in my opinion is what makes it so wonderful to listen to. the song titles are self descriptors for the songs themselves. they define the mood in the song, even if it is just slightly changed. one of my favourite aspects of this album is, randomnesss or the idea that not everything needs to be aligned.
the best example of this is the song Blink. There is a certain melody that carries over the whole song yet as the whole song plays out its difficult to even find a downbeat in the melody. it just exists. without a metronome, without a time to keep it together. id definitely reccomend this album to someone who just wants to feel like they aren't in reality anymore. somewhere softer, and sublter world to dream in for a while. just an empty world that you can sit in and stare around at.
something about ella fitzgerald and joe pass coming together to create this album just makes me feel warm inside. the both of them together is so balanced. joe pass's guitar never seems to over step ella. Ellas voice never oversteps joe either. it's this wonderful balancing act of melodies and harmony.
not just harmony in a music sense but also how ella and joe just... work together. listening to this album i can feel how comfortable they are with each other. they both lead each other on equally from one melody to the next. its amazing how well these two work together. Fitzgerlad & Pass...Again, despite being a duet fills you up. ellas voice and joes guitar match each other completly in this album.
my favourite songs in this albums are definitely My Old Flame and The One I Love (Belongs To Somebody Else). very classic songs that have been done time and time again. but my number one song on this album is Nature Boy. Nature Boy is one of the songs that introduced me to jazz. hearing my favourite artists colour it and paint the song in many different ways brings me joy.
the painting i see from ellas and joes artistry gives me joy. its very a very, warm album. a good album to listen to in the summer. ella's voice hypnotizes you into this very soft state. i could listen to this album for hours while staring at passing clouds. it makes me feel at home. the songs are content with where the are. if you want to listen to something that will fill you up like a warm soup does, listen to this album.