The years spread out neatly like beads on a string. The distance exaggerates itself; at one time they are short as a fleeting moment, and at other times they seem like forever. Lie after lie unfolds itself neatly in layers. The euphoria provides its own special kind of sweet aroma, intoxicating, begging for surrender. Hopes lie dormant and flit about excitedly in the low lights, disappearing into shadow now and then, as if to serve as a dark reminder.

This is it, he thinks.

This is the curtained backdrop of the mind.

Code and runes within a mesh,
Elated truths reach new heights,
Revelation born in impaired sight,
A dream consumes the flesh.

Maze gently unravels its coil,
Flirts with what the eye can see,
It shades all that may come to be,
Yet fears to cover what it may spoil.

Soon, in a whisper screamed,
Fumes will spread across
Telling its story of loss
And love, or so, it had seemed

A parasite lays down its crest.
Merciless in its striking lure.
I have felt it, and I am sure
A dream consumes my flesh

For any song to be classified as the ultimate favourite from that particular artist's collection, it has to do one main thing. It has to sum everything that makes that artist great in a single song. Usually you find bits of that spread out really sporadically across many songs. But the favourite song will do everything at once.

As far as Utada Hikaru goes, my favourite is Kremlin Dusk. I'm well aware that her Japanese songs are what she's more famously known for, but there is something about the mood and the tone of the English songs that makes me come back for more. Kremlin Dusk in particular, musically speaking, has a really great structure. It starts off slow and builds up and builds up then explodes towards the end.

The first half of the song showcases Utada's brilliant work on the synth and her vocal range. I've always admired Utada (similarly to bjork) that she composes and performs and produces/mixes the songs herself and pretty much overlooks the whole process, and it shines through in Kremlin Dusk because there's so much careful attention paid to the idea of the build up. You can see what she's trying to say musically in her composition.

And her vocals do the same, when she goes "calling you-ooh-ooh-oohh home..." she's still building it up. But she's also showing off her voice, which she pretty much controls quite well throughout the song.

Then the drums break. The drummer just happens to be Jon Theodore from The Mars Volta and so the racy, energetic pulse of the drums really set the song going on the rails. Utada picks up the pace.

The lyrics are probably a big factor of why i like it so much. She talks frankly about searching for a loved one, of being a "natural entertainer" and how we're all searching for pieces of something precious. She wonders who can she safetly call.  She asks us almost, as if she wants us to answer her.

Then it explodes. The lyrics :

Born in a war of opposite attraction
It isn't, or is it a natural conception
Torn by the arms in opposite direction
It isn't or is it a Modernist reaction

These are really intelligent lyrics. They've impressed me the most after everything she's written. Not just in how the lyrics sound, but in how they go in the song musically. They kind push the rhythm really violently. She sings these lyrics really powerfully. Because of the rhyme/syllable structure it sounds really musical, but really profound. The drums in the background go crazy. And you're digging it and going..."yeah!" and the whole time she keeps the energy going.

Then she sings in this really soothing voice....

Is it like this
Is it always the same
When a heartache begins, is it like this
Do you like this
Is it always the same
Will you come back again
Do you like this

The song collapses into Utada singing these lines really smoothly over the synth. I'll be honest, picking the favourite was hard. It was close. It was between Passion, Colors, Kremlin Dusk, and Celebrate. But ultimately what topped Kremlin Dusk over all these other songs is the way she sings those ending lines. *Every* time i have listened to it, it sends chills up my spine. She asks us to play the song again if we enjoyed it. But its that smooth, creamy, feminine tone of her voice that really hypnotizes you over the storm she had just made earlier.

Ultimately this song showcases everything that makes Utada great, her composition, her production, her lyrics and her voice. Everytime i listen to this song it feels so epic. I do listen to her. I do play it again.

Is it like this
Is it always the same
When a heartache begins, is it like this?
If you like this
Will you remember my name
Will you play it again, if you liked this.....

