2000s Music | The Music in my Life

Variety is the spice of life, it is said. After several metal albums, now comes a very different one: an instrumental album, with only piano (by Ehren Starks) and cello (by Kate Gurba).

And what an album it is.

According to Ehren Starks, the album depicts a relationship, which in a way can be seen from the track names, as well as the music itself. Sometimes sad, sometimes joyful, sometimes melancholic. I have to admit my ignorance here, and say that the simple piano/cello combination was completely new to me, and it certainly works very well - I have other albums with just the piano, and it always seems like it’s “missing” something.

I won’t say much more about this album for the moment, other than that I love listening to it, for one reason: it’s not from any mainstream recording company, but from Magnatune, which not only sells albums in a digital format (and, optionally, on CDs) very cheaply, and in normal MP3 or OGG files (that is, no DRM (Digital Rights Management, or, more correctly, Digital Restrictions Management)), but also allows you to listen to all its albums online, through streaming. So you can simply go to its page for The Depths of a Year” and listen to the entire album, to see if it is to your liking. Me, I bought it after I listened to half of it, and it was money very well spent.

By the way, this is one of the few albums I have at work that I can play whenever I want, and nobody complains.

Usually, I don’t like sad, “depressive” lyrics. Mostly because I believe in the heroic, not in the usual obsession with pain, suffering and weakness. But also because, in most mainstream music, the lyrics are little more than “poor little me, I suffer so much, I can’t do anything about it, I won’t even try to do something about it, the world is so unfair, blah blah blah”.

That just doesn’t appeal to me - sounds too much like nagging, complaining, and putting suffering and weakness in a pedestal. I like my lyrics to be inspiring, thoughtful, intelligent.

Then, why do I like Blaze’s Blood and Belief, from 2004, so much - as it is, certainly, a sad album?