Lulu’s Loose Screw

About a decade back, I had a conversation with one of my best friends on top a balcony. He said he was afraid of heights and in return I shared, “I am finding that so am I lately, but never was before.” He replied, “It is because I do not trust myself up here.” And we both nervously laughed because it was the risk of plunging into the unknown that made our constitutions shake.     Griffin Novie’s  Balcony Bliss  is a conceptual piece working on this same thread. Instead of falling to the ground, Griffin expands the time we suspend in air, envisaging while appearing face-to-face with himself amongst the clouds.    Bounce Gravityless in Griffin Novie's Buoyancy   Enter into a sunrise of sound with “We Don’t Have Anything More to Say” as clouds surround you in a dream. Burning through this daydream with an electric energy, the guitar riffs like rays of sun melting the clouds away, puncturing the sky and “permeating the neurons through their membrane.” Mea...

Back in 2016, I was writing music reviews for  Indie Band Guru  and collided with the brilliant likes of Breanna Barbara. Her debut album,  Mirage Dreams , had just been released and I had the privilege to capture it on the  virtual page . A few weeks ago, I had the flattery of Barbara sending me her new single, and so here I am, and here you are, looping through the orbit once more.   While her entrance burst down the doors with a steel-boot kick in  Mirage Dreams , Barbara withdraws into a softer more subdue tone, drawing the curtains closer in “ Big Bang Blues .” With Breanna Barbara as captain, we dissolve into a warped illusional dimension, shimmering with drawling sounds, shape-shifting rhythms, melting mixtures of blue hues.    Barbara’s voice emerges over a cascading clash of classical guitar and bass, her voice steady—like a rocketship coursing through the atmosphere and soaring through the uproar of space—as the instrumentals t...

“Green? Gross!” He tosses the skittle back inside the package, digs out another color.   “Reeed! More like it!” he says, throwing the sweet treat to his tonsils, forgetting to chew the flavor.  His fingers fumble inside the bag, scoping out the next letter of the rainbow.  ROY-G-BIV.   “Grape! Yes!” He shovels it in, forgetting about the “Green again! Ugh! “Aw damn! Didn’t realize there were only three left! Shoulda saved the grape for last.”  He scrunches the wrapper and shoves it in the right pocket of his hoodie. He pulls up his hood as a light breeze strokes his cheek gently.  Florida winds always feel like summer time. Even in February. Beady eyes squint out in the twilight behind a gun glinting underneath the single shine of the street lamp.  “Hold still,” the voice of the beady eyes projects.  Hands up as he had learnt from television and movies, or from the innate consciousness of the tone of his skin,...

Empty.  My thoughts are empty. No, my brain is empty. Like when it’s 1:30 in the morning and you got your fan circulating in the background. Clearing out your mind. I think these white-noise boxes are designed to suck out the thoughts from your brain. But isn’t that what I come here for? Every time, I sit here hearing nothing but the same static from the sound screens. Anything repetitious can drive you mad. The heavy beats of water dropping on my air conditioner from the neighbor’s air conditioner upstairs. Leaving me blinking in the darkness at 3:15am. Just staring. Waiting for sleep to muffle me. Smother me in its sweet blackness. Sleep. The buzzing is dilating in my brain. Crescendoing and decrescendoing in a blur. Can sound become a blur? A blurry image? The haze of a desert morphing into a mirage along the horizon. Constantly seeing mirages. Whirring in a disappearing-and-reappearing act rapidly. A portal.  Maybe the silence of my thoughts, that emptine...