 |
|
|
|
|
TV On The Radio Transmit Their Opus
The only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it...
by Chris Martins |
09.12.2006
The only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil. -- Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, BBC interview, 1959
The tiny stage has gone sepia-tone as if the air's been swirled up with squid ink. The ceiling's low and the walls are close, the floor a smoothed concrete slab naked but for the inch-wide rubber-capped circles repeating themselves in groups of four, the occasional ring of glass refracting light through its amber contents, and the oblong obstructions that keep shuffling about with nervous energy, meeting up then heading off to a corner to pause, tap, then move again. A flare of plum red, a burst of orange, and then the whole scene goes digital green-blue. SKKKKKRRRRZZZZZZZZZZZ. A guitar's hard angles shard against the backs of the folding chairs and fly like tiny daggers into the skin of our ears, as a ghost's voice picks up a hollow old soul song. Beautiful and harsh, pin-packed and over-indulged, this music fills the room.
In here we're safe. Between the claustrophobia inherent in this space and the deafening noise coming from these cherub-faced twins who call themselves Dragons of Zynth, it's just the right level of uncomfortable. I'm standing next to Tunde Adebimpe, he of Brooklyn's artfully inspired TV on the Radio. Our mouths are agape. Our ears are burning. Our senses are fully engaged. Around the room it's the same combination of wonder and knowing half-grin on every face--the people here look empowered and beautiful, beaming brilliance at one another through the infernal racket. Yes, here we're strangely safe, but outside there's a beast lurking and it looks like us. And in fact, it is just that: a hulking, hunkering, roiling and boiling "us" so sinister in its vanilla ambivalence that it sits comfortably wherever it pleases, barely seen and rarely prodded.
In Carl Jung's day, the monster of man cast a long shadow--fascism and corrupt communism, as far as mass psychologies go, loomed ever higher than our mirror images and made for very visible targets. But today's creature is a little harder to cast stones at. This combination of comfort and consumption isn't so imposing in stature as it is smothering in its bloated corpulence; it knows nothing but to expand outward at a slow and steady spread, ingest all in its path--cities, neighborhoods, occupations and opinions--and crap out a homogenized version of life as we knew it. It is "us" exploded, and we are most certainly--all present company included--a part of it. And if art imitates life, then we purveyors of good music should verily be terrified. Of course, this is the part where I tell you there's hope.
It's about eight hours earlier and we're in Williamsburg, a flagging outpost of art on the northeast fringe of Brooklyn, a slingshot's fling over the East River from Manhattan and less than a block away from where the Dragons will play. Outside it's skuzzy and gray, about two in the afternoon with 14 degrees in the air. Against a backdrop of matte metal and rusty brick red, the only real color is in the Krylon flourishes: bouncing bubble letters pouring down the walls, bulbous 2-D faces grimacing in the stinging wind. But inside the loft of David Sitek, TV on the Radio's other founding member, it's all warm tones and heated atmosphere with the drab camouflage that followed us in collapsed on the floor in piles of fabric and down. Dave isn't here. Aside from being the band's aural architect, he's also an independent producer with an ear for the unusual and extraordinary, and he takes on as much work as his body will allow. He's at his studio now, where not too long ago, this young band of ambition and ideas finished recording what might just be the best reason we've had for hope--as far as interesting, arty, progressive, well-executed, and mind-fuckingly good music goes--since OK Computer was lodged deep in the throat of the aforementioned beast.
Jaleel Bunton, Gerard Smith and I are lying on the floor, on a large rectangle of Persian carpet stretched over hardwood, lounging with Japanese-print pillows wedged under our arms. They're the most recent additions to the band (originally brought in as the touring rhythm section), but after two years on the road and seven months in the studio conceiving an opus called Return to Cookie Mountain, these two are every bit a part of TV on the Radio. We're surrounded by recording devices and various soundmakers, paintings and stacks of CDs, DVDs and salvaged knickknacks. A pair of constantly lit cigarettes (though seldom smoked) are curling threads of white poison into the air from an old turquoise ashtray, and the whole scene is so pleasantly bohemian it's easy to forget that the entire world doesn't just discuss art all day. It seems a proper introduction to our newfound heroes.
"The other day," Gerard says, "Jaleel was talking about Kool Keith and how he was 'future prehistoric'--there's just that timelessness in the sound of the Black Elvis and Dr. Octagon records. And last night I was at this show and in between sets, the DJs were playing N.W.A., and it sounded totally gritty and grimy...and dated. It's like the difference between listening to The Doors and The Velvet Underground."
