Gregor Vukasinovič
The Agalloch Effect
When a song projects images into your mind, and then it turns out they closely resemble the environment where the artist in question lives or grew up.
Mathematics is the source code of reality, both manifest and otherwise. Music is the continuation of mathematics with different means. It's like the visualisations that were all the rage in the mid 2000s, that came with music players like Winamp and such, generating more or less psychedelic images from the audio the program was playing.
I've since come to the clue, music can be the same thing in reverse, and the human brain can reverse engineer that, apparently. The first time I noticed that was with the first two or three Nightwish albums I heard, which were also the first ones they released back then. Once and prior to that. They always drew pictures in my mind. Pictures of the Finnish wilderness, the lakes, under a sky of purple and orange as the Sun was setting behind the trees. But then, that's where Nightwish were from, and I knew that already back then, so I didn't think much further of it.
However, then I discovered Green Day. The pictures their music drew always reminded me of scenes from GTA San Andreas, and later GTA 5, both set in California. Turned out, Green Day indeed are from that area. Oakland, more precisely, even if that isn't present in any GTA title. And their stories, much like GTA's are indeed usually set in the poor and desperate parts of town, in the filth underneath highway intersections where the American dream has given way to the rude awakening afterwards.
Agalloch finally, I only discovered much more recently, during the pandemic. Their pictures were yet again different. Here I see wooded hills, if not mountains. Dark forests they are, almost devoid of colors, old, windy, moist, shrouded in fog under an dreadful sky, and overflowing with mystery. It would be too much to call them hostile, but they aren't inviting either. A place where you can come to die if that's what you're hoping for. Looking into the origins of Agalloch, they turned out to be from Portland, Oregon. The Pacific northwest, just outside the Cascade mountains. Couldn't be much more fitting. I've named the effect after them then.
They weren't the first where I noticed it, but the ones where I noticed this really is a recurrent thing, not just a one-off with a small handful of bands.
Another variation of that syndrome, is Meatloaf. The effect works there just as well. Highways, Truck stops, gas stations in the night, in 1970's American pop culture. Except... apparently that's not at all the kind of image they were hoping to produce, judging by the videos they shot for many of those same songs. Those try to make them look like something out of Tim Burton, with witches and haunted mansions and things like that. Something that might have been popular in the 1990's and later goth scene, which I always saw as more or less the exact antipode to Meatloaf's look and feel. But then, I guess night is night. Perhaps a gas station is the just the most goth thing you have at your disposal growing up in 1970's Texas. One also must keep in mind, Meatloaf didn't write all their songs themselves, if any, so it may not be their mind and soul that gets channeled in there.
The Agalloch Effect
When a song projects images into your mind, and then it turns out they closely resemble the environment where the artist in question lives or grew up.
Mathematics is the source code of reality, both manifest and otherwise. Music is the continuation of mathematics with different means. It's like the visualisations that were all the rage in the mid 2000s, that came with music players like Winamp and such, generating more or less psychedelic images from the audio the program was playing.
I've since come to the clue, music can be the same thing in reverse, and the human brain can reverse engineer that, apparently. The first time I noticed that was with the first two or three Nightwish albums I heard, which were also the first ones they released back then. Once and prior to that. They always drew pictures in my mind. Pictures of the Finnish wilderness, the lakes, under a sky of purple and orange as the Sun was setting behind the trees. But then, that's where Nightwish were from, and I knew that already back then, so I didn't think much further of it.
However, then I discovered Green Day. The pictures their music drew always reminded me of scenes from GTA San Andreas, and later GTA 5, both set in California. Turned out, Green Day indeed are from that area. Oakland, more precisely, even if that isn't present in any GTA title. And their stories, much like GTA's are indeed usually set in the poor and desperate parts of town, in the filth underneath highway intersections where the American dream has given way to the rude awakening afterwards.
Agalloch finally, I only discovered much more recently, during the pandemic. Their pictures were yet again different. Here I see wooded hills, if not mountains. Dark forests they are, almost devoid of colors, old, windy, moist, shrouded in fog under an dreadful sky, and overflowing with mystery. It would be too much to call them hostile, but they aren't inviting either. A place where you can come to die if that's what you're hoping for. Looking into the origins of Agalloch, they turned out to be from Portland, Oregon. The Pacific northwest, just outside the Cascade mountains. Couldn't be much more fitting. I've named the effect after them then.
They weren't the first where I noticed it, but the ones where I noticed this really is a recurrent thing, not just a one-off with a small handful of bands.
Another variation of that syndrome, is Meatloaf. The effect works there just as well. Highways, Truck stops, gas stations in the night, in 1970's American pop culture. Except... apparently that's not at all the kind of image they were hoping to produce, judging by the videos they shot for many of those same songs. Those try to make them look like something out of Tim Burton, with witches and haunted mansions and things like that. Something that might have been popular in the 1990's and later goth scene, which I always saw as more or less the exact antipode to Meatloaf's look and feel. But then, I guess night is night. Perhaps a gas station is the just the most goth thing you have at your disposal growing up in 1970's Texas. One also must keep in mind, Meatloaf didn't write all their songs themselves, if any, so it may not be their mind and soul that gets channeled in there.