Welcome to the second edition of my short series about mind-expanding music released in 2010. This entry is about the band Emeralds, a spacey electronic group from Cleveland, Ohio. The video below is for the song “Now You See Me,” one of the last tracks on their album Does It Look Like I’m Here?
I had originally intended to feature Oneohtrix Point Never in this post, a similar electronics-in-outer-space outfit. That one-man act has released at least five albums in the last couple of years. Both Emeralds and Oneohtrix remind me of the music they play in the Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot Center, which of course is a huge geodesic dome—a “bucky ball,” nicknamed after R. Buckminster Fuller, that under-appreciated visionary.
The space age sort of died in the late ’80s, when the alien paranoia starting building up in the X Files era. I think we’re entering a second space age, and this time we’ll be aiming much further out (and inward). Each human mind contains a universe. And the Earth is a space shuttle, constantly rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun. “We are all astronauts,” as Fuller said. I think Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never understand that idea (maybe just intuitively, not consciously). Some of their songs also remind me of Pink Floyd during the Dark Side of the Moon/Wish You Were Here/Animals era.
Similar Posts:
- Mind-Expanding Music from 2010, part 1: Gold Panda (January 25, 2011)
- Mind-Expanding Music from 2010, part 4: Flying Lotus (February 21, 2011)
- Mind-Expanding Music from 2010, part 3: Teengirl Fantasy (January 25, 2011)
- Flying Lotus Performs Live Score for ‘Heaven & Earth Magic’ (April 2, 2010)