By Sylvia Plath

Enter the chilly no-man's land of about
Five o'clock in the morning, the no-color void
Where the waking head rubbishes out the draggled lot
Of sulfurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums
Which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much,

Gets ready to face the ready-made creation
Of chairs and bureaus and sleep-twisted sheets.
This is the kingdom of the fading apparition,
The oracular ghost who dwindles on pin-legs
To a knot of laundry, with a classic bunch of sheets

Upraised, as a hand, emblematic of farewell.
At this joint between two worlds and two entirely
Incompatible modes of time, the raw material
Of our meat-and-potato thoughts assumes the nimbus
Of ambrosial revelation. And so departs.

Chair and bureau are the hieroglyphs
Of some godly utterance wakened heads ignore:
So these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing,
Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld,
A world we lose by merely waking up.

Trailing its telltale tatters only at the outermost
Fringe of mundane vision, this ghost goes
Hand aloft, goodbye, goodbye, not down
Into the rocky gizzard of the earth,
But toward a region where our thick atmosphere

Diminishes, and God knows what is there.
A point of exclamation marks that sky
In ringing orange like a stellar carrot.
Its round period, displaced and green,
Suspends beside it the first point, the starting

Point of Eden, next the new moon's curve.
Go, ghost of our mother and father, ghost of us,
And ghost of our dreams' children, in those sheets
Which signify our origin and end,
To the cloud-cuckoo land of color wheels

And pristine alphabets and cows that moo
And moo as they jump over moons as new
As that crisp cusp toward which you voyage now.
Hail and farewell. Hello, goodbye. O keeper
Of the profane grail, the dreaming skull.

I had written a post earlier loosely based on a Mars Volta song called Eriatarka, but that was more of an emotional response. This is still an emotional response, but more directed.

I have to stop to describe just how breathtaking this song is for me. Just how much i love it.

The intro starts with a few brief, sudden drum fills and guitar drums. It comes really sudden and powerful like gunshots.

Then it moves into some gentle guitar picking. The guitar work is incredible. The tone has this space-feel to it. It's like Tool's and Pink Floyd's soundscapes but more contained in the song. They are kinda like the backdrop.

And then Cedric's vocals come in....

And there are those who
Hadn't found the speaking so wrong
Is it wrong
Of pavolov lore
They ran rampant through the floors
Is this wrong
Feels so wrong...

There's gentle vibrato on his voice and....i dunno it just really hits your core the first time you hear it. His voice really gets underneath your skin. Especially when he says "Is this wrong..?" in that smooth voice.

The vocals go into higher pitches while the song gently and calmly glides along. Then suddenly things stop.....you get a little build up. You think "where is this going..." Then it explodes.

Trackmarked amoeba lands craft
Cartwheel of scratches
Dress the tapeworm as pet
Tenticles smirk please
Flinched the cocooned meat
Infra-recon forgets

The chorus just really defines the Mars Volta for me. These sudden bursts of energy that are just overpowering. His voice hits amazingly high notes while the guitar, drums and bass all do that fierce strumming rhythm altogether at the same.

This repeats again for another verse and a chorus.

Then the bridge hits. The music suddenly takes off almost like it's floating in the sky. Something inside you just lifts upwards. The drumming just assaults you. Omar Rodriguez's guitar fuzzes into the background with Ikey's keyboards. Cedric shouts at you desperately....

evaporated the fur
because it covers them
if you only knew the plans they had for us
evaporated the fur
because it covers them
if you only knew the plans they had for us

The minute Cedric was screaming "if you only knew the plans they had for us..." is the moment where i decided i was in love with this song. The way he sings it so powerfully and so convincingly. You actually feel like he's dying to tell you something. And the music is almost pushing the lyrics. It's almost bullying you with its energy to get involved and lost into it.

The chorus repeats with a more relaxed rock groove, but the guitars still have their scratchy, radio-signal like tone. The song lastly fades into abstract electronic sounds, typical Mars Volta fashion.

This song is becoming close to a favourite for me. Personally this song and Tetragrammaton have topped many, many Tool songs in terms of greatness and i'm shocked that i'd actually say that, but it's true. The music is just so powerful and the screeching, high pitched falsetto vocals just shatter your brain.

Eriatarka by The Mars Volta. Album : De-Loused in The Comatorium.

Download it now.

