aRternative

Time is of the essence. People rushing through the street, their steps knocking faster and faster against the plaster. Always faster. Do you ever have time to stop to think? I've heard these lines a couple of times before. Everybody complains about the pace of our age, but I didn't believe it. And now, as I'm starting to turn into an adult, I feel it. I'm "out" all day, coming here, going there, university, driving license, family, friends, loved ones. I never have time for things that really deserve it. I feel lonely. I feel homeless. In the greatest home of us all, the world.

Have you ever stopped to set aside everything and think?

The essential need of a thinking man is to question. Question anything and everything: theories, dogmas, propaganda, commercials, teachers, fathers and so on. What was the greatest thing you've ever questioned? Your parents? Your teachers? Your friends? Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Your government? Your nation?

Red sparowes questions possibly the greatest thing: the driving force of humanity

We are talking about an instrumental quintet from the US and actuality is provided by the recent release of their third album, entitled The Fear is Excruciating, but Therein Lies the Answer. The genre of their music is post rock, which is usually unkown to the greater public. As the name suggests, it is an "evolved" subgenre of rock, thus it mostly consists of guitars. Its uniqueness lies firstly in its high level of serious emotional and intellectual charge, secondly in the unusual length of songs ranging from a minimum of 6 minutes to an unlimited maximum, but rarely exceeding the 30 minutes marker. As it has been mentioned before, Red Sparowes plays instrumental music without lyrics, but the song titles themselves accurately convey the message of the band. Their previous two albums At the Soundless Dawn and Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun had the "story" told by their overly verbous song titles like A Brief Moment of Clarity Broke through the Deafening Hum but It was Already Too Late or The Great Leap Forward Poured Down upon Us One Day like a Mighty Storm, Suddenly and Furiously Blinding Our Senses. The new album, released on April 6th, has short titles like In Illusions of Order or A Mutiny, so the idea behind it had to be told some other way. The band included a short piece of writing in the booklet of the disc with thoughts that hit hard in the readers' mind like a stone thrown into water. It is basically a strong critique of the general human mental attitude that demands answers before understanding the questions themselves or before making sure that there is a question at all. It brings up examples of cases where the human mind sought order and system so eagerly that it created one where there was nothing but random chance.

An overwhelming majority of mankind is driven by the urge to find answers and apply logic and reason to a world in which none exists. Red Sparowes questions this quest for order and the way it does brings immense spiritual uncertainty to the open-minded reader. Is there truly no system in the happenings of nature and life? Are we truly chasing illusions created by ourselves? If yes, what would be the appropriate behavior? Accepting whatever comes our way and try to get the best out of it? According to Red  Sparowes, yes. We should lay all our belief and trust in ourselves and only ourselves. Humanity is the only factor that always has reasons and logic, no matter how twisted they might be. Everything else is just an endless flow of randomized events. This is utterly fearful, I admit. Allow me to quote the final paragraph of the Red Sparowes text as a closing thought: