My First Winter and an Album About It Alberto León
Last Winter Term represented my first proper winter experience. I had been wanting to see, feel, and touch snow since I can remember, but I finally got the chance at almost 20 years old. Getting into details about that experience is a little bit complicated. I loved it, but it also kind of sucked. While the snow never stopped to awe me, at some point I got sick of feeling the weight of the wind in my face and also 90% of campus being a slippery hazard. Clothing became a limitation, and I at least took the time needed to layer up into consideration when planning ahead. The temperature conditions plus a couple of COVID outbreaks usually punished socialization. The pain of walking at 9:00 in the morning to class in -22°F (or -30°C in the more alarming Celsius) three times a week took a toll on me. However, this time of amazement, pain, and solitude made me relisten and give a new perspective to some albums I had already listened to. These albums, directly or not, are related to cold. Their album covers, the titles of their songs, the sounds they use, and their overall atmosphere convey that cold sensation; similar to how an afternoon could feel independent of weather conditions, that fatigue and tiredness that survives sun and snow. This was not my first time listening to those albums, but this was my first time experiencing in a more direct way that sensation of cold. Where I’m from, the average temperature on a day is around 75°F, maybe a little bit more, and that is true year-round. So, as expected, listening to these pieces while experiencing what a winter feels like gave me the opportunity to grasp new sensations and perspectives, different from my initial impressions about those albums. The original plan was to write about three, but I realized I was extending myself into writing about the album that most accompanied me during the term: I Want to Be There by Sadness. Sadness is the name of the solo project of Illinois based artist Damián Antón Ojeda. This album has been associated with genres such as Blackgaze, Atmospheric Black Metal, Post-Metal, Shoegaze, Ambient, and others, but the first genre I believe is the most appropriate label to this project. Traditionally, Black Metal and its sub variants are associated with the cold and dense forests of Scandinavia and Central Europe. You can easily make the association by looking at the imagery of Black Metal groups, and –at least for me– the dense tremolos feel like walking through a blizzard. This is especially true for projects like Paysage d’Hiver and Bekëth Nexëhmü, whose focus is to create that same dense, cold-but-eerie atmosphere. Dissidents of the destructive aesthetics and connotations of the traditional Black Metal scene created something called Blackgaze. I would not call it a fusion, but rather a middle point between Shoegaze and Black Metal, as both genres are known for their distortion and density. This middle ground allows synths and the sweeter breaks and melodies usually found in Shoegaze to coexist with the louder and rougher riffs found in Black Metal. I would not like to spend more time discussing both genres because the comparisons and differences are almost infinite. It is an extremely dense but bittersweet album, encasing everything I described about Blackgaze, and bringing the best out of Black Metal and Shoegaze. Its weight, materialized by its dense and loud riffs, feels like walking through a blizzard. Each song, not counting the interlude, has a slower, calmer part, made up by a simple guitar riff or a synth arrangement, which is there to end or build up the heavy and crushing atmosphere made from the layering sound of guitars. Thematically as well, this album departs from what is usually associated with Black Metal and takes up a more down to earth, sincere, and melancholic approach. Even if the lyrical content is minimal, all the elements of the album convey the feeling of being away from a loved one. The album as a whole is a love letter to somebody who is not next to us, or in front of us, but should be. It doesn’t necessarily translate to a break-up kind of NF011| 11
