verba volant

For this blog, I chose to comment on Charlie’s fourth assignment.First of all, let me say that it’s a great piece - it manages to capture the essence of a slow trip-hop song, where you just lay about, listening to music and feeling “trippy”. However, it feels like only an introduction to a song, and leaves you wanting more, partly ruining the ‘trip’. (Well, what can you expect from a 1-minute limit?). Also, the vocals feel a bit stunted - while trip-hop at times plays around with small pieces, it mostly features full vocal melodies, which set up an uninterrupted mood that the cut up “recycled” pieces lack. (Though we can’t blame Charlie, as this was the assignment and it’s not like vocalists are a dime a dozen and found on every street corner - we’ve all had problems with that).

Technically speaking, it’s a great composition - the bpm are on the low side of the spectrum, but still perfectly acceptable, the elements we had to use are there in abundance, threading through each other and combining to give new life to old pieces of sound (and let’s not forget that recycle is used perfectly and seamlessly). I would have perhaps wanted to hear a bit of gramophone hissing, to add more “verosimility”. I also liked the correlation between the “Stormy Weather” idea of the song the vocals are taken from and the hissing rain and thunder that open and close the piece.

All in all it was a great song that I would love to hear completed (more than 4 minutes of it) some day, and that perhaps embodies pieces of Charlie’s general temperament.