Al Gromer Khan | Strangeness of Ambient Style
Writing on Al Gromer Khan is a bit tough! Listening to his composition is still more tougher. Mido, not that I make fun of him (I paid him that tribute over there) but seriously speaking, it’s difficult to listen to his music without finding yourself doing some other (even, sleeping) largely ignoring the music. That’s not Gromer’s fault. His is ambient style New Age music and it’s how it is meant to be.
‘Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.’ — Brian Eno
The three main phrases here “without enforcing”, “ignorable”, “interesting” are what can be best described of Al Gromer Khan’s. His music doesn’t ‘force’ the listener to listen (through strong beats or high pitch voices or metal sounds that fill up most mainstream music); it passes by as gently as the mildest breeze (not even wind!) : If you are sensitive enough, you feel it or else it goes ignored. But if you can tune yourself to feel this ‘mildest breeze’, then you will be no more the same person you were: You’ve moved into deeper into your being.
Gromer’s insight into music is well established in his writings on music. I’ve been listening to his music albums for almost four years now (with large intervals) and I see myself just a newbie listener of Ambient genre. I feel Gromer’s music ‘interesting’, penetrating, ‘ignorable’ (am still a newbie, I said) and challenging. After all these years, listening to his music, very lately, I feel the breeze of his Tantra Drums, a wonderful music album to start wit, if you are newbie to this genre like me.
In weeks or months to come, I’ll be writing on this artist. But largely I wonder, if something can be written in albums which can be ‘ignored’? If I write, will my writing be ‘without enforcing’, ‘interesting’ and ‘ignorable’? Let’s see.
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