There’s music you have on in the background at a dinner party, or you half listen to at a bar, during the lulls in conversation. There’s music you dance to, and there’s music you can’t fully appreciate unless you’re sweating in a mosh pit.

Then there’s the music that you can only properly enjoy and understand when you really listen to it. That means emptying the house of pets and kids and lovelyspouse, sipping on some fine liquor, turning the lights off and lying in the perfect position on the floor between the speakers. Hit play, and don’t move for the next hour or so.

Pink Floyd made quite a few of those, as has Nick Cave, Beethoven, and Wagner. I’m sure you’ve got one or two of your own, but my ultimate music immersion is Lateralus, by Tool. I won’t bore you with why I love it except to say that it’s excellent, layered and very deep, and Tool are about the only metal band in the world you can take seriously anymore.

Maynard Keenan, the singer and main songwriter, is a seriously weird rooster, but, my lord can he sing.

I know it’s probably some kind of sign that I’m slightly unwell, but I’ve listened to Lateralus at least once a day for the past eighteen months. I can’t say that I find something new every time, but it hits me in the guts without fail. Anyway, if you want to know more, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralus

So a while ago I’m hunting around youtube and yay, all the Tool music videos are there, and that fills in some time. Several songs were never released as singles or video clips (Lateralus’ title track being one), so fans have put together their own.

Provthetoolhead made one out of a lot of related artwork and other clips, and it’s really good: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=EDlC7oG_2W4

There are plenty of others out there, for instance there’s a guy who’s rearranged just about every Tool song for piano – kooky: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGCDc34m-4

Before I go on, a quick explanation about the Fibonacci sequence. It goes like this, and is pretty self-explanatory: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34….. each number is the sum of the two preceding it. It’s how spirals are made, and it’s the basis for the so-called “magic number” which is about 1.618 or something and is apparently the foundation of everything in the Universe, depending who you ask.

Now there are some weird rhythms and time sequences in Lateralus, and people with a lot more time, musical knowledge and monomania than I, have investigated it. And so there’s this video, which shows just how fibonacci-inspired Maynard apparently is: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY

Once you watch that you’ll start to get deeper and deeper into the weirdness of the Tool Army. For instance there’s the one for Forty Six And Two, which is apparently all about us evolving an extra two chromosomes and then jeez I dunno, the mother-ship’s gonna land or something. I got the hell out of there once I found myself at a website based on the life and teachings of Thoth (go on, I dare you).

So one night I was googling for some artwork to attach to my Tool albums on the iPhone, and hoo boy what a world you enter when you google Lateralus. A quick dip gave me http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/33666/, in which a whole bunch of dumbarses exercise their tiny brains and appalling grammar trying to decipher Lateralus.

http://www.toolpantheon.com/lateralus_meanings.htm is some guy somehow linking Lateralus to the Qabala, but my absolute favourite is http://www.bofe.org/overthinking.htm, where the author, whoever the hell he is, has decided to rearrange the entire album into a Fibonacci sequence by song numbers, and found that the whole thing meshes together a lot better, and makes a lot more sense and he’s now ascended to a higher plane thanks to the Holy Gift that Maynard has given us.

No, I haven’t tried it.

Yet.

+ 1

+ 1