Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Song of the Day #81 - Shlohmo - Later

Make you feel some type of way...



I'm surprised I didn't choose this for song of the day before. This is the song that, while travelling (AROUND THE WORLD) this summer, I listened to the most, by far. And I don't mean "of any non-Young Thug song". I know, crazy.

Lately I have been trying to take a really simple and direct approach to looking at music. I ask myself "what emotion motivated the creation of this song?" and "what emotion is the artist trying to make me feel?" and try to let everything else emerge from that. What I've found most intriguing is that some songs, and a lot of songs I really like, feel extremely "emotional" but I can't understand what emotion, or even emotional range, underlies them.

Like, this song, for example. This song makes me feel basically every type of way, at various times. I remember playing it when planes were taking off and it felt like the explosion of possibilities, of transformative energy. Then I'd play it when the plane was landing and it would feel conclusive, final, triumphant. It felt like an anthem of exploration, of a sort of... self-annihilatory touristic freedom, where no aspect of my particular self mattered in the face of something truly beautiful. And yet it also felt like an anthem of weary marches back to the hostel, a feeling of sore feet, of thinking only of your bed.

It wasn't so much that it could apply to everything, like, it wouldn't make sense in the "theme" of like... idk, shopping, or eating. But it did have a really broad and implacable and often contradictory or inconsistent emotional/situational/aesthetic range. So like... what's going on? How does it work? I have no idea. But I really really like it.

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