I don't buy into the whole wellness industry shtick and am intensely suspicious of the word "mindfulness", but nevertheless appreciate both the calming influence of ambient noise and the simple appeal of building Lego. So the news that the company has released an album of music constructed using only the sound of bricks being poured out of tubs and clicked together made perfect sense.
For an article for the Guardian, music writer John Doran spoke to Lego's Head of Creative, Primus Manokaran, about the inspiration behind the project, and the pleasure and scope that it brought: "The acoustic properties of each brick was slightly different. It was like composing with 10,000 tiny instruments." Doran also considers how the results compare to other significant noise compositions over the decades, noting that the company's enormous popularity marks them out as very different from your average noise artist, whose preoccupation is usually seen as obtuse and niche.
Lego aren't the first to create music using plastic - Doran alludes to Matmos' 2019 LP Plastic Anniversary, composed entirely using plastic objects including a silicone breast implant and a police riot shield. In their press release for the album, the duo claimed that the record was an exploration of plastic's "durability, portability and longevity" - all of which help to make Lego such a good toy.
And yet, as Matmos acknowledged, those are also "the very qualities that make [plastic] a force of environmental destruction". Hence why Lego are seriously looking into alternative building materials for their blocks - and why, as Doran notes, an experimental album made using Lego bricks in a few years' time is unlikely to sound the same.
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