Month: July 2019

Blue Nile – Matthew Halsall featuring The Gondwana Orchestra

~ Poetic Reverb ~ Leave a comment

Here is the song.

Does great music remain confined to our hearing, or does it leak through into our other senses. Can we feel, see, smell, even taste music? The premise of this blog poetic reverb is that great music does leak into our other senses. The vibrations laden in the beats-per-minute of a piece of music reverberate in the brain like the harps reverberate at the end of Blue Nile. Think of the great novel, painting, movie, sculpture that had a significant impact on you, it’s unlikely you processed it in only one sense. Perception itself is multi-sensory, and when our senses work in harmony, it leads to phenomenon of emergence.

Emergence explains that stimuli only become meaningful to us at certain levels of abstraction. So it’s not just the fact that the double bass in this song is playing at just the right tempo, it’s the fact that when the double bass is joined by the percussion, keys, trumpet and finally by the harp, certain associations become apparent and connections between our senses refine the overall experience. Therefore one instrument can have a dramatic impact on how a piece of music is perceived. Likewise, one experience can have a dramatic impact on the meaning of a song to the listener.

Matthew Halsall’s music exemplifies the power of softness in musical composition. Everything in the song seems to be moving in the same direction. Like a river. Like the Nile. After a certain point, the currents in the song become unstoppable, and we are powerless against the onslaught of cascading harps at 6:28 – like the hare that somehow cannot stop the tortoise overtaking it. Listening to this song, I was reminded of the Bruce Lee’s most famous edict – “Be water my friend”.

Monster – Jamie Cullum

~ Poetic Reverb ~ Leave a comment

Here is the song.

In a way, ‘a good thing’ can become a monster; our inability to attain it can strike fear into our hearts, our failure to feel worthy of it can torment us, and our disappointment caused by its failure to satisfy us can be a tragic monstrosity. A monster is defined in the dictionary as an ‘imaginary creature’. What Cullum seems to be pursuing in this song is an imaginary cure-all creation which haunts him throughout the song, a sad-but-true metaphor for striving after creative euphoria.

For all his talent, experience and fans, even a creative genius like Cullum is not in control of his final output. Jamie makes an inspired connection between the act of creativity and gambling & treasure hunting – fundamentally unsound and risky endeavours. Yet this insecurity in his art leads us towards what is really going on, and what he is really seeking – he wants connection, he wants to feel significant, he wants to be a saviour. It’s not really about song writing – it never was. In fact, things are rarely ever about what they seem to be. This latter revelation continually perplexes mankind and provides therapists with a predictably stable income.

Jamie’s voice dominates the song’s entire proceedings, which works because the message of the song is revealed through the lyrics and the marvellous phrasing Jamie employs. And who can blame him when he can craft beautifully shaped phrases like ‘all the chips are falling where they oughta be’ or when he paints entire vistas of emotions through the various ways he sings ‘it feels’.

It’s easy not to notice all the little things that this song does right, but I implore you to listen deeply.  As you do, you begin to appreciate the song’s perfect tempo, the timing of the rhodes accompaniment, the way all the instruments have a hazy undertone that compliments Cullum’s own raspy voice. T’is the sweetest monster i’ve ever heard.