I was listening to Darryl Blood’s “Killing Blow” early this morning at work as I prepared for a big biweekly meeting, wondering how I could write about the song, having listened to it in a number of situations, and really it worked best as a soundtrack, especially if I pretended I was pushing my cart of stuff around a near-empty space station instead of a near-empty office building. It has old-school-sounding synths and some noisy piano for about the first two thirds of it, nothing especially melodic, and it was easy to imagine a cabal of bad guys or bad robots plotting against me and my mission somewhere in the upper levels of my space-office while I went about my business. (Now that I think about it, I may have willed some tech problems into being through my imaginings, for which I apologize to Travis the IT guy.)
About ten minutes in there’s a repetitive laser blast kind of sound, and a low drone beneath it, which isn’t especially pleasant, but it has a compelling urgency. The most interesting part comes a minute and a half later, when some percussion comes in. I’m not a percussion expert, but it’s definitely non-western, maybe a tabla? Then a short simple melody on a marimba or xylophone starts, and a pretty synthy counter-melody that reminds me of something from ’90s trip-hop. The laser drone stops for a while, and it’s a very peaceful groove. I’m not sure what would happen in my space movie at this point, maybe a visit to a good quiet planet, maybe some very chill dancing and/or getting high with a sympathetic android.
The laser drone comes back though, because, and here’s the moral, you can’t escape technology, you can’t escape the future, and weirdly, you can’t escape the past’s vision of the future. Stanley Kubrick will haunt us forever, but it’s okay, because the best parts of the past will haunt us too if we’re careful, and because there will always be dancing. Music is for that and for painting our world in bizarre and exciting colors, and helping us dream, and for that I am thankful.