Reactions

Here is a loose array of reactions to things I’ve encountered over the past two months:

Navy at New Currency’s ‘New Curriculum’ exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery (Performance)

Written 29/9/24

I’ve been thinking a lot about what positive male role models look like. Inarguably, we have a massive void of them in mainstream media. In their absence, a horde of untameable beasts have sprouted from the abyss to corrupt our society’s young men.

I think the biggest challenge we have to male role model-ship currently is that we don’t have a coherent taxonomy for what an ideal man is, but we have a comprehensive one for what an ideal man is not. This is doubly true of the Left, who have launched organised tirades against patriarchy and the nuclear family over the last decade (the two of which have been proponents of male stability for centuries1). They also agree in a united accord that a good man should not be too aggressive, abusive, a bigot, a capitalist, ignorant to the plights of the world (the list goes on). Whilst I agree that men shouldn’t be any of these things, I don’t believe that exclusively outlining these positions offers enough clarity or direction as to what a good man is. We need a positivist criteria. If we think of Man as a whole entity, a ‘good man’ is currently nothing more than a negation: an abstraction which has been formed from a righteous need to undo the wrongs of past aeons.

In this process, we have deconstructed that which is wrong with the world and have not constructed a vision of what should be right in it. Man is undone, unfinished, incomplete.

I could elaborate on this more, but in simple terms, I don’t think males have a clear, aspirational path to look to nowadays. The only figures who seem to be proposing some sort of guidance are those on the Right who comprehensively agree that a man should be: strong, a provider, stoic, commanding and a leader. They mutilate these traits with an insistence on toxic individualism and unaware braggadocio. The multitude of masculine caricature-figures promoted by the Right (who I do not wish to name) are alluring alternatives to those who lack the comprehension skills to know better. They’re dangerous voices, who do not teach respect for women, self-awareness or empathy to their audiences. The young men who are consuming their messages are destructively causing havoc across the world2.

If we are to have a standard for male positivity, it needs to fill this void of empathy, self-awareness and respect; it should uphold Community; it must commit to bettering the state of the world it is in; it needs to know how to communicate effectively.

When I saw Navy perform at New Currency’s New Curriculum exhibition, I was dumbfounded because they possessed these traits. They were bold, commanding and self-assured. Their lyrics delineated a strong moral code. Sporting matching black tracksuits that had the mantra ‘pledge into being’ printed on the back, they held a uniformity which was aesthetically suggestive of a strong collectivism. This lent coherently to the ego-lessness of the entire performance: they all knew each other’s lyrics and simultaneously recited each other’s verses (or stood on hypeman duty, offering engaging ad-libs). They presented themselves as a group with clear responsibilities, respect for one another and focus for the task at hand.

Their philosophy was a thorough pragmatism, which was informed by a hyper-awareness of the realities of their environment (they all hail from Lewisham, apart from Tony Bontana who is a Birmingham native). Thus, they seemed to single-mindedly focus on dealing with the inevitable plights of poverty, crime and capitalism and propose diligent means to navigate them. Making money and hustling seemed to be their solution to everything, but this is deceptively simple: they didn’t speak about money in a manner of excess, rather to them money is just a means of autonomy and a earning it is a path to provide for oneself; the trial and tribulation of earning it is an acetic process of self-betterment which requires an exercise of restraint, consistency and focus. It demands individuals to eschew gossip, drama and irrationality: everything that does not serve a positive purpose is worthless. Navy provide a positive taxonomy for a righteous life: it is not over-indulgent, it is ever-lucid, it is determined; it is minimalistic

This performance was not without pomp or flair though. Forming their sound within a convergence of South London road rap and classic Memphis hip hop, Navy have an idiosyncratic - yet accessible - style. Reverberating snares and loud mechanical hi-hats swaggered boldly over gliding 80’s synth-pop and RnB samples. The juxtaposition of hard, super-quantized rhythms versus soulful melodic textures captured an organic balance between valiance and vulnerability, toughness and tenderness, strength and softness.

Both aesthetically and substantively, Navy propose a conception of Man that is bold, confident and principled. They are aware of the world’s realities, and they are aware of their role within the world. This realises itself within their collectivist approach to music, which highlights the role of Man within community and the potential for Man to form strong positive bonds with others through empathy, respect and attentiveness. Their economic philosophy too, which was pragmatic and fiscally prudent, encourages an autonomous, sensible and determined Man. The conception of this Man is a reliable one, and thus an underlying optimism comes to fruition through an ability to trust in it. This completely goes against the nihilism that defines our times. Hope is something we need.

