Has it become a cliché to talk about pre-lockdown art as being prescient? It's a word I keep reading at the moment. As if, like animals before an earthquake, the world's artists somehow sensed what was coming.
Here's another offering with seemingly prophetic insight - Alone, not alone by instrumental composer Tiny Leaves (aka Joel Pike. Full disclosure: we're friends). The video for this release was produced by Joe Almond.
As the title suggests, this is a piece of contradictions. The violin's yearning phrases weave through tight electric arpeggios. The track's soothing quality verges into something mildly chaotic before calming again. While this emotional spectrum may well resonate with the isolated individual, oscillating between anxiety and peaceful solitude, Almond's video invites us to see things globally. Immersed in a vast, monstrously beautiful and complicated world, we keep our distance and yet feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. We are alone, not alone.
The synthesizer sequence is the relentless, quantised pulse of the world wide web, while the acoustic strings are mournful exertions of human experience itself. The opening pizzicato are how we all used to be before the digitation took over