It’s perhaps an odd way to start a review, but this new, and massively enjoyable album by Jantar – Background Moods, made me think about the whole question of musicians making a living from their art. The wider issues around streaming, and listener’s convenience, stakeholders profit vs the value of creativity, and the sheer magic of listening, all over again.
Jantar are a New York 5 piece, and Background Moods is their latest album. 8 tracks that they dreamt up, played, reworked, whittled away at, rejigged, thought deeply about, and finally agreed on a 63-minute-long chunk of music that would be their newest release. Despite it clearly being the result of numerous hours of hard work, effort, and polish and no doubt – expense – the final album appears on Bandcamp for $1.
We believe artists, should financially benefit from their art. Whilst Bandcamp isn’t completely ideal, it somehow feels like a far more ethical choice than most other large-scale platforms, where any amount (particularly on Bandcamp Fridays) feels like a direct transaction between you, and the artists.
Free or very low-priced music sometimes suggests it’s a rough sketch, a so-so live recording or, just to encourage people to listen. Do we value music that’s not cost us a chunk of money? We all seem to consider that an expensive purchase becomes one that we need to work hard to utilise. Do tiny risk-free purchases, mean the stakes are lower, the music is throwaway – or regarded as lesser?
However, that one dollar admission here, very quickly feels like an unbelievable deal.
This clunky introduction however feels even more justified given how Background Moods instantly contradicts its own title and apparent value. The rich driving motorik groove of Horrible Birds of So Many Kinds throws you headfirst into a zone that only gets more effective as it loops and bends. A lush web of electronics, synth waves, and rhythmic fragments all spinning around thumping drums and glistening guitars.
The next track, Lured by Pyramids is a complete shift, a sleepy jazzy interlude before the bright twinkling patterns of End Titles dance on layers of electronics and drones. At almost 16 minutes O.K. Man, This Is Your World is an even more obliterated dronescape, taking twanging guitar fragments before drifting off into huge waves of muffled industrial ambience.
By this point, it’s easy to lose your way, the next two tracks Shendar Brwa and Onipe Santus are another 10 minutes floating in vague gorgeousness.
Whilst this music is hugely effective in any relaxed frame of mind, it’s often the case, our way, to really get to know albums like this, is whilst out wandering the remote woodland and riverside paths near home. Time where the ever-changing landscape, big horizons, and tiny details, all somehow perfectly mesh into a porous living soundtrack.
A few days ago, whilst listening as part of this review, moving through a remote patch of dense forest, this album soundtracked my slow movement as I headed towards a small clearing. The music gathers itself, surging back into my focus as I walk into a thick carpet of snowdrops. I pulled my music player out my pocket to double check as I amusingly realise – yes, I’m currently three quarters of the way through the 19 minute centrepiece of the album – Moly Snowdrop.
Whilst it’s clearly no more than a gentle coincidence, the experience felt extra powerful. These hardy, industrious, and beautiful little white flowers, reaching up through a layer of dead leaves. The welcome first sign of Spring, and of re-awakening life, briefly owning spots on the ground that soon enough won’t see direct sunlight as the trees start to produce leaves.
The ‘moly’ part of the title, presumably frames a herb Homer mentions in his epic poem – Odyssey almost 3000 years ago. Wrapped up in myth, the plant seemingly filled with magical powers, whilst historians suggest these attributes come from chemicals that cause amnesia, hallucinations and delusions. The music spending a huge chunk of its duration in a foggy bliss, only to eventually, after you’ve lost your way, gathers into vast banks of ghostly strings. An orchestra carried on the wind in waves of shimmering peaks.
Somehow the experience felt like, for a moment the universe had connected. These threads, ancient and in the moment, had overlapped in a tiny and overlooked place I’d never been before, and the soundtrack was already in place. It was unrepeatable, enrichening and made my day. It was absolutely beautiful.
I walked back home, this review solidifying in my mind. The hours I’d let Background Moods flood into the foreground, the experience I’d just had, and all the positivity, and new ideas that the music had gently poised…
All these zones, and questions, that pure creative block of stuff I now had to hand and fully accessible, whenever I choose – and all for $1.
If you’ve got this far in this fragmented review, then thank you.
A tale of present day undervalue intertwined with something priceless. It’s highly recommended you head over to Jantar’s Bandcamp page, and if you can, maybe amend what number you put in that box, before you purchase…
Background Moods is out now here
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