Despite his smaller stature and the ragged and holey sweatshirt cuffs his fingers keep compulsively tugging at, Gerard is almost kingly looking, handsome and world-wise. He speaks with a slight lisp that gives him an air of delicacy and chooses his words as he goes; it fits him well. He's been asked the difference between good and bad art, and to his credit, he's answering the question without hesitation, pretension or perspiration.
"It's always going to be a matter of opinion," he continues, "but there are certain things that have that sense of timelessness about them. Like a Caravaggio painting; like the Brooklyn Bridge...certain works or moments in art that just go on forever. Like the wheel, a fork, a table. And when it's executed properly and it has seamless textures, I think that lends itself to being something."
"I've always thought that my dividing line is: Is it honest?" says Jaleel. "And it's a really obvious thing but it's totally intangible. To me, I've always had a very, very real connection with music. And when I'm playing, I feel like it's the thing that pulls me closer to my folks, if there's any way to describe what being honest feels like. But then that's just ridiculous, because I'll go to a really shitty show, and I can say it feels contrived and it feels whatever and that's why it's shitty, but who am I to say if they're being honest?"
Jaleel looks like a model: nearly 7 feet tall, face the definition of chiseled, hair a spiky pile of 6-inch dreads. When he talks, his quick tempo and emphasis of dull consonants turn his voice into a polyrhythmic metronome. We're about 30 minutes into a conversation that, really, has been going on for ages.
Maybe honesty as a gauge is better used to hold something up than to bring something else down.
Jaleel: Y'know, that's a good way to put it. Gerard: If you haven't got anything nice to say...
Jaleel: There are artists and especially musicians who say good art is gauged by success--especially the pop community, which now embodies hip-hop as well--where if your record goes platinum, then your record is good. There's a reality to that, you know; it's not necessarily my reality, but if something can connect with that many people, then there's something to that, right?
The music community where I grew up was so much about breaking new ground and being true to yourself, and that really resonates with me, but you can go so far on that spectrum that it gets to be experimental for the sake of being experimental, and it's just as detrimental to me; it's just as nauseating to me to be that way. So now, rather than try to be new or subversive I just try to be really good. And not "oh I got so much chops" really good, just: if it feels good, if it sounds good, if it feels honest--it's good music.
Is it hard to stay committed to maintaining a creative existence?
Jaleel: There hasn't been much of a choice yet. I've been really lucky. I'm 31, and traveling around the country a bit and seeing people I went to school with--very few of my old friends have made it this far. At some point, they were like, "Look, I gotta put this up. I have to stop," and everyone regrets it. It really is kind of heartbreaking, but I don't feel like some Herculean warrior; I just never really wanted anything else. I was selfish.
Gerard: [shaking his head] I disagree with him. I think it is a choice. It's a tough choice to make, to say, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to be a little bit extra broke, but I'm gonna keep sitting around working on stuff."
Jaleel: I agree, but wouldn't that help me, being broke? Like, "Y'know, I don't need much."
Gerard: Yeah, but for some people it's hard to do. I have to say it, post-9/11, when I ran out of work at my metal shop job, I made the decision to go and play guitar full-time and I was like, 'Okay, how am I gonna do this?' I had a little bit of money saved up, and I decided to busk in the subway for extra cash. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and it wasn't. And I felt weird about it too, you know, that what I was doing was just an elevated form of begging-- Jaleel: [cutting him off; he sounds genuinely insulted] Absolutely not. You playing in the subway an elevated form of begging? Absolutely not. When I saw you I was like who is this surly, trollish little man in here playing this beautiful classical guitar? I gave you money not because it was like, "Oh this poor guy;" I was like, "Thank you." After playing music for no money for a long time--in New York it costs you money to play shows--just being a musician and seeing this guy play, it was like, "I'm stealing from you and I appreciate this. You're contributing to my mind." That's worth money.
Gerard: No, I know, I try to think of it that way. And not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I did feel like, "When I'm doing this, I'm showing people that there's another way, that there's another option. There is a choice and we all can do our own little thing in our own little way." It probably would've been easier, much more comfortable, to just go and work a job, go and pay rent somewhere and whatnot, but I estranged myself from that to be able to keep making music.
This band occupies a rarified space in that every member is an artist across several mediums and has been in charge of his own musical project. Is it hard to forge a dynamic from that? Jaleel: The group works surprisingly well considering how many chefs there are. Everybody butts head sometimes, but considering that we should probably butt heads all of the time...
