WKNC is sponsoring the 2023 LIVE@Lake Raleigh series.
Starting in 2018, NC State LIVE and Visit Centennial have presented this series of free concerts at Centennial campus’ Lake Raleigh. This April and May, four shows will take place starting Thursday, April 6.
The concerts are on the shore of Lake Raleigh, at the corner of Main Campus Drive & Campus Shore Drive. There will be food trucks at these shows and free parking. Each show starts at 6 p.m. and gates and food trucks open at 5 p.m.
April
Thursday, April 6: Orquesta GarDel
Genre: Latin big band
Thursday, April 20: Hank, Pattie & the Current
Genre: Bluegrass
May
Thursday, May 4: Laurelyn Dossett
Genre: Singer/songwriter
Thursday, May 18: Caique Vidal & Batuque
Genre: Afro-Brazilian
For more information on the bands, frequently asked questions, and additional information about the events visit the LIVE@Lake Raleigh website.
I was dully teasing my dopamine doused brain, scrolling through the endless pit of social media looking for the next mild prod of unimportant something to let my eroding attention feed on. I found a conversation about noise music, and someone cited Merzbow’s “Pulse Demon” as a “palate cleanser,” so I decided to listen to it.
There are no ideas in this album.
There is nothing memorable in this album.
There is nothing of independent significance in this album.
There is nothing at all special in this album.
It’s just pure grating noise.
But after five quarters of an hour of nothing, something neat happened. Everything else sounded different. The silence was the same, the songs were the same. But the way I was conditioned to hear it was different.
I decided to put on some of my favorite tunes. Don’t get me wrong, my enjoyment of the music that I listened to afterwards didn’t change, but the way that I heard the music was totally different. I could hear everything. I paid mind to everything. This is how the artist thinks. I could feel each component of the music and how they all connect. I could think about it far more critically.
Pressing play on a track from “Pulse Demon” and skipping to the middle to listen for a few seconds is silly. Playing this for someone who has never heard of it before and only giving them a snippet is ridiculous. It’s like saying “c’mere, lemme show you a clip from this movie,” and it’s the entire movie sped up and condensed into five seconds, complete with cartoonish sound effects.
It’s a comically overwhelming amount of information to push onto someone for such a short period of time. However, the humor is just the method by which we reject the rush of information. Once your mind gets over the hurdle and is able to acclimate to it, it becomes entrancing.
If you relax your eyes, look at the cover art for “Pulse Demon” long enough, and immediately look at something else, it’ll start to warp. The image tricks your eyes. The harsh bends and folds hurt to look at, but once you’re done looking, everything else looks different. This effect is fleeting, but it’s noticeable.
Is this placebo? Is this real? It’s not astounding or groundbreaking, but nonetheless it’s fascinating- and it might be the cure for music.
On February 7, 2023, I made a commitment to myself and a small group of friends. For the rest of February, the only music I would listen to would be within the “drain gang”. For anyone who doesn’t know, drain gang includes a plethora of artists including Bladee, Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital, and Yung Lean. The genre is a blend of hyperpop and trap, which many seem to enjoy.
I had never listened to any of these artists prior to that day. Naively, I assumed that this challenge, called “Drainuary” would be a good introduction to the genre. However, drain gang would soon take its toll on my mental health.
Yung Lean performing at The Hoxton in 2016. Photo courtesy of Drew Yorke, under Creative Commons.
The Demise, Part 1
For context, I listen to approximately 6 hours of music every day. It gets me through both the good times and the bad. Music hypes me up for the gym and puts me to sleep. The issue with listening to this much music arises when I can no longer listen to a diverse music palette. Over the first 24 hours of Drainuary, I listened to about six hours of Bladee alone.
This statistic alone broke me. Exactly at that 24 hour mark, I decided to abandon the challenge, knowing that my mental state would only further deteriorate from there. I wasn’t enjoying the music that much, and I only listened to drain gang out of spite. But, this journey was not yet finished.
Hope, Part 2
One friend of mine suggested that I should instead listen to an artist that I actually enjoyed. After searching through my playlists for artists starting with an F (for February), I finally landed on Fiona Apple. Now, I would listen to no music except for that in which Fiona Apple played a part in creating. Although I hadn’t listened to all of her catalogue, I adored her latest album “Fetch The Bolt Cutters”.
Compared to Drainuary, “Fiona February” was a breath of fresh air. Her music spanned a far greater range of emotions than someone like Bladee, and I could assign an identity to each of her albums. As a result, cycling through her music felt far more natural, allowing me to keep with Fiona February for longer into the month.
Fiona Apple at Damrosch Park Aug 8, 2015. Photo courtesy of Sachyn Mital, under Creative Commons.
The Demise, Part 2
Longer is a bit misleading of a term though. After five days of listening to nothing except Fiona Apple, I started having a mental breakdown and needed to use other artists to ground myself again. Granted, I was also dealing with other issues at the time, but Fiona February certainly didn’t help.
What I Learned
Despite what I had expected, intentionally limiting my listening to just one type of music is extremely difficult. I was unable to complete many tasks I can normally do just fine, because I felt like I didn’t have the “right” music playing. Additionally, I found out just how heavily I tend to lean into music as a coping mechanism for whatever I’m dealing with at a given time.
As a result, I felt like I couldn’t process things that arose in my life well, if at all. I don’t know if there’s really a moral or anything of the sort to gleam from this situation. All I know is that I can never actively limit my music listening to one or a couple of artists.
