Anyone sitting opposite me on the tube recently may have noticed me attempting to hide an elated smile as we traversed subterranean London. My mouth fidgeted childishly, wrestling with the grin that was attempting to beam out of my twenty seven year old face, my seated body twitched as it battled restraint. The reason for this excitement is the newest album by Glasgow-based producer Rustie, Glass Swords. It takes Dubstep, a pointless term these days, refracted as the genre is into various sub genres and scenes like light off the sides of the aforementioned mineral, and explodes it into a rainbow-coloured glitter-synth rush. A song like 'Ultra Thizz' launches euphoric blasts at the listener, vocodered vocals twirl and flutter while the beats stomp and kick like an ecstatic pixie hammering back and forth. Like much 'Post-Dubstep', or 'Bass Music' (take your pick, both are equally boring epithets), Rustie intertwines his music with the after-image of 90's dance music; but whereas someone like Burial engenders a sense of memory, nostalgia inherent in the music, Rustie's music is infinitely more hyperactive, zinging and blasting off like a rainbow rocket shooting these references into the future. With synthesizers and kick drums jumping up and down and setting off fireworks in my head, it was hard to keep still on the Piccadilly Line. When 'Hover Traps' goes 'epic', the melody reverberates like a church choir transformed into seven hundred heavenly synths, a buzzing mass of colour and melody; it's hard not to leap up and punch the air when you hear this stuff, it's so goddamn exhilarating. This got me to thinking about my relationship with songs. How I obsess over music as exciting and intoxicating as Glass Swords. The amount of times this week that I have skipped back to the beginning of a song as it reached it's close, was, well, a lot.
And yet even now I can feel the thrill of Rustie's album begin to fade; the rainbow synths are not quite as dazzling and the fluorescent vocal samples fair to stir in me the sense of escapism that music can generate in the listener. I realise that obsessing over a song tends to be a reductive process for me. At first I am so bowled over by the track that listening to it is just as much an attempt at making sense of it, as it is marvelling at it's rush and creativity. The song contains a mystery that I haven't yet solved; it's alien and invigorating and continually draws me back for repeated listens. Countless tracks, from many a genre, have awakened the joyous explorer in me, causing me to listen to them again and again in a short space of time: 'Strings of Life', 'Teeth Like God's Shoeshine', 'Waltz #2', even a song as drawn out and disparate as Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'Dead Flag Blues'. Of course this is ultimately self-defeating; as I slowly come to understand the track more and more, as I begin to anticipate it's peaks and troughs with each successive listen, the mystery and excitement begins to fade bit by bit. And soon, I'm grasping on to that one peak, that one ecstatic moment which is my dearest moment of the song, the moment that conjures a careless jubilation and contentment with life. But, as with most things, this moment is fuelled by what surrounds it, indeed when I first heard the song I may not have considered this my favourite moment with such clarity; back in those days of thrilling uncertainty, the song was a hazy jungle environment, I was setting out to explore this clearly brilliant and exciting place, but had yet to become familiar with it's glorious details. By the time the songs charms have faded and I clutch vainly at a particular melody shift or vocal wobble, I realise that these singular moments are not secret safes where the songs shining brilliance is stored away, no, the power is interwoven throughout, ingrained into every element.
I recall listening to 'Night Train' by Guns n' Roses so much that I reached a nadir, merely listening out for the lines 'Ready to crash and burn/ I'll never learn/ I'm on the night train', where Slash's lead guitar shifts down a note then up one, with the rhythm. This moment had previously electrified me, made me feel strangely emotional considering the song's a tribute to a brand of cheap wine; but I hungered after that moment continually, I was like a smack addict so consumed by the drug that every hit of heroin is insufficient, the guitar line barely sated my hunger because the rest of the song had been abandoned. Soon, when I played 'Night Train' I was filled with disappointment even before I had reached those lines, lines which before had shone so strong.
(My junkie moment comes at 01:38)
One of two things tends to occur at this point. I might leave the song for a while; put it away, maybe for a long time. If the music is good, I'll definitely come back to it. Or I stumble upon another dimension of the song, one that electrifies the whole experience of listening to it once more; a moment that seemed merely functionary before, a bridge from verse to chorus or a repeated word that I only now notice has a peculiar vocal inflection which jazzes with my being (man). The song is thrown into a new light, it's whole body comes into focus again, and the importance of every moment is reestablished: how it fluctuates and breathes, how words seep into each other, how the intro foreshadows the middle eight. My head feels on fire again, the back of my neck tingles, my fingers tremble and maybe even my eyes well up with tears. Countless songs through my life have ensnared me in this way: 'In For The Kill', 'Ambling Alp', 'O.N.E.'. From a hyper-happy-deranged breakcore damager like Bong-Ra's 'Hello, My Cock Is An Aardvark' to exquisite chamber pop such as The Zombies 'Time Of The Season', I'm clueless as to which song will grab me next, but when it does, ecstasy consumes me, and my life revolves around that single track, listening to it again, again and again.
A favoured song's status constantly evolves through our lives, travelling from a digital file (most probably), which builds and bursts into a supernova that illuminates everything we do for a few days, maybe a few weeks, maybe even a few months; and then it is reduced once again to a humdrum bit of text on a screen, the twists and turns contained within easily anticipated. Then I suppose it lies dormant, a mythical creature, waiting for it's resurrection, which may well come as a serendipitous stumble, a backwards turn into the song; a chance renunion that will spark the flame of mystery and wonder once again.
This elaborate relationship may well be what unfolds with Rustie's Glass Swords, I can't say for sure yet; although the vivacity of it's rollercoaster vocals and glitter punch beats has started to fade and I'll no doubt put it down soon and revert to normality when riding the London Underground, an album this colourful and insanely melodious will surely have it's hooks in me deep, and I don't think they'll be leaving for a long time, even if I think I've forgotten them.
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