This is probably not a surprise if you have directly talked to us at any point after September, but before we talk about this album, let’s talk about MEEEEE.
It’s been around two years, but the experience of seeing Death Grips at Coachella still resonates in me. The stressful journey and unrestful sleep, the heat and the strain, my body and mind caving in, all leading up to the complete sensory overload of the show. Yet all of this remains trapped inside memory. The videos that, for a moment, shook my life apart have not surfaced elsewhere. When the footage of the NO LOVE DEEP WEB tour emerged, with the double computer eyeslit setup, I thought I’d have a chance to show people “this is what I saw,” for if they went and witnessed they could be exposed to the same world that existed alongside the freeing and dooming spectacle of the music and performance. However, the videos being played were largely the music videos they’ve made before. Some of the visual cues (like the jacket) have resurfaced in the work, but that only serves as proof that I might have seen something. Time passed and I had made peace with the idea that even given this age of extended portable eyes capturing everything, no one got what was on those screens. No one made a record. The feeling from those videos couldn’t be recreated for others, no matter how I tell that story.
On September 25th, the video called “Still Life (Betamale)” was published to Oneohtrix Point Never’s website. It wasn’t my little group’s first exposure to the song though- an unfinished leak of the album R Plus Seven had existed on the internet for a few weeks before this day, and the moment it showed up it dominated our conversations. It was a work that seemed too big to comprehend, but it was so alluring with its sound that even in a woefully unfinished state it had captured our ears and minds. It was exciting! Raw musicality that played both to a desire to exist post-taste and a need to push boundaries ever-forwards.
After we saw the video, our conversation changed. There was no more certainty, and what was respect ended up tempered with a little bit of fear. Where we were offput and disturbed, I had a chance to mix in relief. Finally someone could have an idea of what I had dealt with. I threw away the unfinished leak and waited for the full version of the record, for what I thought was an exercise in musicality revealed itself in that moment. R Plus Seven holds ideas so full that you can debate with it forever. It deserves sportsmanship more than consumption. So go forth and bask in the wonder of Oneohtrix Point Never’s “R Plus Seven,” the Best Album of 2013, on your own time.
…because right now I’d really rather talk about the self-titled Faux Fur record.
I know! Okay! I know! That review was going somewhere that seemed like I knew where it was going to end. Listen. I’m not smart enough for that, or smart enough to express how that record and I get on. Everything I said was true, at least. It’s a record that you really have to engage personally, with your experiences and knowledge of art getting stress tested the whole time as it confronts the form of the album and the traditionally accepted tonalities of modern western music. You decide for yourself what’s favorable and what’s not. All very heady.
And yet, that’s still Iggy Pop and Atsushi Onita in our banner up there. There’s a certain sympathy for simple path bliss around these parts, and Faux Fur plays to that. They’re young as hell but they’ve built these really intricate pop machines that are still structured in a confrontational way. Faux Fur very consciously chooses what pop tropes are of use, and the speed they switch these modules out makes for some brilliant music.
A great example is Stoop, which begins as this very tightly swung groove with a simple melodic phrase. The track noticably picks up speed through the first chorus, but the band still stays locked in time. It keeps growing as it moves through time, earning every new nuance as it completely metamorphasizes from this tiny, tight groove to this expansive freeway rhythm until it explodes into a full bore speeding engine as it comes to a close. It’s fucking incredible songwriting.
Or Burnt, for another one! Burnt’s initial theme suggests a groaning, easy going ballad until the guitars drop out for a moment, coming back as these stereo klaxxons. The moaning continues, having a siren draw amongst what sounds like obvious danger. The bass returns and the real song lands, adding an entire beat as the guitars weave paths around the speakers, carrying a little 4/4 riff into this dizzying maze. When the balladish theme returns, it feels exhausted instead of relaxed.
The album is full of keen insight on rock structure and tonality while using primarily major keys and really subtle effects, all of which is pretty much unheard of for our best rock winners. Dissonance is used to make a point, as an accent by itself. Like Oneothrix Point Never, both albums exist as open criticisms of music tropes that also embrace some of these idiosyncracies (Lopatin’s organs, Faux Fur’s album closing lullaby standard “Worn”) but it’s very hard to claim that either of them have anything to say about the path music is taking.
For that, you’d need to look at something like “I have lost all desire for feeling” by Perfect Pussy.
2013 was the year that thinkpieces jumped the shark. The triteness of that entire sentence is so flawless that I don’t want to expand, but I should. The internet vibrated over and over again with outrage over popular culture. The image of discourse on the internet has taken on a different form, from “neverending hellhole” to something a lot more polarized. I am making no judgment of this development because I completely understand the need and use of creating a safe space on the internet, even if it harbors elements that are vehemently against the internet I treasure participating in. Things like anonymity. However, that’s not a subject I’m here to discuss in depth.
Rather, there’s another approach to this situation that I think is worth praising. The default became twitter polemics and prolonged essays and lectures to already sympathetic audiences. It is lovely to believe in a world that can change minds through the exchange of ideas and not through personal revelation. Maybe it works in a more measurable metric than I’ve seen. I don’t share that belief. I believe that, as sad as it is, there are people who can’t be changed and can’t be helped. The best thing I know how to do is to surface these revelations in myself, and surface them publicly, making people look at them. This has been the corner stone of every album I’ve released, and of the next one I’m putting out. I believe in doing and not saying.
Perfect Pussy does. In a world where rock music is still seen as being dumb white dude shit, Perfect Pussy has gone out and made the argument for the way forward in 12 minutes. “desire for feeling” kicks more ass in that 12 minutes than a hundred thinkpieces, than a thousand tumblrs, than a million tweets. Every song is laced with razors that cut deep into the constructs that kill and disenfranchise everyone outside of the priviledged and ignorant white patriarchy, and bleed the fucking pigs out with intense, revalatory joy.
“What love lays bare in me is energy, so I give up that which keeps me going and I still end up lonely.”
“I had this dream that I forgave my enemies.”
“In the absence of everything, I found all things, and I understood myself, so I understood nothing, so I stopped questioning.”
“Someday I’ll stop begging you of who and how.”
“It’s never what I am, it’s only what they were.”
Every. Single. Word of this.
There is a need for change from this bullshit situation. Change requires action. I don’t know if Perfect Pussy will always be something that can prepare me for these actions, but “I have lost all desire for feeling” sure will.
WINNER: “R Plus Seven” by Oneohtrix Point Never
WHY: It’s still the best album of 2013. Faux Fur is a close runner up. Perfect Pussy, though, released the album most of the year 2013. However different all three of these albums may be, they still speak to an overwhelming idea, a singular concept: Challenge Bullshit, For You Can Defeat It
Fermata over Whole Rest 