You might be asking yourself, what the fuck, Brightly? You said you’d be posting? What the fuck, dude?

Well, as you can tell from this title, I’ve followed the so many wondrous musicians into the world of outrageous back pain. If you’re asking how back pain could stop you from sitting down at a desk and writing some shit then you’ve never truly experienced back pain. Ever have a cavity, or a pain in your tooth, so fucking painful that it took away all of your thoughts and sensibility? Where you just became a different person? When you find yourself shouting at people for the simplest things just cause of the pain you’re in? Now, imagine that same feeling in your spine as surges of pain shoot down your leg, you can’t think a single thought through the electric buzz of pure pain, and you suddenly understand the real reason Hank Williams was an alcoholic; now that’s back pain. And guess what? Sitting makes it fucking worse. 

So, is this the end? Is this how it goes?

Naw, fuck that.

I’m going to fight through this shit cause I’m not some fucking quitter. I barely even quit cigarettes. The reason I’m even sitting here tapping out keys to y’all is cause I’m already working on this dumb motherfucker but, I’ll need some fucking time.

So, please, bear with me a bit as I rearranged my entire skeleton.

And, as always, keep listening

P.S. Huge shout out to Robin McKenzie’s, “Treat Your Own Back”. The cover is fucking terrible but that meat is pure spicy deliciousness. If any of you are in a position between surgery and a lifetime of pain medication, please check this book out first. The process in it is gruelling if you follow it to the letter but, because of this, I can finally see myself as not having back pain for the rest of my life. Goddamn lifesaver. Also, if you happen to be 17-years-old, just avoid downhill mountain biking if you can. It’s super fun but some piece of shit garbage human will eventually think it’s funny to put a giant obstacle in your path and you’ll end up fucking up your spine something fierce which will affect the rest of your life and have you recommending books like Treat Your Own Back and shit.

Goddamn. I said God-Day-Um!

This is a braided rope of holy shit. The threads are: The Alchemist, ELUCID, and Billy Woods. And with these three put together they’re stronger than they are on their on — now that’s a fucking collaboration.

If you’ve been on this site before, then you know I fangirl like a motherfucker over anything Billy Woods touches. If he was an elevator, I’d be a fan of buttons. If he was a dirty hand? The ground meat in your meatballs. An insomniac? The screen of a smartphone. A priest? Choirboys. A proctologist? The ground meat in your meatballs. You picking up what I’m putting down here? If Billy Woods is there, I’m there with bells on hoping he signs my tits. 

Some rappers break down their shit into digestible pieces that a dog could figure out. “You can’t cancel the truth!” What truth are they talking about? Who the fuck knows, but sure sounds like a nice anthem for entitled motherfuckers to chant whenever they feel pressured to change. This isn’t Billy. Naw. Billy’s on a whole different kind of level. While young thugs tat up their faces with memes, Billy is out there creating high-end art the likes of which would make Saul Williams, MF Doom, and James Joyce blush and hope to get their tits signed.

That’s right, picture James Joyce’s perky set of sweater melons slung inside a pushup swinging like those metal balls on a psychiatrist desk just aching for a tap from Billy’s sharpy pen. That’s how deep and thick these lyrics are.

You’re not gonna be able to catch all these lyrics on the first listen. Shit, the meaning behind that album cover probably passed you by. Pigs. Pigs. OH ya! Cops. But wait, Haram is an Arabic term that is about everything forbidden by Islam including pork. Huh? That’s right. Shit’s deep. Just check out these references anything pig in the song Chicharrones (which is the name of fried pork rinds).

“Got caught with the pork but you gotta kill the cop in your thoughts still sayin’ pause. Negroes say they hate the cops but, the minute somethin’ off, they wanna use force.”

“It’s one nigga who nice (Yup), the rest sausages. Got caught with the hog leg but you gotta kill the cop in your head. The officer in your mind, red handed, the chicharrones was chili and lime.”

Here they not only continue the use of the pig theme with cops, but then throw some big bad wolf imagery from the nursery rhyme, The Three Little Pigs.

“If you off the pig is you offin’ pigs or offerin’ figs. Oh you big and bad? Blowin’ hay and sticks, huffin’ bricks. Clip the snout (Snout), to spite the mouth (Mouth). Write the lips, put it on the spit. Pig roast, who got jokes? Fryers for the skin (Skin). Cold swine shoulders get the smoke. Oh you big and bad? Soo wee.”

This shit is laden with meaning and double meaning. It even samples David Lynch talking about the semi-consciousness of daydreaming and Little Richard talking about Jimi Hendrix IN THE SAME SONG!

