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Listening report to Philip Glass – Act IV: Spaceship

 When I listened to the song again at home, I had briefly forgotten how disturbing it was. In fact, I got so scared after the first minute when the pipe organ got louder and the fast singing started, I literally flinched. At first it reminded me of a baseball game when one of the players hit a homerun, but the horror movie atmosphere clearly prevailed. Which would probably make it a good song for a Halloween party playlist. On the other hand, it also reminded me very much of the Nintendo game Mario Kart, especially a track through Luigi's haunted mansion. With every lap driven, the music is sped up.

Pipe organ sounds always make me uncomfortable and my first thoughts were of Dracula or Davy Jones from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. The vocals, which were probably recorded at a faster tempo, make the song hectic and as if I heard it in a fast pace. The different variations of the repetitions were quite annoying at some point. Especially if you notice that the piece is another eight minutes long.

But when the vocals were gone, the repetition became very monotonous and I wondered why I was torturing myself and if the other pieces of Philip Glass would have been just as annoying to me. This piece definitely sounded to me again like a collection of annoying noises in constant repetition.

In fact, I could not even think of a spaceship when listening, which was rather disappointing to me. And with the recurrence of the choir and the undefinable singing, I came faster and closer to my tolerance limit. I always wondered who listens to such a thing voluntarily or for what particular reason? But most of all, how did the person come up with this kind of music in the first place? It is almost painful to have to listen to it again and when I imagine having to go through a whole concert with this kind of music, I shiver. It was probably not helpful, that I got hungry while listening and then the whole thing made me even more impatient and longing for the ending. The last 15 seconds definitely gave me the rest. 
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