i have returned… dusting off this substack like an old diary, finally primed with some creative motivation… still don’t think i have the energy for longform writing quite yet. or rather, when i have recently i’ve just used it on letterboxd in the spur of the moment and not felt like expanding into paragraphs and grammar correction and all this other shit.
i guess my thought was i’d go ahead and revive this thing in case i do feel that motivation soon. there’s lots of stuff going on in my life and, more importantly, the world; it’s good to have art and creativity to keep you sane, keep you motivated, keep you driven. with these little dispatches i thought i’d every so often talk about some music, movies, shows, books, games, or anything else that’s been on my mind and that i kinda wanna expound on but maybe not too much. and hey, maybe you’ll see me in full critic mode sooner or later because of this stepping stone…
danny brown’s new album “quaranta”
i hope i’m wrong, but some people may be disappointed with this one. for a sequel to XXX (quaranta means “40” in italian as google translate helpfully explains in the first audible moments) - an album that remains completely in your face for its entire duration, forging a new sound that still sounds fresh a decade later - the new album is quite downtrodden, lowkey, depressed. uknowhatimsayin? but sadder, or AE but muted, perhaps. it starts off with some bombast, like with the alchemist-produced “tantor”, but that vibe slowly starts to deteriorate over the course of the record. danny only uses his signature yelp on a couple of tracks, that sustained mania we know him for seemingly shuddering to a halt. he instead prefers that straightforward tone of voice he would use once in a while on tracks which required it, songs with the kind of contemplative gravity that would require that he is as clear as can be, that he is properly heard. he’s most certainly not reinventing the wheel here, and i think some will find that “boring” or whatever. he doesn’t need to, though; he’s already passed the torch to people like armand hammer or peggy (whose world he perfectly slots into, but it is still peggy’s world) or MIKE (who shows up here and fucking kills it). the genre of hip-hop, contrary to whatever culture writers who think they’re tapped in by staring at the billboard charts and pointing their fingers at celebrities who are *gasp* trump supporters think, has been blossoming in such diverse directions in the underground, with soundcloud and bandcamp being host to all kinds of experimentation, that i personally don’t care whether a veteran of the sound is innovating or not.
especially with an album this personal and devastating. the days of “die like a rockstar” are over, as 12 years later danny reflects on the fact that he really *could* have died, and more importantly how the fate he resigned himself to was almost as bad: going through a painful divorce, losing friends, damaging his body, witnessing detroit’s gentrification from the sidelines. i love how he directly quotes some of the great songs from goodie mob and geto boys; the latter especially moved me, not that referencing “mind playing tricks on me” is novel by any means, but borrowing scarface’s direct, confessional writing style (which he does throughout the album, to be honest) acknowledges the history of mental health discussion in hip-hop in a really fulfilling way.
danny’s avant-garde edge isn’t gone on this album by any means; like i said, there’s plenty of bombast in the first half, and even the quietest tracks have odd melodies and some unpredictable diversions to carry them through. this album does have some of XXX’s DNA sonically, with parts of that album’s rock-influenced sound being laced in throughout. danny is and always will be a rockstar, he’s just slowed down, decided to pick up the pieces of the wreckage he’s left behind. he made this album when he was at his lowest point with his addiction and mental health struggles and it shows. he’s sober now - the label seems to have held the project against his will - and it’ll be interesting to see where this new danny brown will go from here. i think the final track “bass jam” is a hint toward that: an affirmation of everything music has meant to him since he was young, speaking for him like nothing else could. why would he give it up?
