Originally the soundtrack for the short-film, Apricot, this Basil Hogios instrumental sounds exactly as you would expect from its title: as sweet and soft as that orange-yellow fruit with its velvety skin. It is easy to understand why Briand chose Hogios as his film’s sound artist: it is a truly soporific sound, rendered both emotive and evocative through its mix of the traditional and the more studio produced. You wouldn’t have thought it but Latin seems to sum up the song’s effect perfectly, with the adjective ‘apricus’ meaning ‘exposed to the warmth of the sun’, ‘in a sunny spot’, and the verb, ‘apricari’, meaning ‘to sunbathe’. And indeed, for a brief 1 minute and 35 seconds you are tricked into believing that your life is a peachy existence of spending whole days lying in the warm sun, and not the reality of sitting inside, staring at the word count on your laptop. Yet, as the music slows further in the last ten seconds it sounds as though Hogios too knew that reality was not so, that the season for the orange-yellow fruit was not forever, and that the orange-yellow sun will always eventually set. Nevertheless, for those fleeting 95 seconds, I am capable of convincing myself otherwise, as I am sure you could do too. Of course, it only lasts 95 seconds – but there’s always the repeat button.