Gerard: We just all want to make something that we're each proud of. I think it also comes out of us being older and all having worked independently of one another, just realizing that this is a great opportunity and we don't want to ruin it.
Jaleel: We were just talking about how randomly, you know, how haphazardly everyone came together--[Kyp and Dave walk into the room as if pulled in bodily by Jaleel's words; the significance of their timing sneaks past us]--and there's this undeniable chemistry. It's something you just don't take for granted. I've never understood why this band has chemistry, but it has good chemistry.
As if on cue, the tape recorder whirrs, clicks, pops, and stops.
Jung made as good an attempt as anyone ever has to explain, or at least expound upon, the phenomenon of coincidence. He called it synchronicity, and the theory went like this: When a series of seemingly random events align to hint at a particular pattern or dynamic, it's more likely than not a friendly wink from the cosmos. He believed in the idea of a collective unconscious coursing under the toes of all humankind across all of time; something like a four-dimensional river of wild ether cutting through the very core of being. And when the scales of well-balanced living dip too far toward the dirt, this force would drop minute counterweights of subjective meaning into choice moments of daily life. Not all coincidences carry meaning, but those that seem significant are worth paying attention to. Particularly how TV on the Radio came together, and continues to do so, apparently.
As Jaleel and Gerard wrap themselves up like a pair of boho nomads to head back into the grey, the second guard takes their post. Kyp is slow-moving and stiff, as if too sudden a motion would shake his maned head loose and send it skipping across the floor like a tumbleweed. He gingerly sets himself down in the room's cushiest corner, a small hill of pillows, jackets and scarves, and through a slight wince of pain, quietly apologizes on behalf of the earache that's been ringing doom in his head all day. He looks like a lion with a thorn in its paw, while Dave is a rush of enthusiasm in mismatched old-man socks. He plops himself down on the carpet and starts doggedly preparing a joint for a round of "regrouping." Around his neck is a golden hummingbird medallion and his worn Mello Yello T-shirt is about an inch too small, so that when he stretches himself out sideways, a slight pale gut pokes out. He and Kyp, despite appearing as polar opposites, are wearing matching thick-rimmed plastic specs, and together they look like the physical embodiment of their band's sound: eclectic and odd, blindingly bright and shadow-stained in turn, soulful, hip, peculiarly poetic, obsessively preened and utterly wild.
TV on the Radio's strange trip began in 2001 in a Williamsburg warehouse. Tunde Adebimpe was the only son of a psychiatrist and a pharmacist who'd moved from Nigeria to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Growing up, he'd split time between continents and family members, schools and entire cultures, but all the while put pen to paper: doodling and recording broken thoughts, creating 'zines in high school and eventually experimenting with animation. Film school brought him to NYU, and graduation (with its impending threat of a life impoverished) sent him to Brooklyn, following a friend with a line on cheap rent. Eventually, Tunde joined nine other hungry artists in a half-converted industrial space. By day he gave life (and subsequent bloody death) to the clay characters of MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch, in the evening he sold paintings on the street in SoHo, and nights he'd spend alone with a four-track (bought on a whim), sketching songs a cappella with an amateur's ear. Then the new guy moved in.
Dave Sitek was born of teacher stock in a planned community outside of Baltimore. His parents were musicians and artists, and encouraging almost to a fault, so quite naturally he'd started his own hardcore band by age 13. Within a year he'd decide that his true calling was recording music, and with his favorite albums' liner notes as his only guide, young Dave began calling studios (in London, no less) to find out how guitars were recorded. After years working around his hometown, he was asked out onto the road by an old friend--Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs--and he ended up following the band home to New York. He settled into the Brooklyn warehouse his brother had been living in, and when Tunde (not a month into his newfound music obsession) walked by that barely furnished room to see nothing more than a pack of cigarettes and a pile of recording equipment...let's just say old man Jung would've been proud.
"You have to understand that this band is based on a relationship," Dave says. All pleasantries aside, we're feeling properly...regrouped. "It's not based on a result or a reward--if it was, then we would have broken up a long time ago. Everyone's got a really strong personality but we care about each other more than we will ever care about any carrot that's dangled anywhere near us. We'd rather not make music than get in those kinds of fights. And, you know, we're grown men; we're not supposed to be in a van together for a year. So, I mean, we fight like anyone else does...with fists...in a parking lot." Laughing, he turns to Kyp, pushes up his glasses, and puts on his best nasally whiteboy voice. "What's your take on it, bro?" Kyp just giggles stonily.
