If the Moon Went Skinnydipping at Midnight: Tash Sultana's Musical Atmosphere
If the Moon went Skinnydipping at Night…
It would let out a long, relieved sound of ambient satisfaction that sounds like the musical atmosphere of Tash Sultana.
God, I was looking for a way to connect—thinking I need to write something—need to interact. Notice me, humanity. NOTICE ME. I roar this as I stumble around a candlelit flickering room, smashing bottles and howling at the walls like a tormented suburban Quasimodo.
Anyway, I was listening to the live version of “Coma” by Tash Sultana and recognized that everything she does is earth-shifting in a way where—she is basically an emotional potter. I’m driving in the car and halfway through the six-minute song, I go from a sense of sweet springtime electricity to sadness I have only experienced during alone dark moments in bright sunshine surrounded by crowds. By emotional potter I mean, I’m just a lump and she’s oscillating her voice in such a way that every note is a gentle touch, sculpting the listener until they don’t care what they’ve become in the moment—they just want to be a part of it.
The first time I heard “Notion” was one such occasion. The second through thirtieth times I heard “Notion” was the same.
A gentle swirl of resonance, her voice melting in with the chords and laying down under a current, then resurfacing as a shimmer that rides along the surface and dives back under when the breeze shifts.
And when I start writing something like this, I feel like it needs to say something, or I need to be funny. Or profound. But sometimes what’s happening is you simply want to express how something made you feel and there should be no expectation of what anybody else thinks of your decision to express it.
I’d love to rip off some long creative hyperdramas like I was doing in spring of 2020, but the current conflict is that—my gaps of time are so constricted, and I fight against them and pummel them with fists and scream to let me out and be creative every day.
For now, I’ll enjoy the subtle moments where in the isolation, I can feel connected to the reverb, the emotion, the glowy melt of atmosphere that drifts with the chords. I’m grateful for this medium in which I can write and when I do my dopamine receptors sprout and look something like this:
The ferns of the forest moon of Endor
And since I’m about atmosphere and hers is that clean and clear and immersive—here’s an entire Tash Sultana set.
Tell me with a straight face that her music
doesn’t sound like how the moon feels.
She plays guitar, horn—whatever that sound box thing is that makes ambiance reverberate like your soul got shook the same way you hear a song blasting emphatically from someone’s car speakers on a summer afternoon.
If you’re local to my neighborhood, she plays the Filmore in Philadelphia on June 24th. I, for one, am looking forward to it.