Musical Event Horizon

I posted on Facebook;
“Think I’ve reached a musical Event Horizon…
New music doesn’t excite me, I take refuge in old music, more and more I return to old albums, old friends…”

I’ll try to qualify that.
Let me start by saying that I like music, I like many different types and genres of music, not all music though. When I say “New music doesn’t excite me…” I don’t mean recently composed music but music that is new in addition to what I already know. I’ll quite happily listen to the wireless and am often impressed by a piece that maybe I’ve never heard before be it newly composed or decades old but that’s as far as it goes. Once upon a time I’d have searched-out and bought such “discoveries” but now, more and more I am content to let them flow by me, I’ll just enjoy that moment as it passes.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to buy any more albums though, there are certain bands, groups, artists who I “follow” and who I will continue to follow, until maybe they become “unfollowable”.
Over the past few years or so I have been introduced to many new bands but only a small amount of albums have been added to my “playlist”.
Notable additions include, in no particular order, not even alphabetical:

• Hunt by Amarok
• Sorceress by Opeth
• F.E.A.R. by Marillion
• Twilight by Drifting Sun
• Seven Widows by Believe
• Seas of Change by Galahad
• Our Voices Shall Remain by Throes of Dawn
• Fate Outsmarts Desire by Kaprekar’s Constant
• The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery by The Tangent

Okay, there was a sort of order there I suppose, just my inner word nerd.

Not present is the latest album by Riverside. It was Riverside arguably who got me into the whole “Polish Odyssey” thing and I have all of their albums, except the latest one, “Wasteland”. Their previous album “Love, Fear and the Time Machine” was a slight change of musical direction, nothing wrong with that, but having heard the new album via streaming services I just thought, Hmmm, heard that before, nothing engaged me.

Similarly with The Tangent, their previous album, “The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery”, immediately grabbed me and I bought the CD; their latest album “Proxy” I also bought, in advance via one of those pre-order support the band deals, got my name in the booklet, gave it one listen… Hmmm… On the face of it it’s just the sort of thing that I ought to be lapping-up; loads of keyboards, Hammond organ no less, track lengths between 6 and 16 minutes but somehow again it didn’t immediately engage me.

Now, there is a school of thought there that says that music you immediately like is not as good as music that you have to work at, music that you have to listen to a few times before you “get” it. The former is supposedly just an infatuation, the latter builds a real relationship and it’s this music which you will keep going back to. Well, I’m not so sure.

If I had to choose just album one from the small list above and say, this is my favourite, it would be Fate Outsmarts Desire by Kaprekar’s Constant.
Now, don’t ask me because I can’t remember exactly where, Bandcamp probably, but I heard the track “Blue Bird”, all 17 minutes and 53 seconds of it and instantly liked it, I still like it along with the other four songs which follow, I’m not counting the first track as it’s merely an hors d’oeuvre for the rest of the album.

I shall continue to listen to new music and no doubt here and there I shall continue to buy new music but I think, maybe for now, a watershed has been reached.