Gridlock
Formless

The first time I listened to this album it was a Friday in November and I was at home, standing in the hallway of my balcony. I remember that evening, one of those gloomy afternoons that herald winter and have something of it, it must have been around 6:00 PM when, after making a latte macchiato (as a good homebody, I admit) I decided to take a break from everything I had to do to relax with something more open, more experimental, and brighter on that gray day. On my old Philips CD player, which I've had since middle school, I inserted "Formless," the last work by the now-disbanded American band Gridlock; I remember exactly that my approach to this masterpiece was incredible.

I was so struck by the greatness of this record that I was completely addicted, right from the start. The vibrations this album manages to transmit are incredible, unbelievable! And once you get inside, it's impossible to get out because "Formless" touches that most remote part of you until it lights up your eyes with the sonic wonder contained within... and the exact word to describe all this is just one: shivers. The shivers that assault you when you close your eyes and on the simple Ambient/IDM notes of the fourth track "Return" you manage to get carried away... and once you open your eyes, you look out the window to see if everything that's happening is just a figment of your imagination.

It began to rain, and the music seemed to synchronize with what was happening outside. The first synthetic vapors of the seventh track "Interlude2" are light and delicate, they caress the soul and heart of those who truly understand music with their heart, and modestly I believe I've managed to this time. Maybe I'm nostalgic, or probably worn out, but I believe those who have experienced such moments in front of an album at least once can perfectly understand what I'm trying to convey. Formless is not a trivial music album, it's much more. "Formless" is the soundtrack of our most hidden Self, that Self that appears to us only in moments of inner peace where undisturbed by external pressures we manage to communicate with emotions, with the beating of our heart... and alas it is something so extraordinary that we can't perfectly tell someone else about it, give it a color, a shape... "Formless," indeed. It's like looking in a mirror that knows only our face, or a lucid dream that we slowly manage to control as we come into contact with our innermost perceptions and gradually the immediate disorientation we face in front of something we don't yet know is abandoned. We embrace something new. And so we let ourselves be accompanied by the percussion of "Displacement" on a night illuminated by the headlights of other cars, the neon signs of shops and the voices of people. Inside us thoughts swirl, worries about everything life throws at us, and we wish for much more time to be alone, in tranquility and peace with ourselves. Slowly the lights dim with "Done Processing" and we remain speechless at what has just hit us, a whirlwind of emotions, reflections, shivers, shivers, and more shivers. "Formless" is this. It is the meeting with what is most true inside us and in an hour this warm wind blows against us and something remains in the soul: the awareness that perhaps sometimes staying alone to think and know ourselves is much more interesting than wasting time doing something else that seems more important on the surface... after all, what is more important than ourselves?

I'm not interested in describing to you technically how the album is composed, or what the instruments are or comparing the songs to others or restoring the whirlpool of words I've written. This is all that "Formless" has left inside me and I hope that, should you listen to it, it will do the same for you...