Aquariums (aquaria?) are cool places.
Well, not at peak hours. Then they’re absolutely awful. But at opening on a Tuesday, they can be very serene. It’s a strange feeling to walk up to walls of water, held back from drowning you by a few centimetres of glass, while those alien-looking-yet-probably-harmless fish stare back at you.
If the aquarium is empty enough, other visitors will take on that reverential silence that they usually reserve for art galleries, talking to each other in echo-ey whispers that you can’t really decipher.
I wonder if Nosaj Thing had a big, public aquarium in mind when he made this track, or if he was thinking more along the lines of a little rectangular prism type of aquarium that someone might have in their bedroom. Either way, it works.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The opening seconds hint at a minor key, but then the bass and twinkling glockenspiel come in to make things happy and cute.
2. The snare hits sound like someone taking a gulp of air before plunging underwater.
3. The strange chopped up vocal samples are a whisper that you can’t really decipher.
Recommended listening activity:
Losing a staring contest. (With a fish.)