I’ve been listening to a lot of different music lately, I don’t like to categorize music by using labels but this way it gets easier to be understood, so, here we go: I went from electronic to indie-rock, back to pop then to dub and then post-punk, some post-rock or hardcore punk, moving freely from one decade to another, never caring about boundaries. That’s freedom, I mean listening to whatever I like…
I love listening to well crafted pop albums, I can tell if something sounds good or not: making electronic music is one my favorite way to waste my free time, therefore I know that achieving a certain kind of sounds requires knowledge, a well-trained pair of ears and attention to details. That’s what producers are for, expanding an artist sonic potential, showing bands new ways to express themselves, putting them into a different light.
Strange things happen sometimes: for example I’ve never really cared about Arcade Fire or James Murphy (LCD Sound system) before last year, then I listened to Reflektor and loved it. Whether one may like Arcade Fire latest album or not, my opinion is that they made a perfectly crafted and coherent piece of music, it makes sense from the beginning to the end, and it is, at times, touching. I can tell that James Murphy’s work as a producer matters a lot here, as well as the band intention to evolve into something different.
Still, I’m curious about Arcade Fire’s older stuff, not that keen on James Murphy’s, even if I enjoyed listening to him djing at Sonar a few years ago.
I digressed a lot already, because my point is another one: I was browsing Pitchfork’s website to find something refreshing to listen to, and I stumbled across a band named TOPS. There was their latest song, cool sounding but a little bit too similar to Berlin’s ‘Take my Breath Away’ (Berlin’s first EP is great, anyway), and that one always reminds me the of that awkward moment when I was watching ‘Top Gun’ on TV with my dad, and I could sense he was afraid I would have suddenly asked “daddy, what are Tom Cruise and Kelly Mc Gillis exactly doing?”. By the way, I didn’t ask anything, as the next day at school I examined the topic extensively with my classmates: we were all amazed by Kelly’s tongue mobility, as far as I remember!
Back to the topic once again, I skipped that song and went to TOPS’ own Bandcamp, gave it a shot and actually liked them so much I bought their album in digital format. That’s it, a well crafted pop album, clearly produced and mastered by someone who knew what he was doing. Then, I stumbled across the video of ‘Turn your love around’ and my heart just melted. It features a dancing class for deaf students, and there’s something incredibly touching for me in all of this…don’t really know what it is, might it be I share with them the impression I felt I was kind of ‘different’ during my teenage years, or maybe that it makes me think about my adolescent female cousin and the difficult time she’s facing now (gosh, maybe she’s even reading this right now,) or, just because I imagine how hard it is for them to dance just by feeling the ‘vibes’ with their bodies or wearing hearing aids and cochlear implants.
Yesterday I felt like I wanted to join them in that dance, have fun with them, enjoying the vibrations with my heart wide open, not thinking for a moment about all the troubles and hardships of adulthood.
If Marlon Brando showed me my reclaiming masculine side in a dream, this might be my feminine ‘sensitive’ side trying to get along with it, but in real life. Frankly, I see no point in disowning my own emotions, and choosing one side instead of another, just because boys don’t cry and girls are overly emotional creatures. I leave all this generic crap to narrow-minded people, and I add, it takes courage to be vulnerable, as it takes time and some effort to be aware of ourselves, acknowledge the way we feel and identify what exactly triggers our own ‘exclusive’ emotions.
I’ve almost forgot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGEcQ73qVL8
A White Canvas 
That is really impressive of having me reading this. 🙂
I am hard of hearing and I was part of the “Turn your love around.” I was in that video, and from what I read, it melted my heart because no one has thought harder enough to know that those deaf AND hard of hearing students have a different way of hearing the music. They actually FEEL the vibrations because it gathers into you. Once you feel the beat of one music, there you go. You start to dance in any beats you feel. Hard of hearing students can hear the music but more of that, they feel it because hearing it could be a difficulty to them because they cannot understand the words of the song. Vibrations are what we contain as hearing music.
If you like to try it once, visit NORTHERN SECONDARY SCHOOL. There’s a deaf and hard of hearing department on the third floor and that’s where I go. You can come, and ask other students on how they feel or listen to music. Honestly. it’d be a pleasure having someone saying that seeing deaf and hard of hearing people doing their own needs melted your heart. Felt so great hearing it as I appreciated the comment. 🙂
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Thanks Krystiann, reading your comment here makes me so happy! This demonstrates me how important is to share what we really feel inside us: heart, mind, body and soul. By doing this we may feel rejected sometimes, some other times misunderstood, but you know what? Whenever we reach out and actually connect with someone in any way, we simply have such a reward that we forget all the efforts we put into it.
Your comment will help anyone reading my blog to better understand the way you really feel music, it adds the post so much more value, you can’t imagine how grateful I am for this 🙂
Not planning to go to Canada anytime soon, but if it happens I will definitely try to visit your school 🙂
A big hug, have a great day!
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Just listened to their whole ‘Tender Opposites’ album. Reminds me a bit of 80’s alternative music. Nice find!
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cool band, aren’t they? Happy I can still find music I enjoy sometimes 😉
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