Wednesday 30 October 2013

Smog-'Running The Loping'

This one is going to be a bit different, it's still about a track which I love, however it is not brand new and has a slightly different feel to the sort of thing I have written about before.

I came across this whilst listening to Annie Macs Sunday show on Radio 1, which is based on the pretence of music you would listen to just before the act of sleep, and I love it. Peaceful, relaxing and calming music is in my opinion the best thing in the world. It connects with me far more than another area of music, it drifts me off and puts me into a head space in which I am the master, king of my own thoughts with no interference from the outside world.


The main feature on Annie Macs Sunday show is the 'bedtime mix', in which a guest (a musician) is invited to come up with four songs that they feel are appropriate for bedtime. A couple of weeks back Jon Hopkins was invited in, a man who is multi talented and makes very organic feeling electro music. Anyway to cut a long story short it was one of the greatest bedtime mix's I've heard, but particularly one song jumped out to me and immediately I searched it out and downloaded it. That song was 'Running The Loping' by Smog aka. Bill Callahan.


What immediately stood out to me was the simplicity of the music, he uses only a few cords and very simple melodies, but his music is far deeper than the simplistic composition suggests. 'Running The Loping' leads you into Callahan's world, you are given a glimpse of his insecurities. What really struck me though and what I could relate to was he doesn't look at himself through rose tinted glasses, the simplistic nature of the music reveals a human, a man who honestly asses himself. The honesty in the track connects with me, and the simple composition lulls me into a trance, a place of peace where, without sounding too airy fairy, you connect with yourself. 


And isn't that what music is all about? The connections we feel with it, the connections it has with our past and the overriding sense of being consumed by something that we can't quite explain. 





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