| |
That’s right—“Quiet
Friend” is the short song here. The title track’s almost a full
half-hour, and the opening “Reflections in Suspension” runs 16:46.
“Quiet Friend,” like everything on the album, opens with a gentle
swell of synthesizer devoid of attack: the sound sort of throbs languidly
in and out, like the “Sleep” light on the new iBooks or like my
admittedly hazy memory of the sounds accompanying the visitation in the
climactic scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
After some time, which period is not measurable by the ear since there is
no tempo or rhythm to speak of, the slight-vibrato swelling sound is joined
by a quiet, twinkling bell-like tone that chimes its five or six notes in
a couple of random sequences, and then a somewhat higher swelling synth-tone
kinda floats on in, and all the while the lower tone underneath—well,
it kind of—and then it—but at the same time it doesn’t—because
it’s not really—when you really stop to think about it, there’s
just—there’s the bubbling sounds, but they’re not bubbling
like popping-bubbling, just rising—I mean there’s three things,
or at least two, but they’re like the same thing, but they’re
not the same thing exactly—
|
|
