Rarely do I find a single compelling, I’m also almost never interested in music videos that simply feature the band playing. Selfless Orchestra however pull this off with sensationally good taste and a knack for highlighting beauty. Before I dive right into the material at hand, I’d like to share a few words about the band and what lies behind their upcoming album.
Through Great Barrier, Selfless Orchestra aim to utter a poetic statement regarding the future of the Great Barrier Reef as its well-being is threatened. The band is comprised of eleven musicians, uniting players from different backgrounds in order to offer a rich palette of nuances in order to more accurately shape this sonic vision. A more comprehensive description of the group’s endeavor can be found on their Bandcamp page or on their website.
“Time is a Flower” is the second track off Great Barrier and its full title is actually “Time is a Flower Part I (The Dream Refused to Stay the Same)”. Yes, there’s also a second part. The full title is relevant due to what the band has to say about this particular song:
‘Time is a Flower, moments grow and rearrange, every moment we grow older, we forget to see the seasons change
Hold me closer as we grow older, watch every night return to day, time is like a flower, may we blissfully fade away’
I really like this statement and I just had to share it. It further underlines the poetic nature of the band’s work as instead of just plainly saying something about the song, they decided to phrase something of an epitomic pair of stanzas, akin to a haiku. I think that those words really encapsulate the essence of the song quite well.
The song itself is a seven-minute epic that starts out rather idly and slowly builds into something larger than life, fading out with stammering bits of sound at the end. As the song builds we hear a violin, cello, and keyboards on top of what we normally hear in post-rock. While the band draws from the stereotypical post-rock sound, they go on to craft something that is really their own thing. It’s difficult to properly put in a small selection of words, but – aside the band’s statement – I guess it kind of resembles the flow of nature, which is something effortless, cursive, and simply is.
The soundscape that is crafted across the song is as lush and vibrant as the landscapes that are being portrayed across the video. That’s not the only point where the song and the video synchronize though. The breadth of the music is entirely synonymous with the vast expanses of land that are captured adroitly in the shots. In a similar fashion, the members being split throughout the land on various types of terrain, underlines how they are all substantially different yet part of a greater whole – just as the lands themselves.
Alright, I think that’s enough of me prattling about – make sure to follow the band on Facebook, Bandcamp, or their website! The new album Great Barrier was released digitally October 19 and will be available physically October 23!
