The appeal of never ending.

I can be an indecisive dude sometimes. I can't tell you how many times I've put on an album and then, mid-song, have had the urge to listen to another song or skip around or put on an entirely new disc. It's not because I am not enjoying what I'm hearing; I just want to hear more. I always want to hear more. I wish I had several different sets of ears and just as many brains so I could listen to a bunch of stuff at the same time and take it all in simultaneously. That set-up would suit me better than these clunky ol' pierced musician ears and the tiny little dusty clump of gray matter I have in my thick skull.

There is one type of album that I do not have the urge to skip around, and that is the type of CD where tracks bleed and blend into one another, those listening journeys where scenes and sounds merge into one long experience that can only be summed up as such. You hop aboard at 0:00:01 and hang on for a non-stop ride through the disc, not knowing where one track ends and the next begins. Those albums are truly a gift, and I have a deep respect for those types of discs.

VGM-wise, think of the Silent Hill OST. For 36 tracks, this disc is a living, breathing, angry ambient beast that deserves a full, complete listen. You can't put the disc on and hop around back and forth from "Claw Finger" to "Moonchild" to "Children Kill" and be like, "Yeah, that has some good tunes". No, no, no, dammit! See, Hiroki Kikuta had it all down proper when he arranged Secret of Mana+. That album is one track that's upwards of 50 minutes long because that's how he wanted the disc to be. It would lose some of its effectiveness and impact if it was broken down into a bunch of tracks that you could simply skip through. SOM+ is an excellent disc that can only be taken in as it was meant to be taken in - one, big, deep listen that identifies the album as an album, not a collection of songs. You could ask me when song A turns into song B into song C on that disc, and I would have no friggin' idea. I don't care to; I just take it all in and I don't even touch the volume, let alone any other button, while I listen. When the disc stops spinning and the little mechanical arms and lenses and whatever the hell else in that radio makes my CDs stop moving, that's when I stop listening. It's not just a CD or a VGM arrange album - it's an experience.

Lately, I've been listening to some DJ mix albums that have that same type of appeal; one song becomes another becomes another becomes another until the disc ends and I'm just sitting there thinking, what the hell just happened? Lately, I can't sit there and enjoy a full song. I skip. I'll go to the next song after the loop. I'll get bored. But, I'll be damned; if I put on one of Dave Seaman's new Therapy Sessions discs or Nick Warren's GH #024 or Adam Freeland's essential mix, I will listen to the whole album and I will not have an urge to stop for any reason. The exact opposite will happen - I will stop doing other things so I can continue to listen. I will pull into my driveway and will turn the car off and will sit in that driver's seat until the album stops. The appeal of having an album mixed together as one long track is huge, and as such I can respect it more than a disc that just has a bunch of tracks in sequence. Instead of short, little rides, these albums are one huge trip. No stops. No layovers. No skipping around.