Tunde and Dave recorded together every spare moment they had. Taking the name TV on the Radio, they made a 24-track disc called OK Calculator, a free-flowing and sometimes goofy collage of hip-hop, rough barbershop harmonies and distortion. ("You can see we were working really hard on crafting the perfect song," Tunde later jokes, "which I would say appears about 24 times on that record.") And once a week, armed with looping pedals and shitty samplers, they'd set up at a local dive called Stinger Bar and bury the audience in improvised noise. Kyp--a Pittsburgh native raised by Jehovah's Witnesses with a secular hankering for jazz--was working a cafe Dave liked to frequent. His path to Brooklyn was equally slapdash: by way of New Jersey and San Francisco, a band called Rocket Science & the Nigger Loving Faggots (he's so soft-spoken that when he mentions this he might as well be talking about a spot of tea) and a daughter whose mother moved from California to be with family on the East Coast. Kyp followed, found work in Williamsburg, and one night ended up at the Stinger.
"I went to see TV on the Radio," he says straight-faced. "I didn't understand it."
"We were doing some wack-ass shit," says Dave. "We were really, literally, making everything up as we went along. It's important to note that when I first saw Kyp play, Tunde and I had just finished this conversation about having other people play with us--we'd decided we could do damage control better by ourselves. And right after, we went and saw Kyp play, and the drummer is just destroying the kit--I mean literally kicking drums over--and the other guitar player is fucking wailing, and Kyp's just sitting there drinking a cup of coffee and we're like, 'Let's get him in our band,' for absolutely no reason."
Kyp understandably held out on joining them--the "band" was still an off-hours affair, relegated to hobby status by the maintenance of daily life (namely jobs). But when September 11th came, all of a sudden striving to achieve the dreams of others seemed like a terrible waste of time. Dave and Tunde treated their plywood-walled space like a concrete bunker and got lost in sound. They set out to make the most overproduced bedroom recording the world had ever heard and emerged with the Young Liars EP, a gorgeous pink brick of dense and heaving music. It was like nothing we'd ever heard--the unlikely offspring of post-rock and black spiritual music pounded to life on sampler pads and swaddled in atmosphere--and while word of this new sound trickled into the ether, TV on the Radio became a very tangible thing. Needing no further convincing, Kyp happily became a part of the experiment.
In 2004, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes was released to praise and awards, but really it was the critical establishment playing catch-up, red-cheeked at having found the phenomenal EP too late to give it "of the year" status. The album was extraordinary, no doubt, but not as instantly captivating. Along with the usual cronies (Nick Zinner, Katrina Ford from Baltimore's Love Life, Martin Perna of the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra), Jaleel drifted in toward the end of the sessions. He was a Louisville transplant who'd grown up surrounded by music. Learning an instrument in school was mandatory then (and he learned four), and his parents--a college professor and an ex-star of the Philippine Basketball Association--had a generous Motown collection interspersed with the occasional Pink Floyd odyssey. He nurtured a perfectly good guitar career there--playing with members of Rachel's, sharing bills with Palace Brothers--but one day realized that whatever he was looking for wasn't there and left for Williamsburg. He wasn't even a drummer until Dave asked him to play.
And neither was Gerard a bassist. In fact, he'd never been in a band. His parents emigrated from Trinidad to Long Island before he was born, and every year would take the kids to back for Carnival. Gerard took music lessons from the age of 5 on, and by the time he enrolled in fine arts school in the city, he was a master at classical and flamenco guitar, as well as a painter. But five years later--a graduate, jobless and living out of his parents' house--he cut himself off, moved to Brooklyn, and starting busking. He pulled a decent crowd in the subway, and eventually recognized one of his regulars as the star of a short film he'd admired. Gerard struck up a conversation, and the stranger introduced himself as Tunde Adebimpe. Before heading above ground, Tunde mentioned that Gerard and Dave should meet at some point. A week later, Gerard impulsively visited the SoHo corner he used to work and found a man selling paintings after dark. He thought this odd, so they began to talk, and it was Dave.
"Obviously we didn't plan on the way things are today," says Dave. "With Kyp--even with Tunde to a certain extent--we had no idea what this was going to turn into or what it would sound like. Especially with Gerard and Jaleel, asking them to play these other instruments--what was supposed to be a two-month arrangement ended up being...forever. Or as much as forever as we're allowed. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing and I still don't think that we really do."
"Well," says Kyp, "when we just figure out what we're doing, it'll be time to quit."
