This piece was first left as a review on the website RateYourMusic. I was reviewing AE_Live 2016/2018, a compilation of live recordings from their Onesix tour. During this time I was working hard on all of my AE_Live 2014/2015 reviews and they were getting increasingly long and analytical. I wanted a change of pace with this one.
"Suddenly I became conscious of a stirring of soul within me. My world of experience in a moment seemed to become lighted, and facts which were detached and dim found a great unity of meaning. The feeling I had was like that which a man, groping through a fog without knowing his destination, might feel when he suddenly discovers that he stands before his own house."
—Rabindranath Tagore
Memory and physical extension in space are bound up. Memory turns space into a time which unfurls from present to past with a textured irregularity according to the character of what is remembered, and time turns space into memory of course. My father physically recoils at loud noises, he says when he hears sharp noises of a sufficient loudness he literally sees flashes of white light. My own synaesthesia is more abstract, but in the pitch black of the Manchester performance I attended I noticed (though my eyes were closed) that thin, quivering, unsure packets of light came borne on the music. Tiny pinpricks they were, until a rare flat surface appeared in the music and then the light was a razor thin straight line, slicing away my aching feet and the warmth of bodies behind me and leaving only the dim awareness of autopilot. Running along the sharp edges this way, the light suggested that the invisible shape was essentially smooth and metallic. It might be reflective if there was anything external to reflect.
ㅤAt the turning of a flower
ㅤHis disguise was exposed.
ㅤNo one in heaven or earth can surpass
ㅤMaha-Kashapa's wrinkled face.