This is a true story. It is early morning. I put on my headphones, press play, and set off on my daily commute. The music slowly fades in, trickling down my ear canal, with soft fuzz, stretchy drones, and soft pulsating something. The textures swell and subside, buzzing through digital distortion, electric hum and noise. Rhythms reveal themselves. And then the melodies come. But it is the overall buildup that has my attention, awaiting the inevitable, bearing the unbearable, loving all this pain. The music goes well along with all this other weather inside my head. Then, half way through the album, something happens…
Suddenly I am overcome with emotion. Goosebumps crawl up and under my pant legs. A hot fire rises at the pit of my stomach and begins gnawing on the inside of my spine. I am forced to move to the side of the road, in case I need to grab onto something for support, because I don’t feel like I can stand. Raw emotion spills out of every cell in my body, finally turning to tears, which I fight hard to hold back. The world disappears and I am left alone at the center of this scene, swallowed by the immeasurable agony of its soundtrack. It takes some time for me to regain my composure, and once I’m able, I proceed with my walk on unsteady legs.
I am not exactly sure of what happened. But it has never happened to me before. I want to attribute it to something else. Something else besides the music by Dag Rosenqvist. Something else besides all these feelings conveyed by his piece. But I cannot. I try to prove it to myself otherwise, and play elephant a few days later. Although its impact is not as poignant as the first and unexpected time, I am still emotionally afflicted, even as I write these words with the album playing again. The middle of “Porcelain” is particularly stunning, in a very different meaning of this word, whereas it almost feels like a stun gun, piercing my mind and my body with a high voltage current, sending the muscles slithering in pain.
I could go on explaining more… But I feel that at this point, it’s all you need to learn about this album from me. Thank you for reading.
