Lately I've been posting little or no songs out of the music I'm currently listening to (aka my playlists), so I guess the time has come to put remedy to that! I'm gonna do that with Of Monsters and Men, whose new album I really like now, after it took a while for me to really get it under my skin. This, I believe, is one of the bonus tracks, or extra materials of the album, but it stands perfectly fine together with the rest of the music! After a (so far) boring week at work and prospects of a less boring life here in Veneto, I'll leave you and devote to my Japanese language studies! Oyasuminasai! - おあすみなさい！
By now, thanks to 'Human', I have obtained the key to open the lock of 'Beneath and skin' and have been able to greatly enjoy it and fall in love with it! The process has not stopped of course and I am accessing the heart of other songs on the album (and they are reaching mine), and this is one of the three or four that this process of discovery took place about and has been the most successful! Given that I'm not really sure I understand what's going on with my life now and what I'm supposed to do with it, I'm trying to throw myself into what I know will help me understand it and comfort me in the process, i.e. the reason why I started writing this blog: music!
While creating my current playlist I have noticed that the (wild) animals theme was pretty recurring, so I thought that it would have been nice to recreate it on the blog too! In the end, you have to take your chances when they come! But today, given that it's not so late already, I wanna tell you a bit about Bangkok, some facts in random order: be careful when you go get a Thai massage, as I did for the first time today and I had muscles moved that I didn't even know were in my body, quite tough an experience but hopefully rewarding in terms of wellbeing!; Japanese manga in Thailand cost very little in Thai (about 1.5/2€ on average), about double of that in Japanese and more than 5/6 times so in English, learn the languages or pay the price!; today I got scolded by the ladies we are working with because I made the air conditioning not cold enough (there were 25°C in the room, and outside it wasn't even that hot); you can eat countless varieties of (food in general, in particular) curry and rank them clearly in order of preference!
Today I maybe hopefully had the first breakthrough with OMAM's new album, 'Beneath the skin' (the title coming from this song's lyrics), and I had it with this song actually. After the end of this (short) working week (2-day working weeks should be the rule, not the exception!) I got back to my B&B and took a walk around, as the sun was up high in the sky and there are a few green areas around here. Eating an ice-cream and then reading manga, while walking I was listening to the album and it feels like it started to get into me after a few listens...! Apart from 'Empire', I hadn't really felt a particularly strong connection with any of the songs, but now it feels like they're starting to pierce through! And usually the album I take a while to like, are the ones that I end up loving the most... let's see what's gonna happen with this one!
I find OMAM's second album very different from their debut, and I still haven't understood if it's a good thing or not...! I haven't found any hit song yet (like Little talks, for instance), the songs are more intimate, more hard to understand, to familiarize with and to interiorize, which might be a very good pro in the long term, meaning that the music is good and lasting, as it needs many listens for the listener to penetrate all the layers of interpretation (melody, lyrics, etc.) and the whole mixing up of them all. Anyway, today my friend M. came to my hometown to visit, we explored some old (for me) and new places and it's been a very pleasant day. It's just that when we are together, we are a dangerous love-for-Japan combo, and we always end up buying well too many mangas... anyway, that's one of the good things of life and I will just enjoy it. Now let me go, I have mangas to read..!
Today for the first time I travelled to work from home directly, without coming to Veneto on Sunday, and it's been a great choice: besides enjoying my Sunday much better, I quite enjoyed the trip too (though it was quite hot) and I also was, for some reason, hyper-active, very productive and very awake (and very wet)! After work I reached my B&B, which lays at the top of a hill: to reach it I had to climb a crazily steep road, but the location is quite fascinating! The worst thing is that I realised I left both of my Mac chargers home, meaning it's gonna be three (long) weeks without them! Stupid! Thanks goodness I have the work-pc that I can (supposedly) use at home!! After all of these adventures in such a long day, I'll leave you with one of the songs that are featured in my latest playlist, and I'm sure you're gonna love it as much as I do! It's the first song I'm posting out of OMAM's new album, which is going to be released very soon!!! (Or is out already?! No, it's tomorrow! Well, great timing, kudos to me!!)
"2015 is gonna be a kick-ass year for music". That's what's on my mind now. I'd be tempted to just leave that as a blog post, but I don't think it could be defined a blog post! Anyway, I quite like this already, so can't wait to fall in love with it and also for the whole album to come out of course! It's awesomeful that I'll start getting a wage this year, as I'll spend it all on CDs!! Omam's sophomore is coming out in the summer, Florence in June, PJ Harvey sometime before the end of the year, we have the brand new Imagine Dragons... and that's just the beginning! I'm really so excited! But I'll leave you be and enjoy this new pretty work of art!
Another week has come to an end, so it time for a sundayrevival again! Tonite I took a hot bath (+ hydro) and, as you know, baths are a great source of musical inspiration, especially because in the bathroom where the tank is I have a CD-playing radio and in the next room my CD-collection, so that I almost always end up listening to old favourites! This time I actually decided to play the last physical CD I bought, that is OMAM's debut album. Their sophomore album is scheduled to be out this year and I didn't even know that until I found out that they are headlining a Milan festival, which unfortunately I won't most likely be able to attend...! As the record was playing, I remembered when I went to their concert with my friend B. almost two years ago and how she was trying to teach me how to sing on the way back in the car, with pretty poor success (not because of her)! Well... it was also the time when I started being schooled in singing and... ok, I won't go as far as saying that I can kinda sing now because it's not true, but sure I did improve since then, also thanks to my playing the harmonica! But that night in the car, singing la la la la las endlessly... I'll never forget about it!
After being in love with their music for quite a while and also attending a concert of theirs, today I finally bought OMAM's debut album, 'My head is an animal'!! I entered the multimedia store in Milan with the aim of wandering around the CDs area and this was my first aim, but I couldn't find it in the pop/rock section, the same way as I couldn't find any of the other albums I was looking for. And then I found myself in the sales aisle and... voilà! Here it was, at 6.99€! Took it and brought it home! One less CD in my list of items to buy! Yay!
I've been meaning to post this yesterday (well, actually on saturday), but then the preparatives for graduation celebration got the best of me, and well... today it's been even worse, with coming back from Milan for a great lunch party with family and friends here in my hometown! This weekend has been overwhelming, absolutely CRAZY, I'm feeling so many emotions that it took me days to even start processing them! I'm full of joy for the celebration of the end of this chapter of my life, the amazing people that were around me, the support they gave me, the things we have done together! This same things also overwhelms me with sadness, as I started realising that it's really the end, it's for real. It's the first time in my (conscious) life that I'm not a student, and who knows what I am now! I'm really curious to get to know what is waiting for me, but also sad to leave this all behind. I really hope that the people who mean a lot to me today will keep occupying a relevant place in my life, and I'll dedicate this to them all, as representing a memoir of one of the best moments of these past two years!
This post has been inspired by the picture coming with it. I'm not eager of showing my face on here, but I had this moment of creativity (yeah, plenty of that while writing the thesis, it's a shame that most of them are not related to it!!) and I created this, which ended up being my most liked profile pic on Fb. Well, I confess I love it too...! The name of the lion is Lionheart, as me and my aunt got it for our home in Milan in the period while I was eagerly listening to Of Monsters and Men and, well... it kind of was supposed to happen! So after having this moment it made sense to listen back to the song (and the whole album, yeah) and, well, given that I also picked back up the harmonica, I have also looked for the tabs of some OMAM songs! I'll let you know how it goes...!
