Musical Anastrophe | New York | 11/9/19

It's undeniable that any piece of music can take someone back to a very specific place, event, time in their life. I remember my Dad telling me when I was really young that a song was hard to listen to now because it brought back so many memories, but it wasn't until I was much older that I understood where he was coming from. Music builds foundations in the mind for memories to scale up from, it cements exact moments of our past into the soul, whether joyful or mournful. I've talked about nostalgia and memory and those kinds of things plenty of times, but something that occurred to me today was that these foundations aren't necessarily set. In fact, it's very much possible for the songs that hold such great significance to us to shift in meaning through our lives. The time a song is created doesn't necessarily hold the all-encompassing basis of the effect it will have, and songs are constantly displaced into points of your life and continue to have new meanings, additional meanings, as they emphatically engorge our emotions as the years pass by.

I want to call it musical anastrophe. If in poetry, you have a recurring line and you come to assume its meaning, just so in music could you come to assume a song's meaning to you, and yet without an alteration of content, suddenly that song's meaning can completely change, just as if the word order of the line has been jumbled up. Maybe it's a reach. The point is, music can stay exactly the same and completely change simultaneously. Electronic music and its reliance on technology means that when it's first released it sounds new and futuristic, as you envisage a world where computers take over more and more, and in twenty years time that's replaced by the idea of it sounds 'retro', and it's the simplicity that resounds to its audience. This obviously doesn't only apply to electronic, but is ultimately a symptom of the progression of styles and mutation of genres.

The core concept of this to me comes from the change within the individual, however. What really got me thinking about this has been my trip to New York, which I'm pretty sure I've told everyone in the world about at this point. As with any trip away, me and my best friend wondered beforehand what songs would turn out to be iconic from it, but it never crossed my mind that they would be old tunes from my life rehashed again. 'Get Free' by Major Lazer has made me emotional for years for a million reasons, but I'd found it quite hard to listen to because it reminds me of a lot of memories with an ex and all that kind of stuff, but it came on my shuffle on the subway at some point, and then we played it at the AirBnB, then in a cab, on the subway again, and it solidified its place as a representative of the trip. Suddenly, I listen to it and my immediate subconscious reaction comes from a totally different place, so much more is associated. That's not to say everything else has gone away, but it becomes a layer in a more detailed painting. Daft Punk's 'One More Time' is timeless anyway, but remained a banner for my early childhood mostly, and now it's a symbol of grid system streets and skyscrapers, intertwined eternally in that friendship. omg. so deep.

There's another side to it from what I experienced going out. All of our nights were fun and hilarious, but mainly as weird little events mapped out and the general buzz of being on holiday. On the Friday, we went to Yaeji's 'Elancia' warehouse party at The 1896 and this was genuinely a mad one. The artwork was so cool before we even bought our tickets, and it was Brooklyn to a tee, this huge abandoned building with portaloos and food stalls, a giant chill room, it genuinely was giving me rave vibes. On that note, they were playing tunes I (ignorantly) never thought I'd hear across the pond. The Prodigy's 'Smack My Bitch Up', Chemical Brother's 'Hey Boy, Hey Girl' and 'Where's Your Head At' by Basement Jaxx all went OFF, mixed into what was mainly heavy techno consistency and offset with pretty varying visuals. Yaeji was having such a sick time, and her b2b style with the rest of the performers (Gardens, Hot 'N Spicy, Papi Juice, The Push, School of Hard Trax, Soul Summit Sublimate) was more peng complimentary vibes rather than pure duality. Anyway, it all came together to permanently change how I thought of those songs and what they meant to me, bringing in a very specific moment in a country I would never have thought I'd associate them with.

So it's all very much old song, new smiles, but there were definitely some new releases that have been big over the course of last week for me too. Lava La Rue's 'TLSL (Stitches)' is wholesome, warm and wonderful, giving me the exact chilled overtones holiday gives me. The little unison bridge with a breath between each word nicely breaks it up and ending with 'we always keep it positive' has been stuck in my head since. O'Flynn released an incredible album with 'Aletheia', up there with my favourites of the year so far, it's so good. So many floor filler bangers, absolute crowd-pleasers, and his fusion of world sounds stays coherent and within the same theme throughout. Even though lots of the tracks were already released, it's just fantastic as a combined body of work. To be honest, I might make a proper post to discuss it in depth, but we'll see. 'Sunspear' has been on repeat since it came out. Lastly, Mahalia released her debut album 'Love and Compromise'! It's really solid, and I'm happy to have a new RnB album to play all the time. The intro track is actually my favourite of the new ones, 'Hide Out', and I just think the Eartha Kitt sample at the beginning is so peng and simple, quickly introducing the title/theme. Hope you guys are having a great week, thanks for reading. xxx

