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Transitus & Protok

Authors: Ben <benk@tilde.team>

Dated: 2020-10-30

In my last post about Konpeito, I mentioned that I feel like I am a music snob. Music is just something that I was raised on, with my earliest memories being my parents singing to me, and then discovering cassette tapes and radio as a child. I had musical interest in my family, and my maternal uncle, who was like a mentor to me, was somewhat of an amateur musician, but he listened much more than he ever produced. Of course, he was well versed in music theory and passed some of his knowledge on to me. (My uncle passed away just a few months ago due to poor health; according to the autopsy he did not have COVID-19.)

It would take too long to describe my lifelong journey, but as I got older and more distracted with wordly matters, I found myself spending less and less time on music than I used to. One problem is that it takes a lot of time and effort to keep up with enough music to figure out where you want to be. It's easy and comfortable to go back to old things you used to like, and while the best music is timeless, you do eventually get tired of everything. When I go back to music for nostalgia's sake, I can only listen to a couple songs and call it a day.

Maybe I'm too distracted or impatient. I'd like to find and explore new and meaningful things to me, but aside from the issues I just brought up, I am also incredibly picky. Whenever I listen to some piece of music, I quickly come to a conclusion about whether it works or it doesn't work. I don't want to use words like "good" and "bad", and it is of course a subjective measure, but I somehow convinced myself (perhaps narcissistically) that I can find some elusive, almost spiritual essence in muisc. Whether it really has that beauty and flow, or balance. Whether it has the nuanced touch of an artist, or whether it's utterly dull.

Whatever the case, it keeps getting rarer and rarer for me to find something that touches me emotionally or makes me excited. It does happen, of course, and this year it seems to have happened twice, so I figured I don't really have an excuse anymore not to tell *somebody*. I actually have no one to recommend music to because I just don't know anyone who shares my taste or cares about it as much as I do. I long gave up on trying to get other people into my favorite music because I just know we're all unique and entitled to our own preferences. My taste is just mine, I guess!

Also before I get into the subject of this post, I should probably give an honorable mention to Coke Studio, which has inspired me musically and carried me through the past five or six years. I won't bother to describe it since (again) it would take too long. You're welcome to check it out on your own. More recently, I got into a group called Caravan Palace, who somehow succeeded in impressing me.

And with that, there's Ayreon. Looking back, I have come to the realization that Ayreon has been a fixture in my life for so long that I wonder why I haven't noticed before. I suppose it's just something that I took for granted. I have grown all too used to seeing my favorite artists from twenty years ago slowly lose their touch or stop producing music altogether. I hardly can get excited anymore for a new Dream Theater album or Joe Satriani album. They're just not that good anymore, except for a decent tune here and there.

Ayreon stands out because after all these years, somehow a new album manages to come out, and some how I manage to love it. I stumbled upon them by chance long ago with The Human Equation, what I'm sure is their most famous album. It's an OK album, but it's really not the best. That, however, led me to exploring more of Ayreon's music, and I ended up listening to Into the Electric Castle more than the rest.

In 2008, when 01011001 came out, it was like, "Oh, Ayreon is still active?" Man, when I put the CD in my car for the first time, it hooked me at the first track. I really couldn't have anticipated how good that album was, and this just kept happening. When the The Theory of Everything came out, I was also not expecting it, and I was also shocked by how good it was. It's probably all-around Ayreon's best album, solid from start to finish. The Source was alright, but I guess didn't inspire me quite as much.

Each of these albums illicits some vivid memories I have, usually related to traveling. Listening to music is a way that I would usually pass time on long trips or while driving.

Anyway, today was another one of those surprises. A random Google search revealed Ayreon's latest album came out in 2020. Imagine that! I started listening to it on YouTube, and again it turned out to be something so good and completely unexpected.

