What time is it? What is time? Can it run faster or slower depending on how you experience it? Can we travel faster than it and go forward to the future or back into our own history, and if so can we change the passage of time? Albert says no.
Will we be timed out by the universe and if so when? And what does ‘when’ mean anyway? More prosaically, will the vegetables be delivered to the supermarkets ‘just in time’ this week?
So many questions, so few answers. They have intrigued mankind for, well, a long time.
Hawking struggled to get to grips with the subject in his A Brief History of Time as he big-banged black holes in search of a Unifying Theory that explains the universe, while Martin Amis wrote a novel, Time’s Arrow, in which events occur in a reverse chronology, with time passing in reverse and the main character becoming younger and younger during the novel.
All a waste of time if you ask me but it didn’t stop SOLE from approaching the subject in an entertaining fashion.
‘Du Jag Tiden’ (‘You Me Time’) is the best Mr Google can offer me this time…stop it Dave!) and is the second single from her forthcoming album. It was released on 24th February.
‘Du Jag Tiden’ is written and performed by SOLE and her brother Mons Gipp Ossler. It concerns the “intangible” feeling of time; it’s shape-shifting vagueness unless the clock tells you you’re late for work.
I’ve dragged this preamble out a bit because I wanted the reader to get into the time groove if you will, in preparation for a song which represents the issues of how we deal with time and how it seems to go on forever at one end of the spectrum yet overtakes us leaving us playing constant catch-up at the other.
It starts with someone killing time; randomly pressing keys on a piano like a bored child would do, without hope of finding a melody. Then there’s a section in which time drags as it might do in a spaghetti western as the two gunslingers weigh each other up before the inevitable mid-day shoot-out at the OK Corral under a boiling sun, each knowing that their time may soon be up.
As the tempo increases, about halfway through, an underlying piano riff appears signifying greater urgency, aided by a heavy, repetitive drum beat.
Gaining in intensity a wailing, almost screaming female voice adds to the fray as if to insist “stop the world I want to get off”, while distorted guitar sounds echo manically in the background.
Then suddenly it’s all over, as if the universe has stopped expanding and is starting to contract in on itself, having run out of time. Or, you might interpret it as an orgasm and it’s immediate aftermath (post-coital cigarettes included) after a lengthy build up, as the character Rael sang in Genesis’ ‘The Lamb lies down on Broadway’, “I’m counting out time, reaction none too happy, Please don’t slap me, I’m a red blooded male and the book said I could not fail.”
Its make your mind up time on that and as Satchmo informed us, “we have all the time in world…”
Enough of this wordplay. I haven’t heard anything quite this frenzied and intense for a while and I’d love to experience it live. She’s influenced by an eclectic bunch – Nina Simone, Sigur Ròs, Leonard Cohen, Twin Peaks and Björk – and boy don’t you know it.
For now, as Rutger Hauer famously said in Blade Runner, “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
The band:
Guitar: Pelle Ossler
Guitar: Zackarias Lindskog
Drums: Hux Nettermalm
Bass: Christoffer Zetterlund
Vocals, guitar, piano: Mons Gipp Ossler
Vocals, synthesiser: Sole Gipp Ossler
Find SOLE on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/solegippossler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solegippossler/
