The suggestion that science should be divorced from politics is naïve at best. In its earliest incarnation, the discourse of science threatened the dominant institutions of power. The titles may have changed, but the discursive battle remains current.
Into this murky world steps Charlie Marshall and the Curious Minds. On Sublime, Marshall synthesises music and scientific understanding. The first half of the record is concerned with awakening: the flourishing of life in Starburst, the wonderment of I Have Landed, the nexus of spirituality and observation in Almighty Carousel and the blossoming of scientific understanding in Curious Minds, Not a Cruel Machine and Shoulders of Giants.
The second half of the record picks up where Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring and James Lovelock’s Gaia left off. What is science but a way to explain our interaction with the complex ecosystem within which we exist, and to temper our destructive temptations? Within that context Marshall gives us Walk Lightly, Chaos Calling, Caught in the Spotlight, So Many Ways and The Whole of the Moon. Charlie Marshall can’t save science from the wolves of external political attack. But in reminding us of our position in the wider cosmos, he’s also created a great album.
