Unsettling

I was trying to get Win 7 set up so I could do some… well, it doesn’t matter, but it involved VMware Fusion, the Windows 7 RC, a lot of reboots, and a ton of me staring at Windows config screens and scratching my chin occasionally. Anyway, it felt more and more off, like there was something I just wasn’t getting, and I got a little more anxious each time I’d try and hook up a network resource and get stuck on the domain, or try some setting tweak that didn’t quite make sense.

A good hour in, I realized the sounds just barely audible over my Mac Mini’s almost-silent fan were actually music. iTunes had shuffled to “Absolutego” by Boris (in fact, “Absolutego – Special Low Frequency Version” which is described by allmusic thusly:

And talk about buildups, this thing starts with a full 25 minutes of heavily down-tuned bass rumblings and doom-instilling guitar feedback before the drums and vocals finally kick in with the big payoff. From there, the band moves through about 15 minutes of thick, fuzzed-out trance rock (again, mostly instrumental) before the drums exit again, leaving in their wake a howling, droning mass of layered guitar feedback. The sound of this is truly massive and unsettling. It takes a good 25 more minutes for the wreckage to clear and the track to finally wind down to a close — it seems strange to say it, but anything less would have seemed like an abrupt halt, such is the magnitude of this track.

Kids… don’t attempt troubleshooting while listening to stuff like this. With your concentration focused elsewhere, it’ll seep into things, melting your brain, and will mess you up severely.