Can you imagine a world without music, art, and culture?
L’Orange and Mr. Lif force you to live in such a dystopia vicariously through their latest EP The Life and Death of Scenery, which is a concept album based on the idea of a society in which any and all forms of artistic expression are banned.
The intro, titled “The Perfect World Radio Hour – Day 279” gives us an idea of what this fictional world is like, describing a place with mandatory daily prayers to the Sun and executions on account of casual whistling. The second track poses two opposing hypothetical situations, forcing the listener to imagine being in both the position of “hearing the last record scratch, the last note, the last quote”, and subsequently that of the person to rediscover the lost art of music in a world thought to be completely devoid of it, asking the question “what would you do to relate this?”
The third track, titled “The Scribe” inspires hope by depicting a hero who will bring culture back to their bleak world, but the interlude following features the leader/narrator from the intro who quickly discredits these “rumors of a scribe”. Despite this, the fifth track titled “The Perfect World Hour – Day 304” tells a tale of the hero attempting to awake the people of this metaphorically colorless world with the power of music. The final tracks are dualistic in nature, with one eluding to the attempts at reviving culture being failed and the government maintaining mental control over its people, and the next being about the scribe’s continued efforts to help enlighten the population and overthrow the suffocating system.
The album is available for free listening and download on the Adult Swim website. The EP consists of 8 tracks:
- The Perfect World Radio Hour – Day 279
- A World Without Music
- The Scribe
- The Perfect World Radio Hour – Day 304
- Strange Technology
- Lies About the World Outside
- The Perfect World Radio Hour – Day 421
- A Palace In The Sky
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