Verse the foreword march, four score … and onward, vanguard, avanti, alee, skål, kanpai — enjoi

“Moving On” — Hird (Moving On, 2004)

Writers : Christoffer Berg · · Producers : Berg · · Vocals : Yukimi Nagano

:: Primer ::

:: So, this one … absolutely beautiful tune … the tactile intangibility … the penetrating dissociation … the unyielding repose … the lucid suspense of progress in perpetuity …

this title track happened upon my catalogue radar by way of a past-life roommate ( as in collegiate past-life, not as in the crusades or ice age past-life — well, not necessarily ) who shared with me the album in its entirety … but, time is, of the course, merely a social construct ( an imperfect illusion, some might conjure ), and we’re all eternal roommates in the forever residence of music itself … so, whatever all of that means in context of said primer causerie … onward

in immediate retrospect, there’s something about tenures within the scholastic realm, my uni years seem to yield particular forays into subversive sound tribes … something about those stages when i’m a proper student equates to some aspect of affiliation electronic/a, in particular ( and in immediate revelation, it is a sonic scholastic subplot for which i remain forever grateful to the akashic ) …

during the early months of undergrad, i fell into the digital underground world of acidplanet ( which, maybe still exists ? but akin to napster, likely a distant remnant of its former silicon self ) , in turn opening the proverbial doors to drum n bass, jungle, breakbeat, ambient, and hints of nu-jazz ( by way of diy djs, for the most part ) … and that first-person electronic debutante was further bolstered by flatmates, colleagues, cohorts, passers-by, personas-otherwise-non-grata, etc. who brought their proper third-party reco(rd)mmenation deluge — on the one deck: hours upon eons of circuit party setlists ( primarily: trance / psy-trance, happy hardcore, techno ) and on the other: downtempo, trip-hop, lounge, chillwave – sort of a yin-yang of edm-idm / electronic-electronica …

anyhaps, within and without all of said aforementioned that … a roommate from said life path sent along just another album, on just another day, likely result of proximal frequencies, and the off-handed chance at just another auspicious first spin into library mainstay … that album just so happened to be hird’s moving on, and, needless to say, said roommate’s supposition was spot en pointe … i adored the album at that level of endemic genomic … and the title track in reference, i just remember it felt like sagacious sunshine … it felt like home, within a capacity … but then again, music is the forever residency …

so, all of that abstract inarticulated … that’s the primer … a simple description semantically dismantled — but the sentiment is sincerely there somewhere … onward, let’s cellar said rhyme ::

:: On the Palatte · Profile ::

[ Proper preface : on the prelim first spin, way back when, it felt bildungsroman bohemia ( in retrospect, likely on account of the liaison’s distinct boho lifestyle aesthetic affinity ) but, if nothing else, i just remember on that first taste, it felt bohemian — even if only by proxy and contextual pretense … onward ] :: On the front … knock . . . knock … the understated calm of a deep cymballic clarion call descends from a saxon belfry … xylophonic drifts alongside strident repercussion from a source otherwise nondescript … and so, as the sequence unfolds, from a sibylian siren’s induction, the humble alluvium awakening extends … ambit respiration — zephyr in, out like a lioness, roaring off doldrum slumber, untoward the burgeoning lands …

All the time is now
And time is here to stay
Although yesterday
Never left for me

it feels primal cosmic tundra tonal … on the tip of the tongue it blinks a bit like “more aquavit, please” … always moving on . . . always moving on -ward to the mid-palatte … rhythmic rudiments akin to lynx-orchestrated percussion saunter beneath vaporous valkyrie echoes … as a horn wails, it feels mammoth tusk cornucopia … building into a subtle welkin stampede … shifting sands … as the serenading nordic soul of the title tune’s feminine mystic navigates primavera thaw … our aquavit primer segues into something along the linger of a warm sake … and then, amidst steadfast continuity of our einherjar samurai lyrical compass, the tempo slows into submersion beneath residual hiemal fragments …

We don’t see the end
’cause we don’t know the way
We have made the choice
Blinded by the one

ocular deprivation yielding aural elevation and mounting sixth sensibilities … tumbling toward the nadir, settling toward the cusp of singularity — a precipice pause pivots as distant luminous approaches … what was once lost in limbo, now found in purgatory sway …

And love is here to stay
Blinded by the one
Love is here to stay
Love is here to stay

the finish feels … emergent … ascendant in apparent return … aquavit clean but with ephemeral undertones of a plum wine sweet … the atmosphere in said wake, something stairway to valhalla … something terra nova by way of terra eterna … always progressing on by way of moving in, to that which endures through extension … the dusk feels daybreakthrough … speaking into existence, that which echoes into emanation … and with every firmament footstep, a fountain spring future world … as we fade into said terraphemera of sage illbience ::