Navy’s presentation of masculinity is not exhaustive, but it is a great start. We need equivalents to them in different shapes and sizes across the world. This will shape public opinion. It will not entirely solve the male role model crisis - that solution will be ultimately governmental - but it will do a great job in offering a clearer path for men to aspire to.

Outside of the thematic substance though, I think Navy’s style is exceptional. Reaching affectionately to the past through samples and references, but looking ambitiously to the present and future in execution, Navy proposes an efficient engagement with Time. We’re in an age where artists seem too enfettered to nostalgia to create anything new, and we have creative figureheads who seem to unable to distinguish between reference, preservation and nostalgia. Everything feels like it’s stagnating as a result. But the pragmatism that Navy purports in their lyrics, seems to also exist in their production: they draw sensibly from the past in a fashion that isn’t obsessively glossy-eyed, but just careful, curious and full of ‘common sense’.

The whole exhibition was centred around the proposal of new ideas through which to define culture. I love that this performance did so as engagingly as it did (the best part was when they interpolated the tune of Mac DeMarco’s ‘Chamber of Reflection’ whilst singing the phrase ‘N***** IS HUSTLING’ repeatedly over some Memphis drums).

Bad Cameo by James Blake and Lil Yachty (Album)

Written 3/8/24

James Blake went to a secondary school in my area called Latymer. It’s a pretty competitive Grammar school, whose students are stereotyped as being lifeless nerds by all the other kids in Enfield.

At the beginning of his career, Blake sounded exactly like that stereotype: a pubescent white boy plagued with a bland, one-dimensional depression full of low moods and self-doubt. He expressed these feelings beautifully through melancholy modal harmonies that were placated by metallic percussion-textures. His lyrics - fragmented, idyllic and vague - were cobblestones that led to a path of self-certainty, but he tampered with them, etched at them and dislodged them neurotically through a virtuosic sampling technique. His approach to composition told you there was no more return to certainty: he represented a deep deprivation and an overall helplessness. 

Arriving at the start of the austerity government, his mournful musings thus spoke to the mood of his countrymen at the time. His search for certainty, clarity and interpersonal connection doubled as a cryptic metaphor for a longing of replenished public infrastructure and community in the midst of precarious neoliberalism and social individualism. He was possessed by the same nihilist ghost that plagued Britain but portrayed his spectre with the quaint-style of a solemn English water painter.

Somewhere around 2019, however, he began to frequent with bombastically garish rappers and producers from America whose approach to expressing the same sentiments was not a coy tenderness but a raucous hedonism. Their woes were drowned out by rumbling 808s and warbling murmurs. In many cases, their commercial sound lacked the nuance and idiosyncrasy that his had. Regretfully, they influenced his sound into some lacklustre atmospheric bounciness: detailed cobblestone mosaics were traded in for commercial Atlanta-club dancefloors. 

Dislodged from his own home, but inauthentically placed in another, his sound lost direction and appeal over the years. Bad Cameo is an interesting attempt at a return to form, characterised by glimmering, immersive and psychedelic synth textures. Lil Yachty is well-meaning in the midst of it all, but his voice is one of nuisance showmanship in Blake’s eerily introspective landscape. The end product is disconcertingly tacky.

James Blake should come back to Enfield to find himself again. 

Resavoir by Resavoir (Album)

Written 28/7/24

I made Less Talking because of an overwhelming realisation I had at a concert one day that we’re all living one shared experience; that the human condition is collective one; and that our innate, unspoken feelings and impulses are what define us. We are made more potent and given direction the more astutely we understand this. I experienced this realisation again at Less Talking on Sunday3 as I listened to Kaidi Akinnibi’s thrilling quintet performance. As I left the venue on an emotional high, I needed to listen to something just as elaborately melodic, rhythmically intricate and whimsical as Kaidi. 

Since he doesn’t have any solo music on streaming services, I chose Resavoir’s debut album instead. 

The whole album feels like an intimate Metropolis-situated journey through modernist hallways and futuristic dreamlands. It’s somewhat bland in the sense that it’s devoid of any obvious cultural personality (I’ve been listening to these guys for 5 years and I still don’t know who they are or where they’re from), but this canvas of depersonalised grey is accentuated by colourful compositional experimentations through which the album creates a culture of its own defined by seamless fusions of analogue and digital instruments, eclectic sample choices and emotive melodies.

This depersonalised sonic identity, which creates space for oneiric exploration, is emblematic of the Less Talking ethos in that it finds individualism ceding ground to some new, ego-less realm of the Utopian kind.

Really great record.