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense-he is "collective man"-one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind. - Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933
This is not an easy thing. When the sounds first come, they're foreign and huge. You'll strain to organize your wits to their rhythm. You'll wear yourself out trying to catch each dusty jewel. You'll stand back, adjust your scope, and try to bring into focus this thing of intense magnitude. And you might even falter. But that's okay, because you'll have heard it--that certain something (dark or lovely, dulcet or dirty) that won't let you leave without making room for the rest of Return to Cookie Mountain. Despite the absurdly straightforward name (because as Tunde says, "What could have greater meaning than a mountain of cookies?"), this is the kind of album that reveals its secrets over time: upon a massive plateau of sound, a starkly naked melody; hiding in a jungle of careening percussion, a dubby bassline that bubbles along coolly. Which is to say this is the very best kind of album.
TV on the Radio's sound is a marvel of musical evolution. Pick it apart and you'll find strands from just about every genre or movement you can think of--classical, punk, African folk, hip-hop, rock, the avant-garde, electronica, vintage soul--but taken together, this music is virtually seamless. On "A Method" Tunde pours out a free-flowing poem in a series of Brian Wilson-esque melodies, while underneath, what sounds like a chorus of pots and pans, bangs out a broken beat. "Hours" opens with a tiny tone and becomes a rolling textile of corresponding pairs: a reverbed flute and a ghostly organ, a cello being played like a sax and a bass aping the cello, Tunde's rich croon and the gritty falsetto screech of Kazu from Blonde Redhead. "Wolf Like Me"--a rollicking procession of upbeat drums and three-dimensionally layered guitars--is almost a pop song, and "The Blues From Down Here" is, well, the aural equivalent of its name. The lyrics are pure poetry (sometimes blatant: "I was a lover before this war," and often open for interpretation) and the words always soar.
Due in no small part to Dave's obsessive attention to detail (in one moment he makes a flute sound like soloing bagpipe, and makes that sound good), the band makes a meticulous record seem strangely uncluttered. Especially considering the number of guests who stop by: Dragons of Zynth, Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear, Katrina Ford, members of Antibalas, Kazu, and yes, David Bowie. On "Province," Kyp and Tunde and Bowie become an orgy of alternately creeping and towering voices, singing unto the clouds: "Hold your heart courageously/As we walk into this dark place/Stand steadfast, erect and see/That love is the province of the brave." It's a fitting declaration for a record that plays like a call to arms, and even more fitting for this band. Be it pure happenstance that brought them together or something else entirely, they made the choices that at least facilitated their arrival in Brooklyn, actively in search of something other than stifling sameness.
But alas, some of the specific circumstances that brought us this far are already falling prey to the monster of consumption. Williamsburg as a home for raw art and ideas is weakening; this particular last bastion is getting consumed like anything else, possibly quicker than most. We've been pushing industry farther and farther away from our city-centers (Gerard points out that when he moved here only five years ago, there were metal shops everywhere; today he can't think of one) and leaching the concept from our national ethos (considering outsourcing and the digital revolution). Today's top commodity is lifestyle and bohemian chic is a classic model. Rent is going up quickly in Brooklyn's artist enclave, as are high-rise apartments. Dave's loft in the industrial jungle is, for all intents and purposes, waterfront property at the moment. But it's only a short walk from Bedford Avenue--the neighborhood's hip strip of record stores, pricey restaurants, dulled down galleries, and theme-heavy bars--and there's an empty lot in front of the building. Soon enough, a tower of apartments will come in to cancel out the Manhattan skyline.
"I used to work in this cafe with Josh Diamond from Gang Gang Dance," says Jaleel, "and we'd be playing guitar and someone would be like, 'Hey, I want a sandwich,' and we'd be like, 'Okay, when we're done with this song.' It was like a kind of safe haven; they didn't have to worry about turning a big profit to pay the lease so we could afford to have these guys who sit there with random papers and scribble things all day. So many ideas got exchanged in that place because they could afford to let people just be, and be broke and be insane."
An hour later, Dave echoes the sentiment: "It's so hard to get a place now that no one's willing to get kicked out of or go to shit with their landlords, so there are no parties anymore. We've done questionable things at questionable hours at probably every block in this neighborhood at one point. There wasn't even a 'What are you doing tonight?' You'd just go out, make the rounds, and end up on 10 different rooftops in one night"
And the political environment isn't helping either. Post-9/11 New York is hardly as inspired as its artists. Though our mile-wide comfort zones and insular attentions arguably had a bit to do with those attacks (or our ability to deal with them, at least), Rudy Giuliani immediately got to work restoring that toxic tranquility--something the city's creative core decries (Jaleel makes a few references to the "Wild West mentality" that he misses). Whether intentional or not, the reforms (but a microcosm of President Bush's response) have done their part to strip away the freedom/tension/chaos that kept its denizens on their toes. Which, of course, only gives the beast more to chew on. And Dave, who never backs down from a rant.
