Seeing as this is our inaugural column, we would like to set our priorities straight. Music taste is subjective. In our time, being fiends of dirty basslines, magical guitar riffs and airy synths, we’ve realized that there is little to no gain in talking about taste. Personal grudges, identity crises and all toxic cocktails stem from trying to get someone to believe that your taste is better than theirs. Yet, thinking and talking about these musical elements helps us gain an appreciation for how sounds move us, and in turn gives us an understanding of ourselves. And we feel like you might gain from that too.

We’re talking about getting at the “feelies,” a term that philosopher Aldous Huxley famously coined in Brave New World. In the novel, Huxley uses feelies to capture the concept of sensations, an innate human response to external experiences that are often difficult to describe. While in Huxley’s world feelies relate to a combination of smell and touch, we’d like to explore the feelies of sound. These feelies we talk about may make you cringe, cackle or, hopefully, cling to the edge of your seat. All you need is a pair of ears and a subpar set of speakers and you can get right aboard the feelies.

We’ve made it easier and chosen a feely for you to get at: space. Distorted, compressed, or expanded, space manipulation is a classic trait through which an artist can get sounds on the outside to sound inside. At the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Abu Dhabi on September 6th, we were able to interact with this feely at a very personal level. In the thick of clueless UFC fans and rock junkies alike, this unexpected experience drove us into an RHCP deep listening session to try and figure out why this feely was so prevalent in our experience.

Give it Away: One of the most iconic rock-rap tunes of the 90s, this song starts by establishing a bass-guitar love story. Bassist FleA and guitarist Frusciante build a bassline that transports our headspace into a field of mushrooms. They are a shade of burning red, heating up to the intensity of Chad Smith going at the drums. The psychedelic punk-inspired bassline verberates in our headspace, bouncing in funky patterns over these mushroom caps. As this melody flirts around aimlessly between our ears, lead vocalist Kleidis breaks away and attacks with the chorus. As he belts “Give it away!” he pulls us away from this elastic bassline into a sharp hook. This back and forth between the wavy guitar riffs and clinical vocals creates an effect of constant space distortion.

Hey: This is one of the RHCP tracks that really grew on us. This track, hidden in the depths of their ninth studio album, Stadium Arcadium, is a gold standard in creating the feelies through space-play. Frusciante sets up a beautiful harmony with Flea and Smith, that is both steady and wavy at the same time. Kleidis proceeds to use this bassline as a trapeze, pulling off all sorts of vocal stunts that consistently shapes the song’s spatial palette. As he juggles his voice to stretch and spin throughout the song, he briefly tapers off to let Frusciante execute an extra-worldly guitar solo. A great closing act to this circus-like song ties together a truly entertaining headspace.

Dark Necessities: Imagine 1,800 Arnold Schwarzneggers toiling away with a bicycle pump, trying to inflate a thin sheet of bubble wrap. That’s what the band tries to do in one of their most charged spatial build ups. Following a build up of such gravity, Flea’s uses his funky bassline to guide us into a virtual discotheque. With each clap from Smith’s drums, we enter a new floor at the discotheque, traversing through sections of disco-rock, disco-pop and disco-bass, as RHCP walks us through the subgenres within the song. The exceptionality of the piece comes from each of these subsections having their own, distinct headspace, while managing to stick to an overall theme – similar to the floors at a disco-club. Listening to this track feels like a great night out, starting strong, ending surprised.

As we found ourselves just a short distance away from a band we were both raised to, in completely different lives and environments, in this almost ridiculous context, our whole beings were a part of that space. The interaction between physical and mental space is inconceivable. As RHCP played the songs of our past, our physical space quite literally changed. Distorted, compressed, expanded. We switched positions depending on our preferences for specific songs, we moshed alone and together, we lost, gained and lost again the ability to move, as we moved and stood still with an entire arena. We maneuver our space to music, just as music does to its own product of space.

Want to hear what we’re talking about? Check out this week’s playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2CbVaqnh7oimB1Xv0QjOiY?si=0-HmnrHLTi2yySBqVNAkKQ

Want to hear more? Check out our weekly show EARWORMZ on Howler, every Friday from 10pm-midnight. Each episode will be related to the feely of the week. http://radio.nyuadim.com/