Welcome to this very personal journey. It's a joy to make this list, sort the albums, feel them again, and put them in the drawer of my heart so I keep listening to them throughout the years; because I love this feeling, the music talks so clear to me, all of them are special, and sitting down and write and curate this list feels like a suspension of time. This is a sacred "place".
Let's start with this soft and delicate album, with bright and innocent melodies over a playful but solid base that inspires easiness that at the same time provides security, and timeless pieces that together release us to feel at home - This album feels like home.
I like this very much for me: audio pieces sensibly composed to enter into the fibers of my whole body to make me feel this amazingly good, with a veeery very subtle rhythm that treats my heart so tenderly and makes my brain curious but relaxed at the same time, like a baby just feeling the flux of stuff without any weight.
Time stretches as I watch the kids across the street playing with the ball, their parents waiting while on the phone, "making time" perhaps? What do I mean?... The sun from behind me lights over the scene, casts the shadow of a hidden tree over that big white wall. The sun also lights just the hanging fabrics around, while they dance with the wind. Sun and wind on the skin, I remember that vividly, a feeling that is absolutely and completely true, truer than any word. I'm resting my arms and face on a glass, reflections start to appear. This music not only gives this a special touch, it did let this happen in the first place, just by stretching time.
I feel this album at the front of my brain, my throat and the upper part of my chest, but also at the organs. Something inside me feels accelerated, like something big is about to happen, but something very local, very present, not at the deepest of my mind or existential depths. Can something be highly introspective but also connect you strongly with reality? Ah, it makes me feel the inside of my body. Music is such a powerful thing.
Putting some structure to your experience simply means choosing a rhythm to deal with it, and you can choose the rhythm you want, the speed you want. Things can be hard depending on what point we are from them, but the sequence is very simple. This album gives some rhythm/structure/tempo to the present, embracing whatever it's put into each of the units, giving form, meaning, substance to the experience; isn't it what music actually is (for)? Catching a glimpse of life, putting it in a jar, contemplating it.
A great company to carry around, in the emergency kit. Its textures and rhythms build the terrain to activate our body and brain. This isn't to just stay blank or still, it stimulates our creativity, activates our curiosity, and makes us see the world in a special way.
Still rich textures and rhythms, an electro feeling, makes me think of what will remain of the spirit we now know in the future. Will music made entirely by machines touch a string in us, the consumers? Will our needs reign or will the "machine taste" ultimately shape our brains to (think we) like it? So far, despite of technology, we have been able to comunicate our souls through music, so I think it won't be easy to die.
Visions from different universes, fun and demanding, ordinary and precious, colorful and transparent. Organic electronic, as human as something can get.
The clearest example of beings actively creating reality is this, music. The feeling of the music maker, who here is clearly in their purest connection with the whole, is effectively transmitted. When one is doing their activities in full connection, their identity disappears: they're both the maker, the listener, the music, the instrument is part of them, and yet there is a subtle line of "taste", let's call it, that doesn't dissolve away; that's the only thing that really lives and is what the universe is made for/of.
Are you telling me you're not a machine?
The more you look outside, the deeper you can go inside; but there's a trick: you musn't identify, but must hold a subtle but strong line of character to discern. In other words, you must fly without losing touch with the ground. And that sacred place process will nurture you with the primordial sense of what life is. Only with clear eye you can see the truth behind every word, every thing, every thought, every skip of the heart. Transparency is the key and signal the universe blessed me with to achieve that, so I navigate with prudence, not caution; with grace, not pride. The key lies around, free, waiting for your line to cross with it.
Behind the curtains.
The art of exploration: Don't step on your past footprints, but never forget them, because if you don't recognize them, you'll never know you stepped on there again.
Finally one loosely understands nothing is solidly as it "pretends" to be, reality is subject just to consensus. So we can jump from the practicity of being strongly defined and flow in our ethereal form, not getting ourselves too comfortable on any of both sides but in that sacred loose but strong disposition. The strong character and yet playful spirit of this album makes me think of that.
On the most minuscule corner of the vastness of the universe, and despite the low chance, the most honest form of language sprout. And yet, not chance or honesty mean anything really... And that highlights the point.
At every level of feeling this realm, it feels good, just feeling it is good, like gratitude for the mere fact of being alive. Pleasure is in every point of perceiving, suffering just depends on how comfortable, familiar and open we are to the perceived. Is there something or someone we can be grateful to, for all the anchors and propellers? For all the chances to glide between rooting and flying, between passive and active, between living and dying. Thanks to the artist for this piece.
A romance with machine; a connection appeared, a superior communication did click, telepathy established, powered up the ultimate revelation " 1 AM YOU".
It won't be easy to get me to desist, I get through to the end of the loop, only to start another one, if we can differentiate them for practical purposes; and that loop will be built with you. Explore with me? *stretches her arm, gets dizzy from the definition (or not) of her boundaries*
The soundtrack of the actual adventure:
This is the vibe Zai likes, anyone who knows me well would know. The solid spirit and the volatile materiality, because that's how I like my operations. This album is a friend.
Hearing the silences would be a meaningless thing to say, saying that I feel you in the distance would miss the whole point; it's something at nowhere where it's such a depth or naked shallowness where I see you at your brightest, and we dance while we fly away together as we sleep.
Before we wake up, we spend a million years together, revise every chance, make choices, embrace our steps, forgive. Not all frontal interactions have to be masked, there are bridges for better sharing, and music must be the peak bridge. Remember love? Music is the most exact language of it.
3... 2... 1... We wake up, and whatever that holds it all together is felt like a delicate engine extending to depths we can't perceive. A force from far away assures me that the "line", for lack of a better word, is working all fine, I just have to keep trusting my senses. I potentiate the herbal flavor of my beverage and feel the sound of that thin line of agency gliding through, making me smile.
Bring me a cold tea, boy, I want to drink while I wait for my cells to get cleaned with this music.
I love being alive.
As we reach for the end of this list, the vibe gets more contemplative, because I liked it that way to honor the times I felt lost but never alone. They boosted me up. This album has the spirit of everything I have chosen through 10 years making this list: it knows what it likes, what it wants, it found... the key and the door in the tiny packets that live in music, the packets that hold what that music is and what is not. That (and much more) is why I always say music is the answer.
Close your eyes. Reconfigure your surroundings; not (only) the objects around you but all manifestations of being, even in the dimensions we can't perceive, that are into the space your arms can reach. Feel the threads that go through you move as you pull the other parts of them, feel them through your flesh. It's you the master you were looking for and asking to.
How do you feel about your power? Is the scared and comfortable you trying to pull you back? Does it promise you security? Do you believe that hiding is real security? Have you ever thought that the only way to ensure things for you is to take responsibility yourself?
Are you open to it, tho? You don't need anything else, not wait to "be ready". Don't miss the point, Earth buddy. Pilot it.
"Drawing" like creating. "Drawing" like taking. Taking... pictures. Where from? Extending around, dancing, drawing with the whole body, jumping, breathing, getting our energy through to explore (itself), almost nothing remains. And yet that's when we are the most.
Understand that nothing would exist if not as a counterpart... But the important thing to look at is not the opposite, but what had to be before the thing. The flower in full bloom would only be full, or, worse, just flower, if it wasn't for the blooming part. The process, kid. So: Love the eternal, sacred potentiality you and everything is.
At the "end" (which would only come to mean any moment you think), only you remain, the spark that watches over it's sons and daughters, over it's kingdom and history, over his perdition and absolution.
[Or not.]
