Results for “repetition as meditation”

Songs

Two Thousand and Seventeen

Four Tet

Two Thousand and Seventeen is an instrumental centerpiece from Four Tet's New Energy, built around a looping, bell-like melodic…

cyclical time meditative repetition organic vs electronic texture

Hands

Four Tet

"Hands" is an instrumental piece built from folktronica textures — plucked strings, hand percussion, and looping samples — that…

craft and manual labor repetition as meditation organic vs. electronic texture

Three Drums

Four Tet

Three Drums is an instrumental Four Tet track built from layered percussion and a vocal-like sample that circles rather than…

repetition and cycle texture over narrative meditative build

Lush

Four Tet

"Lush" is an instrumental piece from Four Tet's New Energy that builds a gradual, textured groove out of shimmering, harp-like…

organic growth texture over narrative meditative repetition

Bowls

Caribou

An instrumental built around the ringing, resonant tone of struck bowls, this track from Swim uses percussive, pitched hits and…

texture over narrative repetition and accumulation fluidity

Here Before

Vashti Bunyan

A short, hymn-like meditation on children as old souls, built from three near-identical stanzas that shift only in pronoun and…

motherhood reincarnation or old-soul intuition time and memory

Watch the Stars

Bert Jansch

A late Bert Jansch piece built almost entirely from repetition and simple natural imagery — stars, wind, moon — cycling through…

natural cycles impermanence meditation/ritual

Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)

Talking Heads

A polyrhythmic groove built on Afrobeat-inspired repetition, this track dramatizes a speaker who is simultaneously a…

power and bureaucracy bodily panic and breathlessness dehumanization

For the Widows In Paradise, for the Fatherless In Ypsilanti

Sufjan Stevens

A quiet, hymn-like meditation that speaks in the voice of a paternal or divine figure addressing a child, community, or…

fatherlessness and inherited grief divine or paternal devotion obligation and sacrifice

LET’S DO IT AGAIN

Jamie xx

This is a dance track built almost entirely from two chants, one about intoxicating love and one about repetition, that function…

ecstasy and repetition collective euphoria love as intoxication

Recurring

Bonobo

"Recurring" is an instrumental mood piece from Bonobo's Days to Come, built on looping samples, muted percussion, and layered…

repetition memory cyclical time

Do You Wanna Dance

Ramones

A three-minute cover of a 1958 rock and roll standard, stripped down and sped up until the invitation to dance becomes an…

teenage romance dance as ritual nostalgia for 1950s rock and roll

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Daft Punk

A single fragmented phrase is chopped, looped, and reassembled through vocoder into a mantra about relentless productivity and…

labor and productivity machine identity repetition and ritual

Down

Harry Nilsson

A brief block of aphoristic advice about soul and love gives way to a chant that spirals downward, both literally in pitch and…

moral instruction versus surrender descent/collapse repetition as trance

Do It Clean

Echo & the Bunnymen

A post-punk chant built on almost no semantic content, this song works by repetition and rhythmic insistence rather than…

repetition and ritual evasive bravado identity through motion rather than meaning

DARE

Gorillaz

A dance-pop track built almost entirely on repetition and command, DARE trades narrative content for pure physical suggestion.…

collective euphoria surrender to impulse repetition as hypnosis

Let the Good Times Roll

Harry Nilsson

A stripped-down invitation to abandon restraint set to a rolling backbeat, the song works less as narrative than as incantation,…

seduction release/abandon repetition as persuasion

Whole Lotta Love

Led Zeppelin

A blues-rock boast built almost entirely on sexual innuendo and repetition, where the lyric functions less as narrative than as…

sexual conquest desire and excess masculine bravado

Gimme Shelter

Patti Smith

This is a cover of the Rolling Stones' 1969 apocalyptic ballad, and Patti Smith treats it less as a rock anthem than as an…

apocalypse and dread the fragility of shelter violence versus tenderness

Sorry

Madonna

A dance-floor kiss-off built almost entirely from repetition, in which the narrator refuses to accept an apology she's clearly…

romantic betrayal emotional exhaustion self-reliance

Sun

Caribou

This is a track built on a single word repeated to the point of dissolution, functioning less as lyric than as vocal texture…

repetition as meaning ecstatic minimalism natural imagery reduced to a single symbol

