The word “drone” suggests a certain amount of stasis, an amount fairly beyond the ordinary experience of an everyday listener, a stasis employed through static, both figuratively, in the form of something that barely can be felt to move, and literally, in that white noise is often its substance, is often its effect. Drones appear alien to ears used to the structures provided by rhythm, melody, and harmony. But once you recognize those structures as just that, as structures, then you come to hear them everywhere, including in music that appears to refute them — music such as that encapsulated by the term “drone.” Vapor Lanes‘ “Matchbox Twenty” is such a drone, and like many drones it pushes at its drone-ness, pushes away from drone-ness, in its own manner. The odd thing about drones is that they are often defined by that effort that they make to be more than drone, more than what might be considered mere drone. In any case, here that effort is akin to the revving of an engine, moments when the drone seems to speed up, to get unforeseen momentum underway as it moves ahead, for even in its static form it has a sense of motion. The sole bit of framing information of consequence is a single tag associated with the track. The tag is a word, and the word is “oneiric,” which is to say dream-like.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/vaporlanes. The musician is based in Chicago, Illinois.