A question I often hear about Armand Hammer is, why? Why do they make it so dense? Why don’t they say it how it is? I’ve heard people bitch about this shit from the start. They want their songs to be more “accessible.” Honestly? It pisses me off. Cause just think about that request for a second: John Donne’s poem, The Good-Morrow, is so knee deep in double meaning and allusions it’s like walking through wet quicksand in an outdoor club after Covid in the middle of winter and nobody, and I mean fucking nobody, is asking Donne to be accessible. People stand up to the challenge and meet that shit face-to-face. Why? Cause it’s fucking art, that’s why. Because it’s evolved fucking language. Shakespeare was able to change the English language for the better because people approached his shit with their heads held high. Dude invented around 1700 words, most of which we still use today, because people met his challenge. We express ourselves and think better for it. We understand ideas we never did before and are more evolved creatures because of it. So, why the fuck is it that when some old white dude with a PhD starts using double meaning it’s poetry and when it’s young black men it should be more accessible?

Ya, I fucking went there, so what? Like tatted up faced rappers and Bill Maher like to remind me, you can’t cancel the truth.

Rap evolves language, always has. And what regular kids talk about and how they talked about it would’ve been considered gangster rap back in the ’80s. They’re talking about more diverse issues with a greater depth. And they’re able to express ideas with a greater understanding and empathy. But rap is easy to pigeonhole. It’s easy to put into a box and keep over there. But it’s a whole other thing to put on a pot of tea, wear thick ass glasses, and throw on those heavy head cans to analyze this shit the way motherfuckers do with John Donne. But, make no mistake, this is fucking art. Meaning, if you stand up to the challenge and meet this album face-to-face you’ll be better for it, it’ll evolve you. It’ll change your language. It’ll change your thinking. So, put the album on and listen through as many times as it needs. It’s fucking worth it. After you do, I’ll be seeing your tits at the signing table. 

It’s an understatement to say that this pandemic has fucked some shit. Better to say that its bulldozed through economies, politics, industries, families, personal lives, and sex lives (remember sex? So 2019.) like a goddamned tornado through Kansas and now we’re stuck in fucking Oz, both the HBO and the MGM version. That’s right, monkeys can fly and shank ya and water can melt you and crucify you to the gym floor when you get too bitchy. It’s been interesting to watch music adapt to this hot trash. Cause live shows just went the fuck away and their main way of making money disappeared like a sad rabbit in a depressing hat. So, after a while, we decided “live” shows on Youtube were a thing. What the fuck else can we do? And musicians hobbled in front of a cameras, after the Rona mafia broke their legs, to perform tricks like whores in the street for rent, dental, and student loans. Not a joke. Shit’s real. Even the metal goddess Kristin Hayter from Lingua Ignota went from looking forward to breaking through with her awesome fucking album tour to begging on GoFundMe to pay for necessary surgery on her back. They wrote about in Rolling Stone. So, if this can happen to an up and coming star, just imagine what happened to anyone playing jazz. Ooof. Pow. Bang. At least they could count the beats as Rona kicks their ass.

So, in comes Idris Rahman (sax and bass clarinet), Leon Brichard (electric and upright bass), Emre Ramazanoglu (drums, mixing, mastering), and Satin Singh (percussion) from Ill Considered. I’ve written about these motherfuckers before. Guys can fucking groove. That kind of groove that only comes from entire lives in service to the temple and gods of groove. They’re groove monks coming in on that dope wave of jazz musicians from London like: A Comet Is Coming, Theon Cross, Makaya McCraven, Moses Boyd, Sons of Kemet, and Binker and Moses.

So, these guys go on YouTube and do the one thing they’ve always done, groove so hard you forget who you are and where you’re at. Which is perfect cause, not only is this the easiest and cheapest way to travel, it’s been the only way to travel these days. When I threw this on today and found myself going back and forth between watching how the magic is created to allowing it to wash over me like waves in the summer, cause sometimes you just don’t wanna know how the sausage is made. They’ve also released this as an album, this rehash of tunes they’ve already made. But a beautiful thing about jazz is it never sounds the same twice. These motherfuckers could perform the same 10 songs for the rest of their lives and it would sound different every time. Kinda how it fucking works. So, how does improvised music sound during a pandemic? Different. Interesting. There’s a longing to it. This tacit voice saying shit I’ve wanted to express but didn’t know how. It’s a mixture of frustration, sadness, horniness, longing, fight, push, anger, and this dark yet energetic scream, a defiant human angst bellowing against an uncaring existential nothingness yet it somehow feels fucking great. It’s cool and danceable. God … these are some talented motherfuckers.

