By now, we've roundly established that anybody in America or Europe under the age of 35 or so has been basically skewered by media. This is not revelatory. Whether its effects are in toto good, bad or neutral, the simple fact is that we are all run through by media and marinated like shish kabobs in its sticky substance.
Fine. And one of the byproducts of this is that there are many of us who feel naked without a soundtrack. Without accompaniment, we're everyday kids going to work or school, wearing backpacks and sneakers-- we're unremarkable. But with the right stuff in our headphones, we're arms dealers, spies, deep-sea divers, ninjas. Ninjas! With a soundtrack, we're badasses, and what's so wrong with that?
If any possible good has come from MTV, it's that it has raised a generation of synesthetes. With a song playing, we compose a corresponding scene. We choose characters and setting, lighting, palette: play the purple of some gangster's tie off a mahogany baluster in late afternoon sunlight, maybe. We mentally rack focus from the main action to significant details. It's all surface sheen, but we do it well. Sure, you can say media has turned us into desensitized, inarticulate, possibly dangerous thugs, but at least we're thugs slash art directors slash cinematographers.
So you need something to keep you ninjafied on the bus, to keep your infiltration of Yoyodyne's secret underground laboratory from revealing itself as cubicle-bound fantasy. And Thievery Corporation are there for you. The Mirror Conspiracy has everything you need: espionage, chases, thinly veiled deception, shady dealings in back rooms, canasta. Muted earthtones, washed-out tundra scenes, lurid tropical flourishes. Pungent soil odors, the reek of triple-canopy jungle, whiffs of patchouli. Sure, it's just acid jazz with disco and bossanova inflections; naturally, the arrangements are less than surprising; of course the beat could use some variation. But this is about transference, not transcendence. The Mirror Conspiracy provides the soundtrack your mediated soul requires, and that's all that's important.
