bass house

Original English I wrote: I keep listening to this song. It’s a song that you have to listen to at least thrice in a row, to even feel a little satisfied with it. It creates such a feeling of yearning for something more, searching for something that just isn’t there no matter what: a fleeting memory of something that is now gone, and now only exists inside of your memories. It’s so visceral that you have to listen to it again, because in listening to it, you become the singer, who says again and again: ずっと、ただ探している。 ずっと、ただ探している。 And この場所で、思い出している。 この場所で、思い出している。 The feeling of an endless cycle that can’t be broken: the listener herself becomes entrapped and must perpetuate it even as the song itself ends, by pressing “play” one more time. The music itself contributes to this sense of an endlessly self-perpetuating cycle: in the verses, the sliding notes Miku sings between sentences, leading into each other like a wheel rolling down a hill, down and down, with no end-along with the endlessly repeating machine drums, create a feeling of a perpetual motion that is somehow paradoxically absent of forward progression. In the breakdown/chorus (sabi?) the vocal samples are cut short and repeat themselves just as you feel that they might finally move on and complete themselves: they are trapped in a literally looping sequence of chopped up sounds, a reflection of Miku’s inability to move on. There is no resolution. The visuals of the video refer to this too: Miku continually walks, then runs in the same direction, falling over, and getting back up to keep going. But no matter how hard she runs, she is waking in the air, in space, and she gets nowhere. A futile attempt that is repeated over and over no matter how many times it doesn’t work: she will never get back what she has lost, she will never find what has always been missing. “Limbo”- a place between life and death. Between heaven and hell. A soul in limbo reaches neither eternal life, nor eternal torture: it simply must go on existing, however painfully, forever barred from the release of “the next stop”. Suspended in this uncertain existence for the rest of time. But despite this crushing feeling, I also get the sense that Miku is an admirable person, for trying again anyway. Though I cannot grasp the full meaning of this song, as I am not Japanese and can only understand English, this meaning is what comes across to me through the music, and what small phrases I can make out among the rest. This is Sheeno’s “Limbo”.