:: Pairings ::

:: This seven course sampling was / is largely inspired by the sense of camaraderie in organic formation …

very much sonic aesthetic proximity, but / and also equally much predicated upon the hymnal expression of some formative journey … record of roots and routes traversed in movement toward some outward manifestation of an internal motive

if nothing else, maybe these are just tracked sounds of paths and perspectives trekked — ebbs and flows … peaks, valleys, and plateaus — en route to nature’s veracious reflection of an erstwhile-opaque sense of solidarity in / and / of self … :

· ·

Rhyme Cellar : Moving On : Pair’d Playlist :: · “Analogue” – Analogue Transit · · “Change Down” – Bonobo · · “Survival” – Nightmares On Wax · · “Moving On” – Hird · · “New Fiction” – Little Dragon · · “House of Dal” – TOKiMONSTA · · “Until The Morning” – Thievery Corporation · ::

· ·

… so, analogue transit, the exact details of this duo’s introduction are a bit hazy at the moment, but i remember being drawn to their debut ep instantaneously … very much a comprehensive work, strong focus, and somewhat intertextual but very turn-of-the-aughts … preemptive postapocalyptic perspective … the opening track is quite evocative of just that — capturing the crux as catalyst for an unknown-but-conclusively-forgone-future …

bonobo, belonged somewhere in the sphere of here … Change Down felt aligned in / as assuage transit from the somewhat industrial rigidity of Analogue’s particular proem …  easing toward a more agrestral base note …

so, nightmares on wax’s Survival, i think when i first heard this tune ( in a sort of “backing into the boilerplate” moment ), it was just one of those blink synaptic happenings … Survival, and Moving On, just a whole sonic sisterhood of neural networking … recorded communion of these two tunes alone is likely ninety percent of some latent / subconscious rationale behind this rhyme cellar communiqué at all … onward

centerpiece musical recording — Moving On, ward …

so, at the outset, i had no clue or cognition as to who ministered Moving On’s vocals, and then a few liner note perusals later — as research so often yields — a voila! resolution : yukimi nagano ( aka lead vocalist for ( among other projects / creative partnerships ) little dragon ) … and so, of the course, in sound segue from the signature centerpiece, a scale from said bantam kraken’s chamber repertoire … New Fiction, in context of narrative sequence, perhaps, in progress toward neoteric terrains, leaving apparent fact in the distant past, so we draft a nouveau nostalgic dimension of, well, just that : new fiction … onward …

i remember giving little dragon’s new me, same us its prelim spin within adjacent proximity to tokimonsta’s oasis nocturno, so that, and the overarching tantamount sensory textures, sort of established the aforementioned sonic sisterhood sensibility herein — thus … House of Dal, felt seamless gapless, sequentially speaking, so, hitherto hereabouts is where i sequenced the fit …

ah, thievery corporation … eighteenth street lounging on blessed levels … i think, on the blink, The Cosmic Game, sprung to mind, but Until The Morning just read write … the resonance just read aural articulation station … the yoke … from dusk to daybreakthrough … the closure and catalyst … waking into seasonal endurance ::

:: Impressions ::

:: First and lasting impressions, here … just centered, grounded, homebase notation station … more mantra than anthem … but / and seminal, generative, rooted in source symphonic all the same … i think this might have been one of my first definitive forays into a more comprehensive trip-hop offering … before hird’s album, i was more familiar with rjd2’s deadringer-style instrumental hip-hop with multimedia and/or masculine vocal sampling

so, hird and nagano ushered in a whole new-and-still-inherently-native dimension or facet / realm within the genre … a dimensional revelation that yielded an understated gravity and earnest awe-inspired appreciation for the aural field niche … this sense of atmospheric soul … trip-hop as this journey through the ambient lens of harmony as procuring sapience over percussion … delving into the otherwise ethereal auric estuary of organic grooves translated through electronic elements …

and then, the narrative of it all … as this divine feminine coursing currents betwixt and between the masculine mapping of material world coordinates … i don’t know, can’t quite explain … there’s something a bit rosetta stone rudimentary about this tune … and, even, perhaps especially, in immediate retrospect, it’s quite nursery rhythmic … like it’s always existed somewhere in this particular musical memory’s museum

anyhaps, all and all, wholly worthwhile spin for any and all who dig sounds in the scape of bohemian bildungsroman by way of lil’ nordic serpentine tripnotic frequencies ::