Nostalgia in Music | 27/2/19

Nostalgia comes from the Greek νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain" or "ache" essentially meaning yearning for home or the familiar. That's something I wrote in about half of my essays at uni and it's something I've always been quite satisfied by. It really treads the line between feelings of happiness and pain in an almost addictive way. Nostalgia can hurt, but once you start to feel it you seek to increase it, like when you're cleaning out your room and you find an old photo or wristband from some event, and then you forget about what you're doing and just look for more old stuff. Sometimes, it's just a feel-good thing, if you're in the right mood for it, and I feel like music can encapsulate all sides of that in quite a lot of different ways. I was thinking about it last week so thought I'd talk about it a bit.

First and foremost, there's the fundamental concept that songs can remind you of certain people or times in your life. You can hear the first few notes and be brought way back to exactly how you were feeling years ago. I think music is part of the process of getting over a break up; you have certain songs that are securely tied to that person, and the first time you are able to listen to them is always painful. Some more than others, but as you get past that first listen each time it always gets better and is ultimately therapeutic. You can remember who you once were in the patterns of the melodies and sometimes it can really help you recognise who you are now. Whooaaaaa, so deep man, but it's true. The way memory responds emotionally to sounds means you can store information in music that you won't be able to hold on to any other way. I hear a song, and thoughts flood back to me that I couldn't have conceived before. The same applies to smell and old photos, revisiting old places etc., but music is the hardest hitting for me.

Then there's intentional use of nostalgia in music which I LOVE. This is obviously all over the place, from classical musicians making references to one another to the culture of sampling that defines the electronic sound. Artists can use the unique bittersweetness to give their music character and have it make a special connection with its audience. 'Love Got Me' by Ted Jasper is a stunning reconceptualisation of 'Crazy In Love' by Beyonce; the two songs have completely different tones, intentions, and so on, but by sampling it it automatically makes me nostalgic for the way the original song made me feel. One of the things that excites me the most about Burial's music is that the obscure samples he uses and distorts I have my own personal connections with, and so I somehow am made to feel intimacy with tracks that call back on my memories. In particular, he samples this laugh from a video game called Majora's Mask in both 'Indoors' and 'Young Death'. It wasn't just a game I played as a child, but I was actually really fascinated/obsessed with the sound effect myself, so hearing it incorporated into someone else's creative output is exciting. 

I've started to be aware of everything I'm hearing now, every song I get obsessed with for two weeks, every album that me and my friends play on repeat, being memories in the future. It's something that used to scare me, trying to hold on to the 'now' so much but as I've realised how powerful nostalgia is, I realise that once I've felt the emotions the music gives me, I can replay them every time I hear those tunes again. If anything, music will act as a time capsule so that I'll never forget these memories. I guess I'm just gassed on life at the moment, and even though this peng February is probably just global warming, it just feels like a time to remember. This weekend, I went to Boiler Room on Friday and Manara - who was absolutely sick - dropped this song 'Soltiero' by DJ Lycox, which I love, but wouldn't expect to hear out generally anyway and definitely not from her set. That's almost like memory inception; I got gassed at a song I knew and then now I'll remember that night because of it. Boiler Room was sick generally, and then Feel My Bicep had a charity fundraiser too on Sunday, a lil' Italo Disco party at EArtH, and Jamie XX was dancing next to me in the club. Not relevant, fine, but I just had to mention it because I. Was. QUAKING. Don't really get being starstruck but just felt so sick to be enjoying the same event as someone I admire like that. All will be music memories in the future I'm sure. x x 

The last thing I wanted to mention on this topic was something I was made aware of in the last couple of days. My friend showed me this song, 'Pearl Song' by Onra, and it's from one of three albums he created while travelling China, incorporating the sounds and music he heard into his tracks. This track is fantastic, but it stands as a work as a whole as quite brilliant to me. I keep thinking how much the music must bring back nostalgia of his travels to him, and the album almost functions as a diary of his journeys. In a way, as listeners, we are getting insight into his own nostalgia and experience of China. It's really cool, so at least check the track out if you don't have time for the whole album(s). 

So this was more of a stream of consciousness than I normally write in but was just really feeling it today. Here's another great song to listen to I found this week - 'Keep It Real' - Loure. Hope you enjoyed, and don't wear backpacks in the club x