The new album, titled Transitus, is a concept album that in retrospect could have been overly ambitious if it weren't for the fact that Ayreon is up to task. Concept albums are what Ayreon does best, apparently. It would have been so easy to do this album wrong, but they did it right. I was entertained by it from start to finish and found the musical elements inspired. Maybe it has its weaknesses, but overall it's a strong work, creatively and thoughtfully put together not only musically but lyrically as well. The narrative entertains as well.

In addition to its artistic merit, the album's story concept seems rather timely in a social or political sense, dealing with intolerance and human frailty. It's not too preachy or obvious, just a subtle touch that seems to hit the right note. The story and characters are genuinely interesting and likeable, and true to Ayreon tradition it contains references to past works.

If you're feeling adventurous you should give it a try, as I whole-heartedly recommend it. One funny thing that I wanted to criticize about the album is something to do with it's being released with a booklet not only containing lyrics but also a mini graphic novel of sorts with artwork and additional dialogue. The creativity and presentation of it is praiseworthy, but the thing I didn't understand is how one of the characters is portrayed.

Essentially, the story focuses on a forbidden romance between a upper class male and a household servant. It has this kind of Downtown Abbey feel to it. (I think the girl's name is "Abby" too?) I mean, if Downtown Abbey were more like Castlevania or something. The lyrics make it clear that class difference wasn't the only matter, but also racial difference. One assumes that the maid is black.

When you look at the included comic however, the copy I had at least showed this character in a racially ambiguous manner. That is, I couldn't actually tell if she was supposed to be black or not, because the artist seemingly depicts her as a white, I would say nearly blond woman, who just also happens to have something like dreadlocks and maybe some trollish facial features. (I'm not trying to be offensive, but I'm trying to guess the intention of the artist by picking up on visual cues. She looks as if someone tried to draw her a little bit "ugly" or masculine, except in perhaps one frame.)

So this leaves me wondering. What was the artist thinking? Was this an earnest attempt to draw a black person, but they failed? Had they never seen a black person? Or was she not meant to be black but something else? At any case, the booklet is not quite what I imagined when I listened to the story. Maybe the artist wanted the ambiguity to be intentional, perhaps to tell us that race is merely imagined.

Either way, it's all about the music, and that's solid. It's the album that I think Dream Theater wished they could have made when they attempted The Astonishing in 2016, which as far as I'm concerned was a flop. While listening to Transitus, I was unable to decide whether or not it was a new musical direction for Ayreon or just a minor variation on a sound or formula that just reliably works for me. It could be the latter, but I'm not complaining. It's seemingly the best of both worlds, being both fresh as well holding onto what made Ayreon good. For any artist that continuously produces content in the long term that is a very difficult balance to strike. You don't want to become stagnant, but you also don't want to lose your touch, which many do.

The other album I wanted to mention is "Protok" by the Serbian (I think) group, Inje. For a long time I had their single "Danas" in my playlist as just some random "Sovietwave" style recommendation I came across on on YouTube. I always liked that song a lot, but it didn't particularly endear me to the group until I decided one day to see if they ever made more than this one song.

Turns out, they made a whole album, Protok (or "Flow" in Serbian), and this album blew me away. It's not too long, as sadly this group seems to have had limited output, but really there's something special that went into it, from the vocal performance to the musical structure and composition. It's like a miniature masterpiece, and it's nearly free on Bandcamp; you can pay what you want for it to download it in any format, even FLAC and OGG. You can also stream it for free anyway, like "try before you buy".

For being relatively new, Protok seems like a little bit of a throwback album, echoing sounds I heard here and there in the 90's and early 2000's, and perhaps some mixture of genre influences unique to the Balkans and former Eastern Bloc, or some Euro wave type music.

Anyway, I won't bother attempting to describe what it sounds like. You'll just have to try it out and see if it works for you or not. Protok and Transitus are quite different and have to be taken on their own merit, mentioning them both in one post was not for the sake of comparison, but just timing as I discovered them both recently.