Max Richter : Songs From Before
Simple movements. Simple and slow. The slow part is what’s amazing. It can draw out a few notes spaced eons apart and pull them together in a geological timeline. Cenozoic and Neolithic and Holocene overlapping and looped to produce a menagerie of sounds taken from the few moments in all of those millions of years that were catastrophic enough for the whole world to notice. These Songs From Before extend these memorable moments in echoes like a dancer in slow motion. The eyes watching can peer along and examine and try to figure out why the world is taking its time. Normally things are in such a rush. Music’s job is to make me feel good, and I want it now, so hurry up and make me move my feet, or I’ll slap your skip button so hard you know to skip forward or backward, so you’ll just break…
…but that’s not what it’s about now.
It’s not about crescendos like power shits that relieve as soon as the ass feels the shock of the urine-damp toilet seat. The sphincter opens its mouth violently in aghast and lets out a fainting breath that slumps the man lifeless on the toilet, exhausted with release, but this isn’t like that. There’s still life in me to appreciate the miracle of what’s going on, music made from the sparsest ingredients, but cake is still just as light and sweet, angel food. The taste is never saccharine, like diet soda leaving the mouth feeling like plastic inside, but continues on, and when it finally ends, the sweetness merely fades instead of transforming into a darker phase of bittersweet.
Teaching time to take its time can reveal very great things that are usually covered in a veil of busy-ness. If only time wasn’t always money.
Similar Works:
Arvo Pärt – De Profundis
Brian Eno – Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks