In music, lyrics are often seen as a natural form of communication, more immediate and important than the music that makes up most of the song. This might be fine for pop music, but they can get in the way of the more creative musical realms. Better that they are not there, and you just let the music do the talking.
Well, Dadanaut thinks so, and Epopöe is an album demonstrating that some albums are better. It is a collection of 10 instrumental songs that range from spiralling groove-fests, such as the opener Tageweise, to more slow-moving and epic sonic journeys, such as the space and grand Ypsilon. There is room for gentle ambiences, such as the gradual and graceful Wirrsin (a track that both Tangerine Dream or Vangelis would have loved to have had in their back-catalogue), the slow-burning and brooding like Dunkeldenker and genuinely cinematic, such as tracks like Nebelgespinst.
But all of these tracks have one thing in common. They all talk through the mood and motion of the music rather than merely telling you what the composer is trying to convey. This might mean that such tracks mean different things to different listeners and may resonate with each in a way that is a long way away from the artist’s original meaning. But that is instrumental musics’ strength rather than its failure.
The songs get to live a new life every time someone listens to them, resonate differently with their life experience, and are imbued with new meaning and purpose each time it is played.
A pop song, as great as it may be, remains just that, a pop song. Truly explorative, adventurous, filmic and progressive music serves a million different purposes to a million different people. Now that really is something powerful to contemplate.
[…] years of work have gone into this latest album by Dadanaut. Even on first listen, Massenkater is a series of instrumental pieces that wander between the dark […]