the massive amount of chief keef i’ve been digging into and why i love him so much (nothing new here, but i wanted to gush)
i’ve spent the past few weeks digging into the sosa archives, one of the few artists whose discography seems to contain endless surprises. i’m far from a scholar, of course, but it is so, so inspiring to see how much of an innovator chief keef has been ever since he was 16 years old, constantly finding new melodies, drum patterns, and flows to convey the endless streams of emotions he’s been through. it is unfortunate how much of his young life has been spent in the throes of drug addiction (not unlike danny); but perhaps because of it, a lot of his material from then is unlike anything else in trap music of the time. spacey, woozy, orchestrated, totally ahead of its time. it’s hard not to talk about his music in just pure adjectives because who else is gonna give you shit like “pit stop” or “dear” or “awkward” or “save me” or “lucky bastard.” beats that go silent in the middle of the track, hi-hats that sputter to weird time signatures, keef’s yelps and growls as he lashes out at the world while also never ridding of his incredible sense of humor most certainly anticipating a whole generation of rappers to come. i don’t have much more cohesive thoughts than this, but all i know is when i listen to chief keef, i find myself inspired like nothing else, thinking about my own struggles with addiction, mental health, gender dysphoria (some asshole is going to point out to me his transphobia or him being one of those aforementioned trump supporters and i’m going to tell you i do not care), and how badly i wanna be able to communicate those complicated feelings as accurately as possible, and even though i’ve forgotten most of the music theory i learned in middle school orchestra, i wanna make symphonies of my heart and soul. this is all to say, thanks to chief keef, i may finally be cooking up some tunes… watch this space…
(unlike mr. cozart, i’m not gonna give you guys fake release dates or anything, so don’t expect anything super soon necessarily. but soon…)
far from heaven (2002)
enough about music though. the other day i caught todd haynes’ far from heaven for the first time; unusually for me though, someone who always tends to pick movies i think i’m gonna become obsessed with, i wasn’t expecting much. from just the nine or so douglas sirk films i’ve seen, he was an untouchable artist, arguably the greatest melodramatist of all time, someone who weaponized emotion to such degrees that i have a genuinely physical reaction to films like imitation of life or magnificent obsession or all i desire or the tarnished angels. the idea of modern pastiche that directly quotes him or minelli (also a GOAT) or stahl (i havent seen any of his yet but someone i assume is a GOAT) just didnt appeal to me at all. i also just have little experience with haynes so far, and so my main reason for throwing this on was checking a box before may december comes out.
it’s interesting because haynes isn’t necessarily *not* just doing film buff pastiche. he very lovingly recreates the look and feel of the technicolor melodrama with the help of legendary dp ed lachman, and provides a lot of those same pleasures pretty directly. on its surface, this works pretty great as a film scholar’s tribute to a great era of cinema, and could work purely on those terms.
but there is so much more here. this film is all about surfaces and ironies; nothing new to the genre by any means, but the difference is sirk was belying the complexities of his characters and the oppressive worlds they inhabited very naturally, whereas haynes seems to specifically make those undercurrents as jarring as possible when unearthed. when julianne moore’s content housewife first stumbles in on her husband (played brilliantly by dennis quaid, although learning haynes’ first choice was my beloved james gandolfini made me close to ugly crying) in the arms of another man, the very delicately composed frames suddenly becomes canted, as her world destabilizes from its center. haynes is so deliberate about when the illusions break and how that’s reflected in the visual language and the performances. i think about those brief breaks into very modern-feeling shallow focus close-ups, such as when moore and dennis haysbert (breif sidenote, i’m pissed that one of the great performers in hollywood is now releagted to allstate commercials man get him the fuck outta there) stare longingly into each other’s eyes, attempting to forget the judgmental eyes of the bar patrons around them, and unaware of the racist forces moving to eventually ruin their lives. sometimes this jarring nature of the film shows up in somewhat awkward ways, too, such as moore’s first goodbye to haysbert outside the theater, where they pointedly discuss surfaces and whether it’s even possible to expose what’s underneath and still be happy in a world so diametrically opposed to honesty and equality. on the nose, very broadly directed, and yet a world of emotion is still communicated in their mutual heartbreak as they feel the world staring daggers at them once again.
i don’t think haynes is saying “hey, look, i’m making a 50s melodrama but better” or even is trying to expose anything new from the form. he’s really just giving the sense of what it must have felt like to see a douglas sirk film in those times, and feel those ugly truths of american society reflected back at you in such ironic, bitter ways. the characters themselves seem to almost discover themselves in the 50s melodrama, and have to deal with the feeling of having their world shattered so painfully. both the central husband and wife have their own privilege to reckon with, but ultimately, it’s mrs. whitaker resigned to a fate of loneliness, caused by a divorce and a tearful goodbye to her last chance at true love, all because she was complicit in furthering the myth of the american nuclear family, trapped in her own ignorance for so long. the only hope is that she can pick up where she left off with her children, and help them learn the truth of the world so they can be better and change the story for themselves.
i really wanted to talk about some new releases i caught recently, but i’ll save those for another dispatch or perhaps a full piece. more of you need to see jigarthanda doubleX after all… thank you for reading and i hope this was a worthwhile exercise for more than just myself <3