JEROMES DREAM – Seeing Means More Than Safety (2000)
More than 25 years have passed since this album came out, and the question I asked myself was simple enough: is it worth talking about something that is no longer current—at least in terms of its release date? It’s a thorny question. And the answer is yes, for a cluster of reasons.
First, because music expresses states of mind, and those are not afraid of age. Second, because the content of the songs and the mood conveyed by the music always apply to the present, becoming a key through which to read the ways we live now. Third, because we constantly need to question ourselves, starting from our aesthetic, musical, and—why not—ethical standards.
And then there’s another reason, less noble but brutally obvious: there is so much banality in today’s musical landscape that something a bit more alive and disturbing than the current flatness is necessary, if only to glimpse a limit on the horizon. Incongruities, peaks and valleys help us understand how far we can see; a flat, colorless panorama (like today’s musical one) instead makes us almost blind, eroding our natural perceptual abilities.
So welcome moments like this—and all musical experiences aimed at generating small distopias within this mortal, complacent quiet living.