199 words about Lorenzo Senni

Dance tonight deliverables tomorrow

Over the past few months as work and side-work obligations have stacked up, I’ve found a certain kinship with the Lorenzo Senni track “Wasting Time Writing Lorenzo Senni Songs.” I’ve been drawn to Senni’s “rave voyeurism” tunes for some time now, trademarked by their drumless trance-y build-ups that are then denied the release of a drop. However, “Wasting Time…” turns what is normally music about listening to music into a track about making it. And I don’t want to armchair analyze Lorenzo Senni, but if this isn’t a procrastinator’s anthem, I don’t know what is. The signature of the piece is an off-kilter lurch of synth stabs and splats, shifting modes entirely every couple of bars. The mixture of piercingly high-pitched klaxons and cartoonish low-end wobble ultimately gives way to about a minute of Basinski-style disintegrated tape loop to conclude the track. It is astutely unsettled music that is as if Senni crafted a track that knowingly sounds like it was created under looming deadlines for other deliverables. The reluctance and ultimately capitulation to work in “Wasting Time…” is palpable and extremely relatable. It even inspired me to write this piece on it instead of hacking away at the to-dos.