It’s no secret I’m a music lover. As a result, it’s probably no surprise that music that I listen to has direct effects on my mood - both to pump me up, mellow me out, what-have-you.
There’s one band, however, that has a bizarre physical effect on me: listening to their music makes me nauseous.
Which is not a good thing.
Intellectually, I really like the music.
It’s intensely minimal techno, really more of soundform experiments than songs.
The particular album is Alva.Noto’s Transform
How few clicks, beeps, pops, etc, does it take to form a song?
Well, it turns out very few, and yet there’s still a lot going on in there. I’ve discovered, however, that I can’t listen to it, no matter how much I want to.
In particular, “module 10” (all the track’s are simply called “module X”, where X is the number of the track on the album), barely 30 seconds in and I can feel this horrible weight pressing down on me. I find my breathing becomes laboured, and moments after that, this awful churning starts in my belly and I feel like I may vomit.
It’s an incredibly intense experience.
It reminds me somewhat of the panic of drowning, as a wild-animal panic threatens to overtake me and force me to rush to the surface.
And I really do feel like it’s surface I need to find…surface above the sound, or something, I’m not sure exactly, but I do feel this need to escape.