It’s a thing, apparently. It’s a genre of music.

“Deathdream takes traces of Ambient, Dark Vaporwave, Broken Transmission, and Eccojams and distills the sound with a focus on death, anxiety, and decay. The world of Deathdream opens the door for incredible creative expression and rebirth in artists looking to try something new and explore the darker parts of storytelling. There is something inherently refreshing in creating a new alias to create a sound different from your usual work; Deathdream becomes a home for producers looking to become more anecdotal with their work in a disposable, no strings attached way.”

I learn something new every day. Ambient music is fairly new to my listening menu. It takes a place somewhere between background music and active listening but it can’t really be described as either. It’s a vehicle not for thoughts or ideas but for exhaustion maybe. It’s for that liminal space between not wanting to be here, but not wanting to be there. It doesn’t require the same commitment for me as other genres of pop. It’s for listening but not listening. It’s not for meditation. It’s for… this morning. But death dream? No, I’m not thinking about death. Death is the easiest thing in the world. You never have to think about it if you don’t want to. It’s coming despite anything you might think of it.

It would take more of a commitment on my part to understand why someone took the energy to define parameters on music that would just otherwise be called ambient. I’m just here for the music.

There is a deep warmth in this mix, like an electric blanket. It’s utterly at odds with the crunching cold outside this morning. I’m not even sure it’s the direction I wanted to take for listening today, but yet here I am and it’s okay. I wouldn’t even call myself a fan of ambient music but it serves its purpose in my life, or in my head at least. It was the calligraphy on the cover art that drew me in anyway. Similar to the music, it’s an aesthetic. I have to wonder even, who the audience actually is. My assumption is that it’s younger listeners, the internet culture, the HIKKOMORI of self-styled hermits from both the East and West, home contemplating their existence. It’s interesting that such a subculture would develop at a time when the world has grown so much smaller. We have real access to knowledge of lands and languages and cultures. It was all so alien when I was growing up and maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s that it seemed do exotic and alien when I was young that it lent a mystery and adventure to these places. Now with more knowledge, there seems to be less curiosity, so where does that leave young people? Sitting home alone contemplating death, I guess. Young people on the web sure talk about death an awful lot. They speak of it not really with a bravado like it’s an adventure, but like the knowledge that it’s coming comforts them. Perhaps that’s a false front they are putting on. I don’t know. They seem to embrace melancholy as well, along with the idea that life is entirely pointless so they may as well sit right where they are and wait for the inevitable. It’s possible that this subculture always existed but nobody talked about it. There was no vehicle like the internet where people could sit privately and anonymously and connect across wires to share it.

Somewhat but maybe distantly connected, I’ve been contemplating a low-key anger at people that I’ve been experiencing around Sunday night. It seems to be the time when resentment surface. They dissipate like a vapor (mostly) by Monday morning but it’s a strange Sunday night stew. I won’t even say it’s anxiety about the coming work week. It’s more focussed on people, and not people in general. It’s very specific subsets. friends, family, ex-lovers. It could just be a natural cycle that happens to coincide within the frame of a seven day week. I’m sorting it out, but Sunday nights have come to be a time when I am not fit for human consumption.

That’s an aside though, and I’m going to wrap this up for now. Things to be done… Hello, Monday.

Hello.