K E Y: ✄= art ✎= lit ♪= music ✪= video; † = highly recommended content
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
🤠 TWO B+ RECORDS 🤠
On May the 3rd of this year, countless albums were no doubt released; on labels both big and small, and even independently by the artist themselves. Of these, a smaller subset still had cartoon earths adorning their album art. And of these, likely only one stole a graphic from an 800+ page non-fiction book released in 2014. That honor belongs to James Ferraro and James Ferraro alone.
The first sentence of copy on the Amazon page for Toxic World Toxic People: The Essential Guide To Health Happiness Parenting and Conscious Living reads, "Are you after a book to help you improve your entire life?" A query such as this does nothing if not strike against the pessimistic tone of its cover. Without diving too deep, it seems like a text unworthy of its quite impactful visual, and, at its very worst, it could be a low-rent anti-vaxxer j-off sesh.
(That the png or jpeg might have originated elsewhere is certainly possible. But as you can see via the graphic on the right –if Google image search is to be trusted– that seems unlikely. If this was a pure stock graphic, then one of those sites would have come up.)
The James Ferraro release in question is Requiem for Recycled Earth, "the long awaited follow up to the Overture EP and the first of four main musical parts in the Four Pieces for Mirai sequence... a 57 min long opus into ecocide and planetary divorce."
The word ecocide was first recorded at the Conference on War and National Responsibility in Washington DC in 1970, where Arthur Galston proposed a new international agreement to ban ecocide. Galston was an American biologist who identified the defoliant effects of a chemical later developed into Agent Orange.
The first sentence of copy on the Amazon page for Toxic World Toxic People: The Essential Guide To Health Happiness Parenting and Conscious Living reads, "Are you after a book to help you improve your entire life?" A query such as this does nothing if not strike against the pessimistic tone of its cover. Without diving too deep, it seems like a text unworthy of its quite impactful visual, and, at its very worst, it could be a low-rent anti-vaxxer j-off sesh.
(That the png or jpeg might have originated elsewhere is certainly possible. But as you can see via the graphic on the right –if Google image search is to be trusted– that seems unlikely. If this was a pure stock graphic, then one of those sites would have come up.)
The James Ferraro release in question is Requiem for Recycled Earth, "the long awaited follow up to the Overture EP and the first of four main musical parts in the Four Pieces for Mirai sequence... a 57 min long opus into ecocide and planetary divorce."
The word ecocide was first recorded at the Conference on War and National Responsibility in Washington DC in 1970, where Arthur Galston proposed a new international agreement to ban ecocide. Galston was an American biologist who identified the defoliant effects of a chemical later developed into Agent Orange.
Getting to the top
Wasn't supposed to be this hard
The house is on Mulholland Drive
The car's on Sunset Boulevard
The registration's here with me
But neither of us has the key
We can live down in the flats
The hills will fall eventually
How long 'til we sink to the bottom of the sea?
How long, how long?
How long 'til we sink and it's only you and me?
How long, how long?
How long? (La-la-la-la-la-la-la)
How long? (La-la-la-la)
How long? (La-la-la-la-la-la-la)
How long? (La-la-la-la-la)
The orange stripe on the cover art of Vampire Weekend's fourth LP, Father of the Bride, another record released on 03.05.2019 that has a cartoon earth on the cover, is not a mystery. The orange stripe is meant to visually convey the binding of a jewel case (typically black and often with subtle, vertical indententations, but occasionally stylized with different colors/textures). This reduction in plastic is apparently not worth the cost of [insert number here] plastic straws. It's not offset. This cover is a lie, though. If you take away the orange stripe, the negative space, the text, the Sony Music® logo and the cartoon earth, it does not inhabit a perfect square. We can't go backwards; we can't retcon tactical herbicide.
