It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you’re looking for new music to focus to, I want to recommend something:

“Einstein on the Beach”, a five HOUR long opera with music by Philip Glass.

The audio recording is reduced to a measly 3 hours 20 minutes 🤪

This thing is a masterwork of compositional minimalism.

What do I mean by minimalism? Not clean or sparse – in fact it’s the opposite, almost intense in its loudness – but the music changes very little over those 5 hours. You’re just pummeled with rhythmic organs and woodwinds and voices nonstop.

The music changes in incredibly subtle ways that at first feel disorienting. An extra note there, one fewer beats there. The resulting effect is this fascinating feeling of the music almost breathing rather than conveying a melody, its pulse fluctuating like our heartbeats do as our energies change throughout the day.

There’s barely even lyrics. Most of the words sung by the vocalists are numbers and solfege symbols (do re mi). And they repeat those numbers and do-re-mi’s for twenty-plus minute stretches. Sometimes so blazingly fast that it barely starts to sound human anymore.

But it almost shocks you into focus in a way your typical lo-fi/brain.fm playlist won’t be able to do. It’s become my go-to when I need deep focus for a long period.

Try it out… at your own risk 😬