May 2023 in Music
Of course we begin May, the crowning glory of spring, with Takagi, who is always gentle and warm. I think a lot about gentleness; I feel that we encounter God in the gentle beauty of small things, like dew on a flower or the pre-dawn chatter of birds. But saying that comes with its own doubtful anxiety, because in seeing God as gentle and near, immanent in the beauty of creation, I tend to also interpret that as a sort of universalistic or unqualified reassurance, which sits in tension with my understanding of theology. For me, this is a sort of veil between myself and fully experiencing the sense of safety and peace betokened by small, beautiful things. But I do think that the nearness, the immanence, and the gentleness of God in creation is indisputable, regardless of my confusion.
Ok, I admit I revisited Born Slippy because my favorite film podcast did an episode on Trainspotting. Otherwise this seems a little incongruous for me. But it does fit with my listening in one sense: it’s some real fin-de-siecle stuff, rattling around the great empty echoing chamber of the end of history.
Clammbon put out a new album this year, and twenty years into their career they haven’t lost their step, and no one sings with quite that specific sort of strange plaintiveness as Ikuko Harada.
I went to see Guardians 3, and there’s a sequence where they play some diegetic music which is meant to be alien, to sound like nothing ever before heard on earth – but being me, I immediately recognized it as Vocaloid Japanese music, and looked it up as soon as I left the theater. Make of that what you will.
I’m Always Chasing Rainbows – this was another from the soundtrack of Guardians, and it’s an example of how I’m very basic in respect to big swelling rock chords. As for Ancient Dreams, Marina just never misses the opportunity to be musically striking. As for Mili, I honestly don’t know how to describe their music – but I like it. I stumbled onto Mallrat in May, and just kept circling her music. And of course, Pacific Coast is just pure highway cybervibes.
Purple Clouds, however, is quite something. Kensuke Ushio weaves a delicate ending to Naoka Yamada’s stunning television adaptation of the Heike Monogatari, and this score plays over the final thesis of a story which concludes that the only response to death and loss is to pray and remember. What else can we do?
