Off Topic.

I seem to have several un-published posts. That's fine.

Today I have been listening to music that always seems to alter my perspective on what music is and can be. It all started when I grabbed Sufjan Stevens' Age of ADZ. The standard listen to this album is that I listen to the entire thing at least once, then skip back to track ten and loop it until my voice is horse. I will be the first to admit that of all the songs to sing along to, I sure did pick the closest to being a 2004-core emo set. I think I just enjoy the range jumps in that song and how it ALWAYS seems to be accessible to my limited range. There is also something therapeutic about singing "I want to be well" in a rhythmic round to then be followed by yelling "I'm not fucking around.." a billion* times in a row. The other thing about that song is how impossible it would be to recreate live without having two-thousand* people on stage with you. I would also like to take this moment to point out how the drums in the crescendo are lame and weak.

*May be a hyperbole.

The second album I sat through in its entirety today was A Silver Mount Zion's he has left us alone but shafts of light sometimes grace the corner of our rooms. This will probably always remain as one of my top post-rock AND classical albums of all time. The movements are beautifully timed, the layers are perfectly separated... AHHHH I could go on for days. The thing that happens when I am listening to this album is that I get completely enveloped into the music and I can't seem to concentrate on anything else going on around me. Though haunting, I never find it depressing. Though beautiful, I never find myself stumbling. It is just completely what it is. I can't say that I know to many albums that I can say that about.

Last but not least is Sigur Ros with their album (). This album has a tendency to bring me to tears when I'm (not?) in the right frame of mind. Everything I said about ASMZ? Make it so, then double it. If you have ever seen the videos they released around that album, then you know exactly what to feel. It's claustrophobic, restrictive, degrading and fucking amazing. Untitled Track 8 has broken me down on several occasions just because of the several minute build to the most intense explosion of cacophony I can think of ever to be created by men. Fuck. I can never think of an album that has moved me more in my existence than that one has. It has shaped me as a person and has changed me as a musician and all without saying a coherent word. Quite literally. The album is written in the fictional "Vonlenska/Hopelandic" because the singer was sick of people trying to figure out what he way trying to say. If there was an album I could hear just before I lost every last frequency from my hearing, it would be this one. I think I have (at least tried) to share this album with every person in my life so far. I really do have to thank Johnny for getting me into them back when I was in grade 10. If he had any clue how much this album has meant to me, he would probably rub it in my face for ever doubting him.

Well that turned into a gush fest. I don't think I realized how much I enjoyed that album until I started writing this.
As I mentioned, I have a few posts that I never posted either because they are incomplete, or they were just not good. They are all full of something neat, so maybe I'll just combine them and GIANT-BLOG.


-J