8D Music

There’s a relatively new trend called 8D music, a special listening experience that brings new life to songs as audio ostensibly travels around speakers or headphones. 8D music engages the listener in a journey through a track’s sounds, engulfing the eardrums with a transformed version of a familiar song. I decided to write an entry on it particularly because I knew how difficult it would be to use words to describe it. What’s so fascinating about 8D music is that it adds a new layer to the sonic aspects of songs. Best enjoyed with headphones, the whirlwind of sound feels like its running circles around your brain. The first time I was introduced to the movement, I was played a version of Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” a cultural phenomenon marked by its unique, epic engineering and production. As an avid fan of hip-hop, it is always interesting to analyze the intersection of lyrical content and sound in a genre that lends most to an emphasis on lyrics, but culturally has moved in the direction of sound taking precedence for the listener. There is something to be said from both sides. Rap in its purest form is poetry and such should be reflected in practice; however, to echo Ebro Darden, “Sonically if your sh*t is wack, why am I gonna listen to what you gotta say?” He’s got a point. Music is made to entertain and please the ear, so in whatever form it takes music must always manipulate the brain to want to hear more. 8D music is so enthralling because it leads the listener to now consider a new facet of the listening experience: not only what sounds we hear, but how those sounds are delivered to our brains. It provides a new, innovative way to make a song interactive, captivating, and all-encompassing.