In The Pines – Time Shakes
How long does it take before a band knows the demographics of its audience? Maybe a few shows, and a couple of online-released singles? There are very few artists who naively do not know for whom they cater.
The truth is that not all entertainment is for everyone, and the people selling tickets know this. For the most part, they insist that the content be adapted so that as many people as possible who are likely to enjoy the show will attend. This all makes sense even on an intuitive level!
Audiences who like to get lost inside a haze of guitars and pretty melodies tend to share certain similarities. And, I must confess that I am amazed by how many of them will seek liberation by travelling the world, experimenting with their sanity, or trying exotic spiritual techniques, when music can help them achieve the same things.
In The Pines know exactly who is likely to enjoy “Time Shakes,” a warm, hazy kiss of psychedelic-rock. They’ve built the song up through crisp production and have made it gleam in the Sun. But is In The Pines everything you need to get away? If you listen carefully enough, it very much might be. The band makes the kind of retro-rock that has turned many listeners into lifelong dreamers.
DOOM GONG – Never Crossed my Mind
Eventually, we’ll all pay a subscription to have our memories tailored to our needs. In every room in our mind, only the people and events that we like to have there will exist. And, if it all works out relatively well, DOOM GONG’s music might be playing in most of them.
But, of course, it won’t stop there. “What if The Beatles had never broken up and Steve Jobs had poured all his energy into developing a world-class sandwich?” will be some of the questions asked by those buying the subscription each month.
And the companies providing the.. ehm.. Content will happily reply “What If” as they create alternative history lines. In many of them, of course, popular music did not devolve into overproduced two-minute singles and AI-approved electro beats, but into thrillingly bizarre psychedelic rock.
DOOM GONG’s music, and “Never Crossed my Mind,” especially belong to an era that never existed. It never got the chance, what with all the clever record companies hiring people that they could make money from and disappear at the click of a finger.
“Never Crossed my Mind” sounds like psychedelic music meant to convince you that everything will be alright. It sounds like music made by talented people at the behest of heartless machine overlords. It is what we could have had, and we can still dream of it.