Auditorium by Common & Pete Rock (Album)

Written circa. 20/8/24

There’s always been something ultra-modern about Pete Rock’s production. I think it’s that the artists his beats are best suited to are wanderlust-filled stargazers who’s subject matters are always generalist screes of their life’s mundane happenings. Rappers of this ilk were not the norm in the 80’s when he was starting to make music, nor were they the mainstream archetypes of the 90’s when he came to prominence . It feels somewhat prophetic sometimes because they did become the norm in the 10’s, long after his heyday.

On ‘Auditorium’, blissful black American soundscapes form. Soulful samples that have been assembled into mesmeric harmonies and dusty drum shots tessellated in tight, groovy patterns engross our attention. 

Common is the perfect star-gazer for Pete Rock’s audio canvasses. He commemorates black American history in a collage-style that is never concise or meaningful but always charismatic and entrancing. He’s very black Democrat politician-esque in the way he’s far more concerned with upholding an idyllic image of a Utopia than actually offering anything of substance. When you try to listen closely to the lyrics on here, this starts to feel like a problem, but Pete Rock’s illustrious compositions remind you that sometimes the vibe is more important than the details.

This album ends up being a really easy listen as a result. Common doesn’t say enough to challenge the listener, but he flows smoothly enough to entertain them.

Industry (TV Series)

Written 17/9/24

Watching HBO’s Industry is raucous because it presents strange, unpinpointable nuances of British society in a manner that is over-intimate, hyperreal and discomforting. Its rawness and honesty is cathartic. As the show continues to gain momentum, each episode feels more and more like an incontinent flood of Britain’s innermost secrets. In divulging all it does, an explicitly incestuous menage-à-trois between classism, capitalism and conservatism is uncovered. The relationship between the three is unbreakable and destructive; each of the show’s characters espouse some profound truth on that.

Yasmin Kara-Hanani (a spoiled heiress plagued with an incurable sense of entitlement and a sexual orientation that can only be described as dangerous) seems to be the prime vehicle for driving these revelations to the fore in season 3. Having been oblivious to the realities of the world for most of her life, her fallen state - cut off from her father’s inheritance and devoid of sponsors to favour her at work - has brought her to a damning confrontation with hierarchy. She becomes hyper aware of her plight as a woman, her lack of autonomy as a worker, her feebleness before the establishment. We are with her as she learns these lessons for the first time, noticing how violently transactional conversations are in her world (like when she’s told that she needs to rekindle with her narcissistic billionaire ex if she wants to get away with manslaughter) and how disposable she and her peers are.

In S3E6, her conversation with her boss, Eric, erupts when she becomes frustrated with his self-indulgent chatter and lack of professional boundaries. “This is not sex. This is not sex!”, she screams erratically although there was nothing explicitly sexual about the conversation in the first place. There was a power imbalance there: Eric felt comfortable to speak to her as he does because he knows she has no autonomy to refute him. The grandeur this fills him with and the professional security this could have offered her could have been a mutually beneficial exchange (a pleasurable one even!). Silent subservience on her part would have been an implicit acceptance- a consummation. But, she decided to rebel against the circumstance, in doing so acknowledging the somewhat Freudian psychosexual dynamics of this interaction wherein the imbalance between the two constitutes something implicitly erotic and vile.

This is a classic moment in the show’s repertoire as it provides a brutal, succinct and incisive critique of elitist social culture and all the hierarchies that it comprises. Skilfully, it also refers back to a conversation Eric had with his long-time colleague Bill Adler in the episode prior where he confesses his interest for women powerful, young women. It allows us to understand his interactions with Yasmin for what they really are: predatory and lustful. Without this context, the outburst feels strange and absurd. This teetering of hyperrealism and surrealism is a hallmark of season 3 and manages to make its commentary more biting.

It’s one of many moments where the showrunners use an intricate acknowledgement of context and references to past conversations to create a rich and entertaining taxonomy for the state of Britain’s class dynamics. To those who have never seen the show, they might feel bewildered by these kinds of interactions but they are awe-inducing for avid-watchers (some of my other favourites are: “[bleep] and think of England”, “I can only [bleep] down”, “I think children are predestined to kill their parents”).

Addendum

Two years ago, GUAP mag took over the V&A for the first time and arriving there, I was super inspired. The serendipity of the occasion took me over, and the ever-presence of creative black personalities inspired me. I took some field recordings on my phone and flipped them into a piece of music called ‘Everything is Performance’ as soon as I got home. I was so engrossed in the process of production that weekend that I continued to craft a whole EP called ‘For Friends’.

GUAP did their third takeover of the V&A last week. I didn’t go, but hearing about it reminded of ‘For Friends’, so I’ve decided to share some of it here:

E V E R Y T H I N G I S P E R F O R M A N C E

T H E D E V I L M A Y N O T L A U G H

I H A V E E V E R Y T H I N G I N E E D