Tonight is a beautiful night.
It’s a full moon.
I’m an artist, I think. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.
But I do know that I deeply need to be overwhelmed every so often. I guess that’s why I like really hot food, super bitter beers, abundant amounts of garlic and onions, and other strong foods; I like being knocked off my feet every so often.
For that reason, I really enjoyed living in Alaska. I was broke while living there, which meant that my feet were my primary mode of transportation. Walking at night in Alaska, I can assure you, is a humbling experience. The woods swallow up the sidewalks, and you have almost no visual information with which to navigate; you have to walk by feel.
I loved being nearly blind, and being cold. And here in Southern California, it’s rare that I experience either of those things; our cities are well lit, and our climate is infuriatingly pleasant. But tonight was different.
Tonight was cold.
Tonight was dark.
I’m currently living in a fairly remote area; and while it’s no Anchorage, the night sky is relatively unpolluted by lights. In fact, there are even a few trails where I can walk and be unmolested by street lights at all. After all, aren’t street lights a comforting lie amidst the larger truth of night? Night represents the passive, the surrender. Maybe that’s why, when it comes to sleep, fear and fascination tend to blur for me. Here are 2 quotes which, to me, sum up the delight and the terror which are bound up in the idea of sleep:
“‘There’s only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I’ve ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there’s very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse.'” Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter 68. (p. 717 in the Norton Critical Edition)“Death be not proud[…] rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow.” (John Donne, Holy Sonnet X)
I want so much for the world to overwhelm me; and there is so much to overwhelm! For example, consider the following:
“Black holes[…]are made fully and solely from warped space and warped time. They contain no matter whatsoever.” (Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar.)
Tonight, walking in the dark, I was overwhelmed. I was knocked off my feet and laid out by a world which would not be ignored. The full moon hung, petulant, in the night sky; the sky, for its part, was thick with mist. So thick, in fact, that the mountains couldn’t speak their peaks, but only send up foothills into the heights, before being swallowed up by fog. That lacy mist that dressed the hills and softened the glare of the moon also pearled the delicate lace of the pepper trees.
Alt-J and An Awesome Wave
Something else that’s been overwhelming me lately is a band from England called Alt-J. Specifically, their debut album, “An Awesome Wave.”
Theirs is a strange sound; one of the first things you’ll note is the vocals, which sound so strange, you’ll wonder if they’re doctored, or if the singer is imitating R2-D2. If you can imagine a nasal falsetto, then you’ve got an idea of how he sounds. Then, imagine such a voice, layered; creating a choir of clipped, robotic voices layered over buzzing guitars and unexpected percussion. On songs like “Taro,” what little percussion there is sounds like something out of Tatooine.
Let me be clear; these guys sound nothing like Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. At the same time, they sound unlike pretty much anything else I listen to. And I listen to a lot.
The lead-off track on the album, “Intro,” sounds like a prepared piano fed through a CB radio, which leads into cleverly layered guitars over a bass drum that’s timed like Morse code. Halfway through the song, the drums, guitar and bass drop out, leaving only the piano to pluck a timid path forward. Slowly, the guitar joins in, just to make sure everything is ok; then, assured that the coast is clear, the vocals hop in with a cavalry of bass. And so it begins.
The second track is the first of several Interludes, and it sets the strange tone for the rest of the disc. An a cappella piece, it picks up on the moonscape feel of “Intro” and sounds like a dream sung by a barbershop quartet composed of Danny Elfman, Ben Folds, Palestrina, and an ATM. Then, as soon as you begin to settle into it, it’s over, and “Tesselate” begins, evilly.
A jumble of impossibly warm guitars, fuzzy keyboards, and lo-fi synth percussion, “Tesselate” is a strange melody that avoids resolution like the plague, dancing back and forth between minor, non-tonic chords like a sinister Doc Holliday. (For reference, I include here a clip from the always-relevant “Tombstone.”)
The rest of the album is a maze of fuzz-addled strings, tripping percussion, and vocals leap-frogging over schizophrenic melodies that make mincemeat out of scales.
Rest assured, there are moments of calm, to let you catch your breath. The second interlude, about a third of the way through the album, is a relatively simple meditation played on nylon-strung guitar over a reassuring backing track of white noise. But the breaks don’t last long; that song offers less than 2 minutes’ rest before launching into the snare-heavy “Something Good,” which finds the band firmly back on their unsettled terra firma.
I find that this album consistently dodges explanation or examination; it’s so lush and unapologetically abnormal that I can’t hear it as separate songs, but only a continuous whole. Also, I avoid looking up the lyrics because the vocals become simply another instrument; this, I must explain, is a compliment. The recording is done so expertly that one element cannot be singled out over any other; remove any element, and the album would suffer. There will never be an all acoustic version of this album, because the sounds are the music, even though the melodies are impressively complex and exceptionally beautiful.
In short, I am undone by this album.