Ball of Wax 42 Songs: Mark Schlipper – The Meaning of Life

The Luna Moth‘s Mark Schlipper returns to Ball of Wax as a solo artist with his take on “The Meaning of Life.” The song  is an exercise in somber minimalism, with a repeating minor key figure played on an acoustic guitar for the first two and half minutes accompanied only by ghostly, buried vocals. In the final minute of the song, guitar fuzz seeps in like a swarm of mesmerized bees, enveloping, but not derailing, the main guitar part. As the lyrics are indiscernible, I’m not sure exactly what meaning the song posits, but the sounds suggests the horizons of stillness and hypnotic dread also found in the music of Earth and La Monte Young.