Artist: Charles Spearin
Title: The Happiness Project
There's quite a lot going on here. While, at the most basic level, the music on this wouldn't surprise anyone with a passing knowledge of DMST (or even the more ambient side of BSS), it's the method that intrigues. Spearin sat down and talked to his neighbours about happiness, and used the sounds of their words as the basis of his music.
While I could try and make some informed observations about mimesis, I will leave that to those wiser than myself and merely observe that to me, the image created by this album is of a cartoon with a person speaking, their animated speech balloon suddenly popping as their voice turns into music.
The thing that interests me most, though, is that this album is rather radical, in a subtle kind of way. How often does the music I listen to choose to concentrate on dourness rather than happiness? How striking is it that it is unusual to think about people sitting around and talking about what makes them happy?
And perhaps, most surprising of all was how, after listening to this, I suddenly did hear music in the voices of people talking around me. Sometimes we need a reminder.
Track pick: 3 - "Vittoria"
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