Category Archives: Music

An Excerpt From “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” by Salman Rushdie

Posted on by nocenslupus

Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, Chinese operas, jazz, the blues; that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand, from which we can build our cathedrals of sound, is as alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don’t have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world.

Hey There, Ardat Yakshi

Posted on by nocenslupus

At work last night, I got too close to a coworker while both of our music was playing from our little hip speakers and they became this haunting fucking mash-up. And so, my galleons, I ask that you give this a try.

First, hit play on this:

Leave that at full volume. Then proceed to play this at half volume:

It’s not perfect, but the Mass Effect score adds this unsettling, disturbing air to the indie pop nonsense.

For the record, this is my second favorite way to listen to “Hey There, Delilah”. The first, of course, is to not listen to this fucking song at all. But sometimes shit happens. And just this once, it was kind of beautiful.