Playlist – October 2018 “Long Journeys”

Has it started flowing faster and we, as dragged as we are by its impetuous course, we feel this increased sense of urgency?

Or, rather, does it flows like it used to do at the time of the dinosaurs, or at the time of the pharaohs, but it’s just us, who stuff it with way too many things? A hint of this second hypothesis would be the fact that we multitask way too much, subdividing crumbles of our attention between plenty of layers of reality.

What kind of music can best suit such a crowded agenda?

Too often we may be tempted – and plenty of temptations are “generously” provided by the music industry, indeed – to revert to music which is as thin as a veil of rain on a stone, as shallow as a pool on the cupping bent surface of a dead leaf.

Music which will certainly entertain us, but won’t probably aim, per its conception and birth, to provide us with more content than that: our entertainment.

A good comparison (but trite, I know) is that with food: for music is something that we absorb, something which flows from our ears, through our brain, to our inner self, leaving traces, interacting with parts of us and changing them, and us, whether by enhancement or attenuation, or even by burial or revelation… taking seriously in account the permanent effect music has on us, doesn’t it sound safer to rather pay attention to which kinds of score we let comment on our lives, to which kind of auditory food we feed ourselves with, and to enjoy it, while we’re at it?

Nothing better (and more revolutionary), then, in these hasty times, than taking in some music which comfortably takes all the time it needs to develop its discourse and reveal, progressively, its concealed treasure, to those who are patient enough.

There are songs, epics, suites, in this playlist, which, no matter a subdivision in tracks that may be in part justified by movements, segments of music different in style, rhythm, meaning, and in part by the discographical need to provide some titling and timing to let the listener orient themselves in the long flux of sound, last, such songs, half a hour or even a whole hour, and you can perceive, by listening, how the music keeps flowing from track to track, because that’s how they were conceived, as a whole.

You’ll find plenty of jazz and progressive, and some metal, too, and a flood of classical (or neo-classical) music, and sparkles of blues and rock… there’s something for almost any taste, I dare to say.

And you’ll find beauty, if you’ll dare to put your patience to test, and that’s a more than valid reason, in my opinion, to make the effort to take this mammoth playlist: that to let it fill your inner being with beauty.

After all, don’t they say, “no pain, no gain”? But I believe you won’t feel pain, listening to is. Just wonder and bliss, I dare to predict.

Happy listening,

Daniele