Antidote to Holiday Music - Dark Ambient Sounds of Rapoon

Like many of my musical peers and colleagues, I am a Luddite when it comes to anything unfamiliar and even a little modern. I find that many of my blues musician buddies and sisters would rather hear nothing than the latest offering from Counting Crows or John Mayer. We're a cranky, crusty lot with a large thirst for old-school funk and rhythm; give us the big back-beat and a singer completely in the throes of a gospel-inspired love frenzy, frosted with soul horns, sweet guitar and a big, bold bass line, maybe a Leslie-speakered B3 organ, and we're home. Don't even speak to us when this music is playing -- there are few sounds more worth hearing to my tribe. But start in with the Dave Matthews-sounding quirky, breathy acoustic guitar driven introspective tales of who knows what, with just a touch of odd in the syncopation and perhaps some jazzy goings-on with the rest of the band, and that never-ending jam mentality, and off goes the radio/iPod/stereo, and on goes the TV.

This is most definitely NOT to say that any music is bad, or not worthy of listening to, or that the people who listen to music made in this decade or any other are somehow not cool or nice or smart, or that I'm somehow superior because I have a closed musical mind.  Music is the best, and all of it is worth a listen. If you have a pulse, however, you will respond to some music far more enthusiastically than another. Something will reverberate with your soul when you hear the music that truly speaks to you, and this perhaps is the very best thing music can do -- remind us that we have a soul by shaking it a little for us every now and then. 

I mean, it's almost embarrassing to play gigs these days anywhere that people under 50 congregate, simply because I have very few songs in my set list that go beyond 1973. I could, I suppose, brush off some Police and Bruce and Petty tunes that I used to play when I was trying to be modern, but jeez, that's already old people's music for anyone up to their early 30s.

Ok, this line of thought is getting me nowhere but sorely depressed, so let's get to the point before we start imbibing things that people shouldn't imbibe in the morning. 

I was goofing around the web a couple of years ago and came across an internet radio site/music store called Magnatune. It is an independent store selling music that you won't find elsewhere. One of the albums I downloaded was by a guy named Rapoon. The album was called "The Kirgitz Light," and the title comes from a portion of Russia featured briefly in my favorite novel of all time: "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. I will check out anything or anyone that references this remarkable novel, so I downloaded it, and played it a couple of times. I didn't hear much -- just some loops and strange, distant sounds sort of strung together. But then, last month, I played it again, and I guess this time I was ready. These sound sculptures really reached out to me, caused me to go places I truly needed to go. I don't need "smack you in the head" drama right now -- quite the contrary. And most of the music I play involves lyrical dramas of the highest order. Rapoon crafts these soundscapes that drift in and out and evoke remarkable internal worlds of dreams and reflections. It's impossible to explain with mere worlds, of course; any good music is. I guess what I'm saying is, if you're looking for a way to get away from the mind numbing holiday music growing like insidious barnacles out of every speaker in the land right now, I strongly recommend Rapoon's work. You can find some on iTunes, and some on Magnatunes.com, but for a complete list, check out rapoon.net, the artists' own Web site.

The latest work by him that I am listening to, even as I write this, is called Time Frost. What he's done is take samples (sound slices) of works by Strauss, particularly The Blue Danube, and rearranged them into frozen soundscapes. The idea behind this work, he says, is to evoke a frozen place where global warming has captured in ice everything, including musical sounds. And this, he says, is what that might sound like. 

Normally, experimental ambient woof woof stuff is not my cup of tea. It can sound pretentious and even silly to my untrained and blues-crusted ears. I don't have the patience, youth or wisdom to appreciate most music that goes too far beyond my very small circle of musical understanding. But somehow, for whatever reason, Rapoon has snuck in there and blown apart my assumptions about atmospheric, looping electronica. I have listened to little else for the past couple of months, much to the chagrin of my spouse, who has dubbed it "annoying." 

But then, Counting Crows is one of her favorite bands. So neener neener. How's that for maturity and healthy communication? 

You can find this column and a lot more on my blog: http://caroompaspick.blogspot.com.