Category: ambient

Animal Collective – My Girls (Marriweather Post Pavillion, 2009)

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I’ve been agonizing over weather to do this song or not. I mean, as it is, I’m not sure I really have a lot to say about it. Not because it’s a bad song. But more that it’s all built around layering, repeating sections over and over, and building on them. Similar to what we heard in David Gray’s Please Forgive Me. Only, instead of being fairly simple stuff being added, this is awash with arpeggios, synthesizers, and fun little drum parts.

But actually what I really wanted to point out is the lyrics. After hearing it once (or maybe you’re listening to it right now?) I think you’ll see that it’s really easy to just get caught up in the music and energy of the song, without really paying attention to the lyrics. When I first started listening, all I could really pick out of it, is the bridge/break which goes:

I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social stats

Let me just pause to say, on it’s own, that’s a pretty great line. There’s another part after that, but I could never really make it out. Luckily for us, the internets provide us with the answer. However, we’ll address that later. Anyway,what does it all mean? How does it fit into the rest of the song? Well dear readers, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So, let’s look at the first verse, which gets repeated bunch.

There isn’t much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

Oh. Okay. So he’s talking about wanting a house for his wife and kid. That makes sense! Wouldn’t really catch that from the song. After that it moves on to what can be considered the chorus part.

I don’t care for fancy things
Or to take part in a precious race
And children cry for the one who has
A real big heart and a father’s grace

So he’s telling us that really all he wants to be, is a good father! Man, what a sweet guy. Okay, now remember the bridge/break part?

I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls

Ahhhh. He’s reassuring us that it’s not actually the possession of the house that he’s worried about. More the fact that he wants a place for his wife and kids to live. Who saw that coming?

Anyway, the fact that this song is so… emersive, that you can totally lose track of what the lyrics are, is a real credit to the amazing songwriting ability of Animal Collective. I strongly encourage you all to check out the rest of the songs on this album, as they are equally as good.

-James out

Yuki Kajiura – Key Of The Twilight (.hack//SIGN OST, 200)

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No, that’s not a glitch – .hack//SIGN is a pretty sweet anime series that revolves around a (fictional) MMO called The World. The art is well-done, and while the story tends to drag a little, and features surprisingly little action for being set in an online RPG, it consistently includes incredibly good music. This track, for instance.

First a little phased white noise, quickly joined by a catchy buzzy bassline, reflective acoustic guitar, and spacey vocal pads.

Come with me in the twilight of a summer night for awhile
Tell me of a story never ever told in the past

Take me back to the land
Where my yearnings were born
The key to open the door is in your hand
Now fly me there

I always imagine these words being spoken by a younger sibling to an older one – it’s a hot summer night, two boys are lying sprawled out on top of the sheets, savoring each slight breeze that floats through the window and offers momentary relief from the heat. One boy turns to the other, and begs him to tell the same stories, the old stories that they used to tell each other. “Come with my in the twilight of a summer night for awhile.”

This is powerful stuff, it seriously gives me shivers. Something about the instruments, and the clearly worded vocals – seriously evocative stuff. And then the strings break in – lilting, with an ethnic quality that I’m not able to pin down, a bit like western fiddle, a bit like an irish jig, which is almost like a ‘cue the montage’ moment – the older boy begins his story, conjuring a fantasy world of characters and conflict.

Fanatics find their heaven in never ending storming wind
Auguries of destruction be a lullaby for rebirth

Consolations, be there
In my dreamland to come
The key to open the door is in your hand
Now take me there

Is this epic or what? ‘Augury’ is a good word – it has to do with prophesy or folk-magic concerning birds, sometimes migratory patterns, sometimes ritual sacrifice. Storms are brewing, fanatics follow the birds looking for signs, and all of this will rebirth the world. Then, the listener’s repeated reflections on how powerful these stories are to him. Then, a declaration:

I believe in fantasies invisible to me
In the land of misery I’m searchin’ for the sign
To the door of mystery and dignity
I’m wandering down, and searchin’ down the secret sun

The door and the key are important images in the anime, but they’re vague enough references that they don’t stick out amongst the lyrics – I think of the bridge as jumping ahead to see the younger boy as a grown man, or perhaps teenager, now without the presence of his older sibling to guide him, making his way through the world while the stories flit on the edge of his consciousness, driving him to always look for signs of the fantasy world in the mundaneness of every day life. He can’t help thinking about that night, lying in bed, begging for just one more story:

Come with me in the twilight of a summer night for awhile
Tell me of a story never ever told in the past

Take me back to the land
Where my yearnings were born
The key to open the door is in your hand
Now take me there
To the land of twilight

Powerful stuff. It seriously give me shivers to listen to this song. The final ‘twilight’ is drawn out, and fades into an almost Enya-like outro.

