55 minutes, 30 seconds

Assemblage 23
Defiance

I listen to music as much and as often as I can. While I get dressed, while I brush my teeth, while I eat, while I drive, while I work. Unless, of course, Mrs. Total Time is around, and then, as a courtesy to her, I turn it off. (She's not too keen on the loud electro-industrial stuff, and the neofolk music creeps her out. Quite rightly.) Given that I work from home for the most part, I get to listen to a lot of music on any given day. It's on almost constantly.

That gets me to thinking about whether this music, which once had the power to surprise and even frighten me, has lost its potency. In other words, is it now just so much aural wallpaper?

Of course, I'm not necessarily picking on Assemblage 23, or any other more traditional song-based bands. Tom Shear makes what might be called pop music, after all, and that can demand more-active listening. But it's the soundscape-ish stuff I'm wondering about, the more abstract music--ambient or noisy--that makes me think I'm becoming inured to what it has to offer.

I still appreciate certain recordings above others, so perhaps it's the sheer quantity of CDs I own that creates a vast middle ground of music that fails to make an impression. But part of me worries that because it's on all the time, and because I'm doing other things while listening to it (such as, um, blogging), I'm not fully engaged with it. I'm not truly "listening."

Maybe. Or maybe I've heard so much mediocre crap, it takes much more to get me to perk up my ears. That's the snob defense.

Also today:

55:29 Seven Pines, Nympholept (CD 2 of 2)
55:28 Andreas Resch, Requiem
55:28 Ulf Söderberg, Nattljus
55:26 Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth
55:25 Digital Poodle, Division!
55:24 Accessory, Titan
55:24 Controlled Fusion, Unnatural Causes
55:23 In the Nursery, Era
55:23 Project Pitchfork, Eon:Eon