Tides

The xx

A duet-shaped monologue about watching a relationship dissolve on its own timetable, using the ocean tide as a figure for…

inevitable loss powerlessness dependency

Zero

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

"Zero" is a synth-driven dance-rock track that turns anonymity into a kind of dare, addressing an unnamed "you" who is stripped…

anonymity and erasure nightlife as survival identity as performance

Feel Flows

The Beach Boys

A near-abstract meditation by Carl Wilson that trades narrative for texture, using dense alliteration and impressionistic…

dissolution of self memory and time transcendence

Computer Love

Kraftwerk

A minimal, deliberately flat lyric sets domestic isolation against the promise of a technological fix for loneliness. The song…

isolation technology mediating intimacy modern alienation

Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

Moby

A single unanswered question and one cryptic image, both looped without resolution, become the entire content of this track. It…

spiritual malaise unresolved grief repetition as meaning

Fast Cars

Buzzcocks

A short, sneering punk song that uses fast cars as an emblem of empty status-seeking, environmental menace, and mechanized…

consumerism and status environmentalism/safety alienation from modern life

Here She Comes Again

Röyksopp

A minimal, incantatory portrait of a woman weighed down by unnamed distress, sung by an observer who circles her without ever…

mental distress observation vs intimacy compulsive repetition

Frame By Frame

King Crimson

A short, incantatory lyric built from paired phrases that circle the idea of self-scrutiny curdling into self-destruction. The…

obsessive self-analysis psychological drowning fragmentation vs. wholeness

Real Cool Time

The Stooges

A two-part come-on built from almost nothing: a repeated request to come over, then a chant insisting the night ahead will be…

adolescent desire minimalism as provocation repetition and ritual

All Under One Roof Raving

Jamie xx

A dance-floor chant built from a handful of vocal samples looped and rearranged rather than a lyric in any conventional sense.…

collective identity cultural pride/nationalism (subcultural) defiance

Unite

Burial

This is a track built almost entirely from a single vocal fragment looped and pitched into a kind of emotional smear, more mood…

betrayal emotional numbness isolation

Clarksdale Moan

Son House

This is a plainspoken Delta blues meditation on home -- specifically Clarksdale, Mississippi -- rendered through the traditional…

place and belonging poverty endured with dignity memory and habit

The Eternal

Joy Division

A slow-motion funeral procession becomes the occasion for a meditation on grief, estrangement, and the passage of time as seen…

death and mourning isolation from community childhood and incomprehension

Message Of Love

The Pretenders

A live rendering of a Pretenders anthem that treats love as a communal, almost civic obligation rather than a private feeling.…

love as mutual obligation solidarity amid hardship romantic devotion

Silent Spring

Massive Attack

This is a fragmentary, almost liturgical piece built around a single stammered command—obedience—repeated until it dissolves…

power and submission ritual/liturgy loss of individual voice

Never Stops

Deerhunter

A short, motorik-driven track that circles a single image of internal winter, using repetition rather than narrative development…

emotional paralysis escape and its failure depression/inner winter

Tour de France 2003

Kraftwerk

This is Kraftwerk's minimalist tribute to the world's most famous bicycle race, built almost entirely from a litany of French…

endurance and the body technology and human effort geography as narrative

I Believe In Music

Donny Hathaway

A gospel-tinged secular hymn that treats music-making itself as a moral and spiritual practice, capable of dissolving conflict…

music as spiritual practice communal unity optimism through repetition

California Sun

Ramones

A cover of a 1960s surf-pop tune, blasted through the Ramones' buzzsaw guitars and deadpan delivery, turning a sunny travelogue…

escapism nostalgia and pastiche repetition as ritual