Over the last four and a half years, Music Arcades has started to get like a microcosm of popular music over the last four and a half decades. As in: it started off like a blank canvas, where experimentation could be bold and confident. Then stuff piled up, and everything got more crowded. Everything got related and explained in terms of its precedents. There was higher risk of repetition, of being just a footnote to, or minor gloss on, former glories.
Thus it was that, while giving this CD a spin, I looked up the previous Runeology. I think how I feel less intimidated now than I did then; how I find this CD of Norwegian acts distinctively Norwegian, in a way that the Finnish CD two days ago wasn't very Finnish. I chuckle about my former naivety not knowing who Deathprod was (I've since seen him play live, with Susanna, who features here). I reflect on whether Shining, a "progressive jazz-metal group", sound like King Crimson, who were surely the first band to whom you could apply that description (Magic Band? Mothers of Invention? not really metal, were they?).
It's all more layers on top of old layers. And it's no reflection on the probably-quite-interesting music on Runeology 3, but, boy, am I tired! (And already anticipating Runeology 2 with a jaded anxiety.)
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