Diego Alejandro – Ciclos
Our minds are fearful of innovation. And, of course, our ears shy away from novel ideas. That’s how, after all, we’ve been programmed to be. It’s the way that we unwind by allowing ourselves to be lulled to sleep by stories of which we already know the endings.
And these are the reasons why pop songs, particularly the hit singles, always seem to sound the same, at least for a stretch of 5-6 years at a time. This is something that’s happened way before digital algorithms. It’s something that we’ve collectively demanded.
This is the reason why free jazz more than nearly any other music genre creates such a powerful pushback from typical audiences. They expect notes that they can’t hear being connected, falling in every direction. But what if this “free jazz” can juggle ancient memories?
That’s what, I think, Diego Alejandro’s “Ciclos” does. You, Alejandro, aren’t just a skilled musician and composer. The music’s greatest quality is that it summons to your imagination information about South America that is hidden inside your mind. “Ciclos” is a way to summon back all that you know about South America and forgotten that you believed.
Jordan Sand – Baby with the Sail
Becoming interested in poetry, for most people, is an inevitability. And if it’s not falling in love as an adolescent and having your heart broken, you’ll do like most others and choose a poet to quote at dinner parties much later in life.
But it won’t be easy. No, the verses can’t be easily memorised. It’s just that have there been many poets at all? Not really! Certainly very few adults. There have certainly been an awful few who could actually put into words life’s most important problems.
With that in mind, let’s not be so upset about the quality of lyrics in pop songs. Let’s not mind that they don’t tell us much about either life or the people doing the singing.
Jordan Sand, on the other hand, has figured this out much more easily than most. In fact, composing from the beautiful, and usually chilly city of Trondheim, Norway, Sand’s also realised that life never moves into one straight pattern. “Baby with the Sail” talks about life, death and the ghosts that are left to roam. But it does so without words, sculpting sound into maddening patterns. How else can the poetry of the world truly come out?