There's nothing interesting about any of this and it is entirely forced. But it is a force. In 2013, the last time Vampire Weekend released an album (their best by a mile, Modern Vampires of the City), James Ferraro also put out some music; the similarities are striking again:
Black and White in the Big Apple, Baby! Does it get any better? "NYC, Hell 3:00 AM isn’t going to be your thing if you’re on the hunt for the next edgy crooner about to blow up—you’re only going to hear it in DJ sets if the DJ is extremely brave or suicidal or both," wrote Pitchfork in 2013, the same year they named MVOC the #1 record overall. That's the kind of quote that is so maddeningly stupid, it makes you seriously wonder: why do this at all?
Why analyze, compare, contrast, grade, rate?
The American manufacturer of consumer electronics products headquartered in Lake Success, New York, Coby was founded in 1990 by Young Dong Lee (born 1955 in South Korea), who owned 100 percent of its capital stock. Its name came from deleting the "w" and second "o" in Cowboy. The logo was written in Bookman Old Style Bold, which resembles the serif font used in the Sony logo. Lee originally owned an electronics wholesaler called Cowboy. My favorite emoji is the Cowboy Man (🤠).
There is nothing before and nothing after. The growing strain of apathy is not a virus, but rather mossy. Ezra Koenig strains to collaborate, to isolate his feelings and how/why they exist in the greater framework of the world; he pushes these ideas out in the form of a Vampire Weekend album. He takes his time. James Ferraro effortlessly collects ideas about the world, how /why humans are destroying it, apart from any one human experience; he pushes these ideas out in the form of a James Ferraro album. He reacts. That the ideas are the same isn't easy to recognize at first. Both voices are retreating back into themselves, the latter wordlessly but just as scared. Most voices are scared voices. Dave Chappelle thinks Michael Jackson is innocent; he will die an "Unbeliever." At an indeterminate future moment in time and space, perhaps, the world will also die. . . .
We can't be singing songs then. There won't be any words to bring it back. We've set off on an extremely exciting course, a crash course. And like any good crash course it ends in fire; it will be lit. We can, of course, transcend all of this in the interim. Both of these (B+) records clock in at ~57 minutes. You won't regret playing them at the exact same time as you do something, anything that makes you happy.
w̵̡̻̯̰̫̠͗͛̋̄ͅh̸̛̞̜̩̬́̓̒̾̽͑̋͘͝ͅa̸͎̐̉͝ť̵̪͕ ̶̝͖̗͔̦̤̈̈́d̸͉͚͚͎̭̂͐̈̐͒o̷̖͗̌͋̃̓̀͗e̷̛͈͇̮̩̩̫̣̓͗̊͂̇̈̽͒͠s̴̢̢̭̻̳̳͚̼̹͐̔̈̈́͊́̏̀͋̋ͅ ̷̢̫̥̟̬͙̠͎̮͌͂̀̆̃͆̋̏͝͝ȃ̷̜̱̝̘̫̝͍̼̘̇͛̂̕n̵̢̡͙̩̬̪̫̞̾́̓͛̀ẏ̸̬̳̺̃̀̊́̾̕ ̵̡̔̾̊̿́̆̇̇̾o̵͖͗̏̃̽͑f̸̢͇̜̭̜͗̈́͂̅̓̈́̚̚ ̸͍̼̗̖̭̥̯̐̽̀̈̄ǐ̸̦̦̈́̅̊̈̄͊̅͝t̵̨̢̨̧͓̹̩͈̽͒̽͘͘ ̷̥̝͓͚͓̗̯̋͊̅̈́͌̈́͂ë̸̺̥͓́͊̈́͂̅̉̕͘̚v̷̨̛̼̘͖̗̗̝̈̆͗̅͊̈́͝e̵̬̲̯͌́͆̈́̈́̓̍͝ņ̸͒̑̂̀̓̋̀̕͝ ̷̣͖̗̰͕̱͐͗̅̀̀͘͝m̸̙̱̭̃́̉͌̇͐͝͝e̵̟͉͓̱̭̼̣̊̏͌͋͜͜ḁ̶̲̠̤̮̰̫͆̓̅̒̀̆͑̄̄͌n̷͇̈́̍̇͆̚