Enya – Caribbean blue (Shepherd Moons, 1991)

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This is one of my favorite Enya songs – as an artist, her music can be a little hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes it’s too ethereal for its own good, and loses its appeal in spaced-out vocals and ‘world music’ instrumentation. Caribbean Blue doesn’t have this problem.

The beginning is a great way to introduce a concept – brief orchestral strings, which fade away to trancey plucked arpeggios and nice bass swells. The beuty of the chord progression is made clear, along with the sort of flowing, lilting rythem of the song. The brief ‘ah’ vocal sting at :25 should make it abundantly clear to anyone listening that this is, in fact, an early Enya song. The swirling vocals immediatly afterwards give way to the enchanting lyrics:

So the world goes round and round
With all you ever knew,
They say the sky
High above
Is Caribbean blue.

More orchestral strings follow, along with more vocalizing, keeping things interesting but not varying much from the original music premise of the song. Next verse:

If every man says all he can,
If every man is true,
Do I believe the sky above
Is Caribbean blue?

More vocals, more orchestal strings, a little stronger this time, with more bass, intensifying things a little until the bridge at 1:58, carrying the song swirling onwards with higher notes, until the last verse comes around, this time transposed upwards a bit:

If all you told was turned to gold
If all you dreamed were new,
Imagine sky high above
In Caribbean blue.

By now we’ve heard all the song is going to give us – things roll onwards to the ending at 3:50, which is as brilliant a way to usher the track out as was the intro to usher it in – everything drops off, leaving a lone vocal pad, which briefly hints at a solo, before abruptly fading down to silence.

What’s the song about? To begin with, there are a few observations we can make about the ‘narrator’ – the fact that “they say the sky” is blue, and that its blueness is questioned in the next verse, and finally imagined in the last, suggests that wherever this song takes place, the colour of the sky is not readily ascertainable. Are they underground? Are they in space? Are they in a world that’s perpetually cloudy? When I think of the colour ‘caribbean blue’, I think of the deep endless ocean off the shore of a tropical island – impossibly deep dark blueness, accompnied by a fring of shallow green and sandy yellow. It sort of feels like a yearning for a lush vegetative island paradise – something the world in the song is possibly missing.

The phrase “so the world goes round and round” pretty explicitly refers to the passage of time – after all, that’s how our chronology works, revolutions of planetary bodies. “with all you ever knew” seems like another reference to time, and perhaps a sort of elder wisdom – a world in the future, where all the secrets of the past are contained somewhere on the planet? A planet which has lost its island paradise? The other lines seem to suggest that it’s possible for this paradise to be reclaimed: “If every man says all he can, if all he says is true… If all you told was turned to gold, if all you dreamed was true…” If the shattered world worked together, imagined progress, dealt honestly, and communicated… would the sky high above once again become caribbean blue?

The Knife – Silent Shout (Silent Shout, 2007)

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Thing start out quiet – a bass line, a little bit of white noise shaking, a nice reverby kick, until something beautiful appears at :25… a cut-down trance lead with a little bit of echo to it, arpeggiates and dances its way around the chording, eventually leading into the vocals (accompanied by a nice splash of drum machine clapping)

I never knew this could happen to me
I know now fragility
I know there’s people who I haven’t told
I know of people who are getting old

The words are whispery with white noise, vocorded to a ‘singing robot’ degree, and as they finish up the trance synth gets expansive, brightening then filter-tweaking down to a muted sound, before bringing in the next verse. The second verse might as well be the first , and the third follows quickly after. Finally at 2:57 the instruments have had enough – they drop out for a second to give the vocals a chance to introduce the peak of the song, where the synth brightens up and starts rolling higher, accompanied by some additional percussion. This can’t keep up for too long, and relaxes at 3:45 to let the final verse have some breathing room, this one with less clutter then the others, allowing the depth of the vocal effects to be really appreciated. Things stay quiet for the rest of the song – the apex has come and gone, the song’s assets are played out, and it meekly returns to where it started – a bass line, and a kick drum.