Look, if we’re going to be stuck in Oz we might as well have a couple soundtracks and help each other out. How the fuck do you think Dorthy got through that shit? She joined a fucking gang. So if you’re one of those few out there that didn’t get completely fucked by Rona you should help those that did, it’s the human thing to do. Easy now, I’m not saying donate to every motherfucker that needs help or else you’d be broke by lunch. But, now more than ever, if there’s a musician out there that isn’t Beyonce level famous why not give your support? Help them get a surgery they need, fix their teeth, and just pay rent. And if you can’t? Fuck it. You need this soundtrack more than ever. Why do you think these motherfuckers released it for free on YouTube? That’s the thing about tragedy, after that initial shock, you get to choose how to react. You can either come together and help those you can, anyway you can, or we all become more distant than we already fucking are.

Do these guys groove? Oh, fuck ya. They groove against the fucking world, this pandemic, and in defiance of what is in order to create something better. The feel the moment and their emotions and put that shit into sound so audiophiliacs around the world can plug in and feel together. Cause, if you haven’t fucking noticed, they’re people out there that decided others don’t matter. Fuck masks. Fuck distance. They’re going on vacation. And instead of letting out that anger we all feel, they let it burn them from the inside out. And if it’s a choice between burning down and becoming some cynical bitch or dancing like the world’s on fire, I’m dancing like a goddamned queen in Oz.

So here I was checking out dope new tunes like Valerie June’s “The Moon and Stars“, Genesis Owusu’s “Smiling with No Teeth“, and DJ Muggs’s “Dies Occidendum” when fucking bam. Kaboom, motherfucker. Something knocks me so far out of the park I can’t see the hills, forest, or trees anymore—dots on the map. And it’s Beethoven’s 9th. The fucking 9th. Come on! Do you know how often I’ve heard this shit? How engrained into my brain it is? It’s part of the blood stream. Shit’s like shaving, eating, shitting, and pissing. It’s the background of backgrounds. It’s what motel paintings use as a backdrop. It’s what watching-paint-dry does on its day off. It’s the music meetings use when they have a meeting about replying to group emails. And here I am, like some fucking idiot, getting emotional to something I’ve heard as much, if not more, than Bohemian Rhapsody or Here Comes the fucking Sun. You couldn’t run from this shit if you tried. The only way to avoid the 9th would be jabbing sharpened pencils into your ears. It’s fucking everywhere. And yet, here I am.

So, begs the fucking question: How? How the fuck? You fucking serious? Fuck off. Fuck you. Tell me. How.

Answer: Grammy-award winning sound engineers, a symphony that pisses gold, and Manfred fucking Honeck.

Satisfied. No? Well, here we fucking go then.

First off: Bitches ain’t nothing if you record this shit on a phone. Dudes at Soundmirror are legends. Having a top notch orchestra and slick interpretation without a good sound crew is like eating Jesus Christ’s last supper, cooked by Gordon Ramsey, on a pile of hot garbage.

Second: The Pittsburgh Symphony, the Mendelssohn choir of Pittsburgh, and vocal soloists so hot some believe they actually started global warming, are hugely righteous. We’re talking about the full fucking crew. That’s associate conductors, a baker’s dozen of first violinists and another bag for the second, a mitt-full of violists, a bucketful of cellists, a basin-full of bass, harp, flute, piccolo, oboes, English horns, Clarinets on Clarinets on Clarinets, Bassoons, the biggie Bassoon, dat Brass, Timpani, Percussion, an entire choir, vocal soloists, and fucking Librarians. And if just one of these motherfuckers decided to phone it in this wouldn’t be the hot piece of ass that it is. So, next time your jaw drops when a symphony gives you a smile and a wink, remember, sometimes it takes an entire crew to stuff all dat ass into a pair of skinny jeans.

Then there’s Manfred fucking Honeck. Think of him as that pair of skinny jeans.

Let’s get real, plenty of dope orchestras and recordings of the fucking 9th out there that didn’t get my seat wet, so what’s the catch?

Dude. Fucking. Edits.

What do I mean by edit? Check what the guy’s got to say about the first part of this shit:

“Beethoven marks a sforzando (with emphasis) for the strings on every bar from measure 55 onwards, whereas for the winds, the sforzando is only marked every second bar. While this could be viewed as an inconsistency, I believe that Beethoven, in fact, intended that the winds do not answer in the same way, resulting in [many highly detailed lines later…] therefore [I] asked the horns here to play much stronger than what normally might be done.”

Wait, what?

In short, dude analyzed every single aspect of this, and I mean everything. Each line, every mark, every fart and stain was put under that musical microscope, poked, and prodded with that conductor’s baton until he found his answer. The question? Why, Beethoven? Why did you do this. You see, while other conductors read this shit as a novel, he read it for what it is: fucking poetry.

So you might be thinking, “What’s new about this, you vulgar waste of oxygen?” Which, ouch. But I’ll answer anyway.

