Living Set – Last Wave
People aren’t afraid of musicians anymore, and that’s a real shame and something that ought to be corrected. The worst kind of panic that rock musicians can illicit nowadays is that they’ll skip on the bill once they’re done dining, but it didn’t used to be only this way.
Musicians, especially in the early days of amplified guitar music, were seen as potential shamans. There’d be stories about them wherever they went. Some were in cahoots with the devil, while others were said to be angelic spokespeople. Living Set is one of only a few groups that can create a similar enigma.
The fact is that most musicians are now given marketing advice that nearly always includes tips on filming themselves doing dishes and posting them online. Musicians share every aspect of their struggle, hoping to become relatable. But who wants their rock star to be ordinary, average, relatable?
Living Set’s “Last Wave” sounds like an incantation. It’s the kind of music that you fear that you might hear while walking alone through the woods. It’s the sort of music that myths are created around. The music’s given, sure, a nice dream pop polish. But there’s nothing more about it or the people who made it that needs to be known. Knowing less means enjoying this more. And, perhaps, that’s how music always ought to have remained.
Aaron Orbit – Attention
Maybe it is true that the greatest rock n’ roll records never ever got made. Perhaps what really happened is that the songs worthy of creating those were written, arranged and demoed by the terrific artists who managed to dream those up.
But, very likely, those songs then disappeared the moment that the record producers, the managers, and the sound engineers heard them. The way that things go in this dirty business, the song was mangled beyond description before it got sent out of the factory.
But what if it had remained in its pure state in the way that Aaron Orbit’s music sounds? We’d likely have an entirely different music history. The most famous records ever made would sound lo-fi, but intensely personal.
Aaron Orbit’s “Attention” is designed to sound like a blast from the past. And it succeeds in being that terrific great song that you think you heard on the radio years ago, but didn’t really. “Attention” sounds like a celestial 80s synth-pop that was recorded by a platinum-selling artist in their bedroom and was hidden away before the music producer got their hands on it. History can be so much more different!