It’s kind of like a sudden rainstorm, with hand clap clashes of thunder and lightning, washes of wind-swept rain, whispery streams suddenly engorged by an extra payload… not a very complicated song, or a very in-depth one, although it manages to run nearly 5 minutes without getting too repetitive. The excellent use of splashy hand claps, vocorded lyrics, and that trance synth line are what make this song irresistible to me. The “me/fragility” rhyme works really well too.

David Bowie – Hallo Spaceboy (Outside, 1995)

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My other favorite track from Bowie’s ‘Outside’ album, ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ starts out heavy and barely lets up – the crunchy synth line at the beginning keep things on-track while various ambient vocal samples swirl around (similar to the intro to The Heart’s Filthy Lesson), until the percussion hits hard at :25. This relentless pounding lets up just as it edges on annoying, making room for the vocals:

Spaceboy, you’re sleepy now,
Your silhouette is so stationary
You’re released but your custody calls
And I want to be free
Don’t you want to be free?
Do you like girls or boys?
It’s confusing these days
But Moondust will cover you, cover you
This chaos is killing me

At the mention of the murderous chaos, the percussion slams back into the track, along with some more guitar and subtle synths in the background, spreading out into a sort of industrial soundscape, which boils around for a bit until a short break at 2:20. The berse repeats, but this time along with the pounding percussion, which intensifies as the lyrics wrap up, ending in another short break at 3:02 (filled by mutterings about moon dust), immediately stepping back up into the familiar pounding rhythm and guitar exploration. This time things break off at 3:34, as brass stings and spiraling electric piano spread out for a bit, before collapsing back to the default lineup. At this point, the song has given all it has to offer – it continues to rage for another minute or so, ultimately fading out.

The repeated return to the slamming ‘kick and snare on every beat’ pattern doesn’t ever really get annoying, since it’s broken often enough to give the listener time to rest, and the lyrics are obscure enough to catch your attention – is this song about drugs? about sex? about rock’n'roll? Anyway, played through headphones at full volume, it’s inescapably catchy.

David Bowie – The Heart’s Filthy Lesson (Outside, 1995)

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Bowie’s ‘Outside’ album is an entire trip in itself, but a couple of track stand out, mixing the abraisive experimental sound of the project as a whole with an accessible sort of heavy industrial pop. As soon as The Heart’s Filthy Lesson begins, there’s a sort of harsh droning line, maybe an organ, accompnied by some ambient sounds, creating the tensions that’s broken as the instrumentation enters at :24. The sporadic overdriven electric guitar and Bowie’s vocals trade off over a quieter rythem guitar, bass, occasional piano arpeggios, and a consistent drum line.

Things get weird for a moment – “Paddy? Who’s been wearing Miranda’s clothes?” – before featuring a frantic piano break, and surfacing back into the main theme. This is good enough to be a sort of interstitial, but the song continues to progress after a quick break and vocal sigh at 3:21. The bridge sounds the same, but changes things up enough to keep the song interesting, and adds more guitar, building tension until the peak of the song at 3:59: “Oh Paddy… I think I’ve lost my way…”

The rest of the sound is a devolving outro. Through the song, Bowie doesn’t really identify what filthy lesson the heart has to offer:

There’s always the diamond friendly
Sitting in the Laugh Hotel
The heart’s filthy lesson
With her hundred miles to hell

Oh, Ramona, if there was only something between us
If there was only something between us
Other than our clothes

Paddy will you carry me, I think I’ve lost my way
I’m already five years older I’m already in my grave

Will you carry me?
Oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way

The line “I’m already five years older, I’m already in my grave” is great, and Bowie’s repeated cryptic remarks during the outro, “Paddy, what a fantastic death abyss! Tell the others.” is full of suggestion as well. Other then those lines and the interstitial ‘quotes’ throughout the song, I think the vocals work better as instruments themselves then as communicating any concrete idea.