Let’s think about the films The Wolverine and Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Both are movies, yet the experience of watching could not be more different.
On one hand, we have lots of action (violence) and adventure (movement) played out by comic book thin characters. Entertaining? Sure. On the other hand, we have time unfolding inward, at times painfully so (slow), and a journey undertaken unlike any other by people who act as signs, or is it symbols?, of the search for meaning with psychological weight as obstacle. Entertaining? Not so much as potentially life changing, which to my mind is the greatest kind of entertainment of all. The kind that sticks even after the popcorn.
Laurel Halo makes music of the Stalker variety and Atlas, released today on Halo’s own Awe label, is as much a journey as it is an album. And as is the case with any Tarkovsky film, we have to pay attention all the way through Atlas in order to have any hope of reaching an understanding, a kind of communion. Whereas with The Wolverine, you can cook a four course dinner during and not miss one important thing.
