The song I like is called Santa Maria. It's about Egon Schiele, a painter who died of the Spanish flu in 1918. He died just three days after his pregnant wife died of the same stupid flu. Sads.
Santa Maria was a ship with the Spanish Armada that sank of the coast of Ireland leaving one survivor. I'm guessing the song is about knowing your dying. (I wrote a story about this/inspired by this..the main character gets eaten by dragonflies.)
But whatever, inner meaning, whatever.
I like the song because it starts soft and slow and pretty much lulls the listener. And then there a part where all the instruments surrounding the singer get louder and bigger and when his voice re-emerges, it's just as soft as before and his voice is almost lost in the middle of all that other sound (don't mind the drunken Irish banter before the music):
You know, that idea of voice falling away into the sound around it reminds me of this ditty by Henryk Gorecki. I'm thinking of the 1st movement of the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. (By the by, this symphony is more about knowing that the people you love are dying.) The movement is almost half an hour long. The first ten minutes, you barely know the song has started. The string basses are playing so soft and low you feel them before you hear them. And then a voice breaks through:
And that voice builds strength and volume before being swallowed by the other voices.
Kind of like this:
That's the fucking shit right there. The main voice, sings, reaches for that high note and when it hits, the rest of the orchestra swoops in and is all "you go mute now."
I don't know. I connect to that shit. The actualization of a voice speaking and being shut down.
A voice sometimes reaching, almost yelling. A voice that is just talking without any "look at me" volume. It's not that these voices are being meek or quiet. It's just that everyone else is being so damn loud about it.
My Bloody Valentine will show you what I mean:
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