well, of course you did

Wow. Where have I been the past full year?

That I have come to realize just this afternoon while packing my things in preparation for my exit from the military soon. I decided to drop by a friend's bunk earlier, another who shared my taste for the alternative music and plugged in his ipod, and was happily blown away by so many songs I discovered.

Somewhere along the way I think I lost, or perhaps forgot, the simple enjoyment I got from keeping an ear out for new music from everywhere. Not just from musicblogs, like all I do now which I have come to realize had been a lazy way out for me. They should only point me in the direction, not be the main source of everything that I'm interested in. Come to think of it if it was not for that buying of a compilation of alternative tunes back in college while on a random trip to hmv, and subsequently being enchanted by a particular song ' You Can't Hurry Love' and the wonders of allmusic, I would never had discovered The Concretes and the whole amazing field of Swedish indie.

Anyway back to the point. Had I been purposely throwing myself into work all these months? Ignoring the simple things that makes it all worthwhile, letting go of things that I should have held on to instead of shrugging them off, but what the hell, it is time to move on to a new beginning in five weeks time.

Which brings me to this particular song. It is by Imogen Heap, one half of the band Frou Frou which zling tried introducing to me a couple of years back but which I never followed up on perhaps due to the reasons I stated above ( sorry.) If I did like I might usually had done, I might have had discovered this song earlier. Even other artists especially another called Sia, whom I imagine to be a younger and more contempory Tori Amos, seem to be a recurring artist on many a friends' playlists, hold such potential but somehow I missed along the way.

According to allmusic.com, Imogen Heap has been making electronic tinged indie hits since '98 at least, but it was not until '05 with the release of her second album did she break it in. One song on it that helped propel her to left field fame was ' Hide And Seek', an utterly alluringly melancholic tune wrapped in the cold harsh tones of an electronic soundscape. Her strong female voice comes unmistakably through though, and it's amazingly intimate.

One might think that the synthesizers screws everything up, like Cher/ Madonna ( sometimes) is wont to do, but here somehow, instead of distancing one away from the lyrics, her reverbed laden voice serves to emphasize a song that is, from what I can tell, of a very deep loneliness and melancholy, as if her feelings are too raw that they have to be masked by a cold sheen of electronic processing for it would simply be to painful then. If this song is already so affecting like this, I wonder how it would be like purely acoustic. Hahh perhaps it is better not to. Some things should be taken just as they are.

All in all. Utterly beautiful. Put it on alone at night, and close your eyes.

IMOGEN HEAP - HIDE AND SEEK

Perfectly sums up the kind of feeling im working under as I prepare to go on once a phase of my life ends soon enough.