Ball of Wax 42 Songs: Darryl Blood – The Meaning of Life

Darryl Blood‘s “The Meaning of Life” is the first of only a couple instrumental submissions to this volume, and it’s a gorgeous bit of composition via audio manipulation. Darryl has departed from his usual singer-songwriter/power-popper fare to deliver an electroacoustic piece for overdubbed cello and sampled baby sounds (stay tuned for more baby  sounds and yet more dad songs). Since I have the secret information contained in the yet-to-be-published BoW 42 liner notes, I can tell you that rather than being composed by writing down a score and giving it to a cello player (in this case Gordon Withers, a man of many fine interpretations and collaborations), this piece was recorded before it was composed. Darryl took backing parts Gordon had recorded for some of his songs and then deconstructed and reassembled them into this new composition. When combined with the unmistakable sounds of a small child, the resulting piece – mournful and hopeful, poignant and bittersweet – gives as good an interpretation of the meaning of life as an album’s worth of lyrics. Kudos to Darryl for branching out in this way, and to Gordon for providing such beautiful building blocks.