Sometimes i wonder what happens with you. I wonder where you are in your diminished landscape. The silence filled by miles of oceans, orange deserts, the trail of planes and maybe even the violence of a bloody landscape. They all fill the silence with their noises.

We communicate in binaries. The soul wrapped around wires and electricity. Sometimes i feel the humanity draining outwards to fuel the process. The screen flickers in its winking way. There is still nothing, but it feels real. At the end of the day, all activity fades to a whisper. The heat elapses, the fan stops whirring.

The screen turns black. The colour fades. I disappear. You disappear.

There has been one particular game that i've been hiding in for a while now. It's Metroid Prime for the Gamecube. I posted way back that this was one of my favourite games of all time, but recently i've been putting the disc in again and replaying it.

Honestly the feeling of isolation in the game and being left to discover this huge world is beyond parallel. It's so much that i keep coming back to it. Just this idea of a huge, intricate world with all these hidden corridors and secret rooms. It's like that old idea of exploring those big old mansions for hiding places; i feel this game taps into that very impulse.

But the number one reason why i come back to this game is the art direction. Cerebral, infectious, microscopic are the words i'd describe the art in this game. It makes a point of designing really intricate, mazelike creatures that look like they came from some sort of disease by using a mix of the wildest colours. Enemies will crackle with electricity or vibrate with hums, they'll shoot flourescent projectiles at you, they'll disintegrate into mist when they die.

And the environments. God the environments! It's almost like they're breathing a life of their own.....intricate cracks in the walls, living plants that attach themselves on the wall, slimy water and cool snowfalls are some of the environments in this game. Each area feels so different, so varied. Sometimes i just stare in awe, 9 years on, at the effort put into the design of this game. They put no effort into realism. The whole game strikes across as being this abstract work of art. Lines, shapes, colours, that sort of thing. You can't help but admire the craftsmanship that they put into the game.

I'll end this blog post with a few screenshots.

Sounds breathe from here till they are drilled,
The depths fold over till they have nothing to say,
Some peace, some war always remains distilled,
When i asked if you'd go or whether you would stay.
The eye flickers, the stream of air at the dawn,
Passes no secrets, only the outline traces of shadow,
Pace themselves patiently, if waiting to be born
Outside of love, if i may dare to say so.
The words are sick, the words will die out,
And when they do, will i be here to wait,
For every tear, every dream, every doubt?
In the treasure chest i remain locked, safe.
The spectres are here, soon ready to burst
As soon as you dip your heart into my universe.

Something peculiar has been happening to my music tastes. Ever since i paid proper attention to The Mars Volta's Amputecture album i have been listening more and more to this band. I actually listen to them more than Tool (which is unprecedented) and for some odd reason i cant make it through the day unless i'm listening to their songs.

In defense of Tool though, i definitely have my moments where i'll sit and listen to the whole of Lateralus from start to finish. But those moments happen less frequently and instead are kind of lightly peppered over my life. Albums are like phases of your life, you can relish in its themes and heartily relate to some of the issues that it's putting forth, but if you ever want to be fair to yourself or at least live an interesting life, you would know not to stay in the same phase forever. I think part of the stigma with Tool was that they release albums every 5 years or so, which can leave you feeling really starved and musically malnourished.

The Mars Volta for me was a really fresh sound. If i was to best describe Tool, it is intense but in a very subdued way. It takes time to peel the surface and go deeper in the sound. The Mars Volta is intense in a violent way. It comes over like a storm (ha ha) and really just rages inside your brain. It's a really crazy energetic sound that gets you on a hype. And i think that is really what i love about them.

Just take for instance the kind of approach that both artists take. With Tool, you get the sense that these are artists who have reached the edge of themselves and are exploring everything that lies on the fringe. They look backwards and make sense of things. In a sense, they are historians. The Mars Volta would be more like pioneering scientists. They look forwards and they have no idea what's coming next but they embrace it anyway. This means a more chaotic, unpredictable sound. It also means that they churn out albums incredibly quickly.

I would say that it's that approach that appeals to me. Because i am different now, i want to move forwards and embrace the unknown with all my energy and approach it in a really concentrated way. That is what their music is for me. Of course Tool will always, always be my musical home but as age goes onwards you start to feel the need to explore out into the great abyss.