08 September 2011

Colin Stetson - Red Horses (Judge II) (2011)


I got home this evening determined to do something I had not done in years: browse through bands until I found something I both liked and found genuinely interesting. (I tend to blog about music I don’t like that much in fact, since finding bands I do like takes fucking ages. That said I thoroughly enjoy the sense of digging around the internet, finding something that I identify with as a person. It tells me more about me than I could perhaps consciously state, and is just fun.) So how long did it take to find something I liked? I guess about 30 songs from 30 different bands – and about 110 minutes. Fuck! I guess it was always this tough but – damn! – that’s a lot of evening gone.

Onto the music then – Red Horse (Judges II) from Colin Stetson. The thing I like about this is that the sound is so totally removed from the beaten path of things I encounter on a daily basis. Once upon a time, I chose bands and musicians because they channelled my existential angst so to speak. For instance, Jenny Lewis seemed to possess a self-awareness and pain at just being alive that I related to. Since then though, it seems I'm becoming interested in things that are interesting just in themselves. I don’t need music to channel angst. I don’t think this is necessarily a superior reason to like something – just a different one - perhaps related to my different position in life and experience. Being an office drone I feel it itinerate upon me to create the furthest possible distance from that in the evening, and that means strangeness. In addition, I suppose I like the idea of exploring uncanny states of being. Listening to the latest St. Vincent album for instance, I find the lyrics mundane but the atonal electric guitar solos fascinating. Just the sense of discord or disfunction being expressed. Heh - come to think of it, perhaps I am still choosing the bands I like based on what I relate to emotionally. Perhaps it's just the emotional states I’m hoping to channel through music have changed. : P

In any case listen to Red Horses. It's interesting - and so little in life is.