Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
Ears

Despite always being an admirer of classical music, for a long time I considered a very particular branch of this genre quite alien to my understanding: the contemporary one. Speaking with ordinary people, but also with friends who had attended the conservatory (and therefore should have had a more open mind), I found myself facing the usual clichés: "Eh, but that's strange music. All out of tune, with instruments playing 'randomly.' Only those who frequent certain circles with their noses up in the air listen to it." Despite everything, in the end, curiosity got the better of me: armed with patience and the right materials, I began to listen (I could never have made a better choice) and I realized that, as strange as it might seem at first, that type of music had its own grammar, a structure, and once it was absorbed, it could convey emotions exactly like the other "normal" music I listened to. The effect is similar to suddenly moving to a foreign country where you don't know the language: slowly your ears get used to those lip movements and those sounds that seem so strange, eventually understanding how they are a medium for words, just like your own mother tongue.

A glaring example? This album. Composed and almost entirely made with analog synthesizers (except for the voices and the brass section), imbued with minimalism (Terry Riley in particular), you never encounter cold, geometric music. Quite the opposite. When you press play, the sensation is that of being in a kind of secret garden where nature is alive and lush. Suddenly you feel a sense of familiarity, as if it were a place visited in childhood and then forgotten, where nothing seems unfamiliar or threatening. Even the oddities or eccentricities are accepted with pleasant curiosity, and so, when the vocals come in, a little "jazzy," a little ethnic, with a Cubist rhythm, you are charmed as if they were the songs of nymphs happy for our return after so long. For the more daring listeners, all this can materialize in "Existence in the unfurling": 11 minutes of pure wonder where such a luxuriant compositional language finds its utmost fulfillment. For the lazier ones, I recommend "Rare things grow," at least for a taste of this excellent product. The excursion is over, I leave you with a question: are these composers the strange and alien ones when they use such a strange and abstruse sound language, or are we the real aliens when we plug our ears, unwilling to stop and try to understand this tremendously fascinating, yet equally unknown language?