"It's against the law to dance in bars in this city unless they have a cabaret license. This is New York City, the fucking birthplace of hip-hop and however many other forms of music, the entire music industry is here, and yet it's illegal to dance in clubs and you can't smoke in bars. And Giuliani had fucking artwork confiscated from street artists." He's picking up steam as he goes. "You don't yell at the dump truck drivers for banging around a metal dumpster at 5:30 a.m. You don't scream at union workers tearing up your street for the 13th time in a month. You shut the fuck up and you deal with it because you're in the city. But for some reason you can just tell musicians to stop and you can confiscate painters' work. I wouldn't be surprised if they just put blue walls around New York City and a big yellow ceiling and fucking called it Ikea; or, if they changed what the Statue of Liberty holds depending on who the highest bidder is. And I'll tell you this, it won't be a microphone and it won't be a paintbrush."
For the only member of TV on the Radio who hasn't yet raised his voice in song (though he's known for a mean beat-box), Dave's quite prolific at the mouth. But he has a point. He laments the failure of punk rock in shocking the system--any system--into reboot, still has high hopes for hip-hop, and questions our generation's noticeable lack of strong social critics.
"I'm 33. I really don't need to think about myself anymore," he continues. "I've had plenty of years of that and it's time to think bigger. I've just lost sight of this idea that it's going to get worked out before I grab the reigns. The baby boom generation is going to start dropping and then it's in our hands--hopefully we're not going to be a bunch of consumer assholes and we will start reading again and we will focus on things that other generations have chosen to ignore. If it's gonna suck for somebody, it might as well suck for us and we'll at least put an end to some really pitiful cycles."
Looking over edge of his outstretched torso, out the loft window and across the river at the Lower East Side, it's not hard to imagine the same conversation taking place there 30 years ago on the Bowery. Or 10 years before that in SoHo. Or 10 years before that in Greenwich Village. But CBGBs is a T-shirt now, and SoHo's become synonymous with gentrification. (Luckily our hallowed Beats came before the Great Recurring Co-Opt.) And if there's anything clear to take away from this grey and cloudy view, it's the dreary fact that, well, our beast marches on with or without its stated enemies.
Filing out of that little concrete room down the road later that night, watching our rarified air escape into the atmosphere, Tunde and I head out toward the cold. He’s been playing director this weekend—creating video shorts for Return to Cookie Mountain (when the label offered to “get a team of guys in L.A.” on the case, his response was “I’ll do it. If anybody’s going to fuck it up, I’ll fuck it up.”)—and there wasn’t much room for small talk with the Dragons of Zynth present. We have to pass through the venue’s main room to get out and the contrast is striking. The ceiling is high with wooden beams stretching across it, a dancehall-length bar winds toward the lofty stage, and in the back there’s a roped-off reflecting pool. The collegiate masses have swarmed on this spot, all baseball caps and booze, karaoke covers of rap songs and awkward freak-dancing. The sea of pale faceless blots pulses in clumsy unison.
Tunde hasn't noticed though--or he has and is too kind to comment. Instead he answers a question I forgot I'd even asked. "I think that when you're done with something, a huge part is putting it out there," he says, "being like, well, 'I'm going to throw it into that wind tunnel and see where it ends up, see if anyone catches it and sends it back.' I would be happy in any situation that let me keep making things the way that I want to make them, but at the same time the end point of any project is to kind of to send it away and feel like it belongs to someone else. That's one of the most interesting parts of the whole process."
And it's possible that the idea of a collective conscious isn't overly optimistic after all. Because though our own evils seem to march ever onward, it also seems that when we are so collectively unconscious to our own potential, the guard returns, coaxed from some eternal resting place by kismet or knocked into vigilance by an event too hard to ignore. Sure we've got a lot of work ahead of us--and probably always will--but that's an even better reason to take our inspiration wherever and whenever we can.
The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. - Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933
|
 |
|
|
 |
Never Miss a Beat!
Sign up for Filter Magazine's FREE Newsletter for the latest news, tour dates, and more. |
|
|
|
|
|
