Blackhill – Angel’s Elegance (Dusk Version)
Unless your work is in the theatre or treating patients inside a mental asylum, chances are that most of your days are spent interacting with ordinary, regular people whose actions or opinions never jump out. Let’s flat out say it – your life is filled with bores, and there’s not a great deal that you can do about it. So, unless you want to take some drastic actions toward increasing your own eccentricity and seeing what you attract, there’s only one thing to do.
Make it so that, at the very least, when it comes to your entertainment, you are not accompanied by the kinds of people that would teach you geography in school or help you do your tax reports. Opt for the likes of Croatia’s Blackhill, for the sort of artists that, if you knew on a personal basis, you’d be too afraid to answer the door if they happened to ring your doorbell in the middle of the night.
Inventive, quirky Croatian pop has picked up quite a few English-speaking fans in recent years, which makes Blackhill’s “Angel’s Elegance (Dusk Version)” a fantastic opportunity for both listeners and the artists. The song pushes forward relentlessly with a murky, combative psych-rock sound. But, frankly, it’s all the production and orchestration ideas that give the song its identity, and might well want to make you embrace music’s remaining eccentrics.
Solbore – We Are Not Young Anymore
The ideal scenario for any record label, or the music business as a whole, is one in which a million Paul McCartneys are locked inside a million rooms for their entire lives, tasked with writing 3-minute pop songs, and never paid anything except for a piece of toast and a soda at lunchtime. And, while many gladly accept these conditions, the prospect of using dumb AI bots to play the role of the McCartneys, naturally, thrills the industry.
The fact is that the vast, vast majority of songs ever professionally recorded and released to the world follow strict patterns. They’re pop songs designed for mass appeal. And, when most of them fail, the authors just move on to something else.
However, the most sublime kind of music is difficult to categorize, comes through wild experimentation, and, more often than not, is even hard to discuss or define. You’ll know it when you hear it, and you’ll feel it when you hear something special.
But we still need people to venture out there and find it. Solbore’s “We Are Not Young Anymore” is a mysterious, intriguing piece of music. Sure, you could say that, it’s a song inspired by the marriage of trip-hop and pop. Yeah, the nostalgic lyrics about lost youth and missed potential will resonate with many. But those are just words! The best thing to do is listen to the notes and then focus on the silences between the notes. Yeah, try selling that to hit-obsessed record labels!
