20.3.10

Shithawk


Now then now then, I've got a nothing but disdain for today, you ever encounter one of those days where in all likelihood you're probably not going to be able to stop yourself from unleashing a torrent of drivel on some unsuspecting person so you walk around scatting to yourself and answering every question anyone asks you with a maddeningly incomprehensible question of your own? Yo. That's today. Fortunately for me I have you to cascade my jib upon so my colleagues are spared from the main deluge of meaningless pap, for now at least.

James Blake is a Shithawk. That's right you heard me, a Shithawk. Ignore the urban dictionary, I mean it in the most superlative terms. Imagine something that is "the shit" you know like "oh my days, that new Slugabed tune is the shit!" Well James Blake is riding the methane thermals, circling majestically above "the shit" with effortless majestic grace. Maybe a Shitowl, sitting in the upper branches of a tree gazing down upon the seething morass of musical goodness below him with an expression of quiet, calm superiority. What a guy. You should check The Bells Sketch he put out on Hessle Audio recently, it's uncommonly good, the bass in the title track is the most unsettling piece of brilliance; you're there appreciating the track going "well this is all pretty sweet" and then all of a sudden this bowel movement inducing bass comes charging in like a freight train made of crackling insanity. Aaaah yeah!


Buzzard and Kestrel (fittingly) the next track is bonkers and hilarious, although I can't put my finger on why it's so amusing. It's difficult to even begin trying to explain why it's so affecting, this dude has got some next level manipulative skills when it comes to messing your head up. Along with Give a man a Rod, the third and final track, the whole effect is like some incredibly strange drug induced lucid dream in which the dimensions and governing laws of physics keep changing without notice or reason. You think you've managed to grasp what's going on and then you fall into a hole which turns you into a complex geometric shape that speaks backwards with the same intonation as a musical birthday card running perilously low on battery reserves. There's even a bit in Give a Man a Rod which actually sounds like a wobbly owl leading a choir of ghosts on a rubber pipe organ in a melting Romanian castle. Brilliant.