Daydream Society - For Now
Just looked at the tracklist, and for a second I thought this was a relatively short album. Nope. Still almost an hour long. What the **** is with you people and long-as-**** albums?
1. "Encapsulate" 4:03: Quasi-futuristic airport music. Nice. This was kind of what I was hoping for the first time I listened to Brian Eno's
Music for Airports.
2. "Beneath Me He Is Nothing But Brightness" 6:59: Not much else to say about the music so far. It's chillaxing, and... I think I'm just going to say nonsense now to fill up time.
I feel like this is what would be playing if I were in some sci-fi movie, and I fell asleep in an airport, but then all of a sudden, I'm awoken when they call my flight. So I open my eyes, only to realize that I've somehow been transported forward in time by a hundred years, and instead of airplanes going to San Francisco, there are spaceships going to the Moon.
3. "After Everyone Leaves" 4:31: But everything is so quiet, and this music is so quasi-futuristically soothing, that all I can do is mutely marvel at everything around me: the holographic projection screens, telling me arrival and departure times, whether from here to Jupiter, or from the asteroid belt, to here, and then on to Pheonix; the people rushing to and fro, much like in my time, but with strange devices which have replaced many of what is familiar to me, though some may have only changed a bit... iPhones still look exactly the same though, cause they're already quasi-futuristic enough as it is; there's also glass everywhere, from the floors to the walls to the ceiling, it's as if all humanity is visible at once, yet there are no scuff marks or dirty footprints anywhere that I can see.
4. "Outer Wave" 3:56: Most arresting of all, however, are the ships which are landing and taking off. They don't roar, or rumble, or zoom, or anything that I can even hear. They just shoot off into the sky, like majestic insects, their pure white exoskeletons glinting in the sunlight long after they have disappeared into the puffy, white clouds, lazily drifting across the vibrantly blue sky.
5. "Floating In the In-Between" 8:52: I'm broken from my reveries by an impersonal woman's voice softly, but loudly speaking from an unseen source, "Now boarding Flight 471, Little Rock to Venus."
Curiously, I reach into my pocket and pull out my boarding pass.
Flight 471. Little Rock to Venus.
Not knowing what else to do, I enter the line queuing up at the terminal, and wait to embark onto my spaceship. It moves as airport lines tend to do: infrequently and at odd intervals.
After an interminably long time, I finally hand my ticket and boarding pass to the attendant, and they stamp my hand with... something, and I feel a slight prick. I glance down at my hand, only to find it without blemish. Before I can ask what they have just done, she has moved on to the next person in line.
Still feeling pleasantly dazed, I decide not to worry about it, and make my way through that... corridor... thing, that connects the airport proper with airplanes and spaceships.
6. "Separation" 4:34: I'm quietly amazed at the interior of the spaceship. The seats, floors, windows, and flight attendants are much like you'd expect from any plane in our time. It's as if the previous hundred years have been no concern at all to those who design such things.
I must have been standing there for a second or two too long, as one of the flight attendants politely encourages me to find my seat.
My seat isn't really any different than it would have been before I fell asleep. I'm somewhat disappointed to be perfectly honest. I have a window seat that doesn't look upon the airport, only the tarmac, which is likewise the same as it always was. It's all a bit jarring.
Even the captain speaking over the intercom, announcing our imminent departure, and the flight attendants safety demonstration are the same (though the seat belt is thankfully more of a harness).
7. "Mornings Dissipate In Somnolence" 5:17: I'm startled by a faint hum, followed by the nearly unnoticeable vibration of the floor, which seems to pass through my feet, my legs, my chest, and all the way up to my head. I'm almost to bemused to notice that our we are now floating into the sky, accelerating ever faster, until the ground becomes nothing but a blur, far underneath us.
I'm not prepared for when we break the atmosphere. I've seen pictures and movies of and about space, but to see that moment for yourself, when the blue dissolves into formless black and the scattered white pinpricks of the stars, is something which leaves one forgetting how to breathe.
8. "The Bell Jar": The tug of my safety harness is what informs me that I no longer weigh as much as a feather. To my amazement, I observe as the man sitting next to me unhooks himself, and attaches a kind of cord to a hook in the floor, which then gently zips along the aisle in-between the seats to the back of the plane, presumably the to space bathrooms.
I am curious to try this myself, but don't want to risk embarrassing myself if I fail and have to be hauled back into my seat by annoyed flight attendants.
9. "Penultimate" 5:46: I console myself by staring out of the window (do they even call this a window when it's on a spaceship?). The stars zip by, like I was in
Star Trek, and I assume that we'll arrive at Venus slightly quicker than if we were to take a "modern" space shuttle.
As much as I am enjoying this experience, I must say that it would become rather tedious if it were to last... however long a space shuttle mission to Venus would take.
It seems like only a few minutes before the brilliantly red and yellow ball of out solar systems second planet becomes visible in my... viewport? Close enough, I suppose.
Venus looks pretty much like Venus. There appear to be a few more space stations than I remember, but all in all, not much has changed about the molten planet in the past hundred years. I don't know if it's being terraformed at the moment, if it's only being used for mining purposes, or whatever else a futuristic government might want to do with a planet.
10. "Does It End Like I Want It To?" 2:14: Over the intercom, the captain informs us that we will begin our descent shortly. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I had a new ticket in my pocket when I woke up, but I don't know if I also have new identification to go with it. I'm also assuming that everyone I've ever known is now dead. And I certainly won't know what to do with myself on Venus.
I can't find it in myself to panic though, because the music is just too soothing.
Final verdict:
/10