Sunday, February 25, 2007

Children of the Bong - Sirius Sounds is my favourite album

Children of the Bong - Sirius Sounds is my favourite album. For me it practically defines my favourite genre, which I call psychill. (It is called Psybient on Wikipedia.) It's the only album by Children of the Bong, and it has a very unique sound and structure.

The main thing I love about the album is the intricate trippy patterns. For me the patterns evoke the fundamental structure of things which generally happen in reality, but they do it without attachment to any particular examples. They're almost like little stories. Sometimes a pattern does this by itself and other times two or perhaps more patterns seem to interact, like one does something and the other performs a response or continuation. It almost seems like a kind of language, although it may only seem that way because it seems to describe things like language can describe things. Sometimes when listening to these pattens it seems like they are the fundamental building blocks of reality and everything is built from them. They're just hard to recognize normally because they're buried by so much meaning and perceptual detail.

I also appreciate the texture of the sounds. They seem especially wholesome solid and satisfying. They also go to very low frequencies, and listening to it using speakers or headphones which can reproduce that feels great. In terms of texture my favourite track is Children of the Bong – Squigglasonica. The squiggles seem so detailed and satisfying.

My favourite track in the album is Children of the Bong – Life on Planet Earth. I love how it builds slowly from something very simple and minimal. It evokes the way how things in life can start out small and develop into something wonderful. It also eventually evokes the feeling of something continuing to exist in a positive way, like it's not just a build and "then what?".

The overall mood of the album seems feels very relaxing, confident, present and happy. The music evokes feelings of being happy outdoors on a a warm sunny Sunday morning. Concern and worry can melt away and I can start seeing everything around me as a symphony of pleasant patterns without much special meaning. The album is truly psychedelic.

[ originally posted in my last.fm journal ]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a really cool way of describing the music!
Come and check us out on myspace.com/childrenofthebong I'm putting up some of the tracks that were never released - i'd be interested to hear what you think of them!
Thanks for rating Life on Planet Earth - one of my favourites too :)
Rob (Children of the Bong)

aimsta said...

i also like the way you describe this music! sirius sounds is one of my very favorite albums, too. i keep looking for something like it, but nothing i've heard comes close. i first heard it in a small record shop in SF on my first ever acid trip - which of course contributed to my impressions, but that was over 10 years ago and i still find that the music evokes the same sort of wonderful imagery - i can see a whole sea of those little alien guys bobbing their heads to the beats, and some of the patterns you describe that sound like a language make up the language of the aliens. the other strong impression the music makes on me is emotional - it is very emotional music coming from the heart, and not a lot of electronic music has that feel. It is uplifting, where much 'similar' music has more of a depressing effect.