Visual Music

pick out a trac and explain to us what you see or imagine when you listen to it. it could be stream-of-consciousness; listening to a trac specifically for this experiment and sharing whatever comes to mind or it could be a long standing association, vision, which you always experience when listening to a specific piece of music.

Great thread.

When it comes to most (dark) ambient music all I see is blurry black and white stuff. Stuff that is completely out of focus.

autechre - parhelic triangle

rubber suction drain-hole chopping seaside. precession of weather-worn, leathery, grey skinned

men and women, in wraps and cloaks, sounding chimes, walking along the jagged cliffs

[youtubehd]M0OIzd9euEY[/youtubehd]

  On 5/25/2013 at 5:35 PM, Squee said:

Great thread.

When it comes to most (dark) ambient music all I see is blurry black and white stuff. Stuff that is completely out of focus.

i get this occasionally, at least what i think you are describing. it's often very difficult to put into words, although i think this will be a bit of the fun in this thread, attempting to describe what is such an abstract, somewhat intangible experience.

Whoever made this did a perfect job:

For me personally...

Burial - "Ghost Hardware" - Staring out of a London Underground subway train window watching objects pass by quickly, including station stops skipped over, other trains going by, etc. At :45 or so I picture emerging out out of a tunnel onto one of the overground routes and staring out at the city on a dreary day.

Massive starfigher dogfight in outer space, akin to that in Return of the Jedi, and at 5:22 the main one I visual flying explodes just before the battle ends, and gradually the debris flies off and disperses into nothing.

Jumping into the ocean, off a reef or cove, and swimming around freely.

http://youtu.be/O_qN8JpbdAo

I tend to think of nature and landscapes a lot when listening to slower metal and drone. As for ambient and electronic it really varies, sometimes I picture more sci-fi settings.

I'm really picky of when I can listen to a song or the what mood I need to be in to listen to a song with singing or lyrics. It's not a problem if it's shoegaze or something where the vocals are just part of the mix, but singer-songwriter music is a lot harder for me to get into.

Songs very much focused on lyrics, whether it be indie rock, or alt country, but guitar based, I often think of cities or towns. Sometimes songs trigger direct memories of places and sometimes if it's a song I'm hearing for the first time it just harkens a certain visual of a particular urban or rural setting. I often thing of movie scenes with certain songs too - I'm always annoyed when films use a cliche overused pop song instead of finding a really fitting song for a scene.

[youtubehd]lm-RQAFfooQ[/youtubehd]

renaissance art and sculptures

  On 5/25/2013 at 6:00 PM, joshuatx said:

Whoever made this did a perfect job:

 

gloomy beauty, despair

I love music that automatically gives you some kind of mental visual sense of place and time. It's mainly ambient that does this to me:

A space rocket escaping Earth's atmosphere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpC2Gml6syY

Bird's eye view of a mountain chain:

Survival in the arctics:

Some kind of (good) glitchy fever-dream, can't really explain it, but it's a very visual track to me:

Waiting in a cold and dreary hospital for bad news:

Walking through some dark and rainful alleys and streets in London at night. Surrounded by all kids of creeps.

A bunch of soldiers listening to a gramophone in a large room (because of the reeverb), after having fought in the WWI trenches:

/nerd

  On 5/25/2013 at 6:36 PM, Ceerial said:

 

Waiting in a cold and dreary hospital for bad news:

 

 

yes, but the window is open with children playing outside, the trees are swaying and the birds are singing

[youtubehd]fOxVHHfF4EU[/youtubehd]

vacuum tube tesla coil and the seaside tiki tribe

Destroyer's music always makes me think of all the ugly homes we have in Vancouver.

When I was a kid I more often than not heard the same music over and over again, regardless of genre, so I would usually develop images and a story to it, almost like a music video in my head. I don't as much anymore. Knowing more and more about what equipment is used is a catch-22 as well, you lose the novelty of mystery behind sounds but gain appreciation in the effort put into something.