Here’s the thing, lot’s of folks (including conductors and interpreters of Beethoven) out there to serve a good fucking time. That’s their goal. Sound good. Feel good. Taste good. Smell good. And with something as sultry and hedonistic as a 1000 people playing you a single piece of music written by (arguably) the greatest composer of all time just for your enjoyment, well, shit tends to get lavish. Thick thick syrup poured on sugar kinda shit. It is a fucking symphony for Christ’s sake. But ever been to someone’s house where they were just trying too hard? Like, dude, I can’t eat all this food. No, I don’t want a back massage. Um, my joke wasn’t all that funny. Can we calm down? And by the end of the evening you feel empty because you missed out on the one thing you really wanted: Connection. To feel human with another human. And that’s what Manfred does.

Beethoven on a fat set of audio head cans will always inspire. It’s fucking Beethoven. Kinda his thing. But listening to this album was the first time I heard the story behind the notes, like Beethoven was talking directly to me. I know. I get it. I sound fucking high. My Rebuttal: And? That doesn’t make this shit any less true. The fact that we all know this piece makes the differences all that more apparent, makes you question all those slick decisions made, and makes you hear inside the music for the first time since the womb. And, look, if you somehow don’t know this motherfucker which, come on, It’s the fucking 9th. Well, I suggest sitting back with whatever makes you hella comfy and throwing this bad bitch on loud, and I mean loud enough to turn heads, loud enough where people wonder if you’re okay. Cause as far as music goes? This is the fucking 9th, of course it’s good. And as far as interpretations go? This may just go down as one of the best. In either case, great way to turn seclusion, isolation, and claustrophobia into your own goddamned enlightenment.

Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium, motherfucker.

Glenn fucking Gould.

Anyone that wants to get into classical music, of any sort, eventually confronts Gould. He’s a fucking monster. His praise and criticisms will be sung long after we’re dead and buried and aliens investigate human history because AI deduced that we were the error in its pursuit of perfection. His eccentricities as a person have been told and retold and resold and packaged and repackaged and it’s all part of a balanced breakfast of a classical aficionado. Gould is the Beatles of the classical world. Get that? Dude’s an obsession. Douchebags worldwide have all got some fucking quote or story that appears to give them the edge or the “real story” on who Glenn Gould was as a person. Did you know that Gould drank this? Did that? Sat on this? Wrote on that with this? Was arrested for that? Recorded with, Slept with, Ate, Fucked, Listened, Released, Pissed, Prodded, Puckered, Picked, Pickled, Pestered, Portrayed, Plotted, Pieced, Peaced, And Piecemealed? 

And yet… 

That passion. That pure unrivalled audacity and ardour. His breakneck speeds and that frustrating slowness. His absolute fearlessness. 

So, how about instead of getting down, deep, and dirty into who Gould was let’s get rough, rowdy, and raunchy into the music. Cause if you don’t know Bach from Adam Levine, you’ll listen to this shit and just hear a bunch of piano. Cause in the end, that’s all it is, some dude on a fucking piano. 

So, let’s jump in.

Explaining classical music to people that don’t know it can be difficult for one simple reason: it’s the same fucking songs done by a bunch of different people. How can it be any good? Throw a rock into a crowd and you’ll hit someone that can play a half-decent Chopin. Dime a fucking dozen. And the truth nobody really wants to tell ya is this: a lot of it is horseshit. Just like with any other genre, there’s a lot of bad out there. Then, there are those other recordings, the ones you listen to and lose yourself in. Those few that grab you by the fucking gut, throw you around, and make you feel vulnerable. The ones where you think there must be some kind of mistake. That it has to be impossible for a piece of music, notes and how they’re played, sonic waves in the fucking air, could make anyone else feel the same way you do. Glenn Gould is this kind of motherfucker. There are points, especially at his incredible control as he goes Mach 600 through a minefield with the grace of a ballerina playing Dance Dance Revolution, where my asshole puckers up like a creature tasting lemons for the first time. Picturing some dude sitting in front of a piano, being able to move at those speeds with such precision, is difficult. But it’s not just his speed. Cause lots of motherfuckers can play fast. It’s the clarity of which it’s done. Then Gould switches. He plays slow. Cause he’s young and doesn’t give a fuck. You know this song as fast? Okay, now it’s slow and beautiful and heartbreaking. Now it’s a whole other bag of emotions you never knew could exist because fuck you, that’s why. But that’s not angry spite you hear, naw, that’s love. The deepest love of Bach someone can have. A creepy kind of love. If Gould loved a person as much as he loved Bach, he’d be locked up for it. He’d be that creep that followed you home and carved your name into their arm even though you’ve only ever witnessed them at a distance. He’s someone so completely obsessed with a composition it changed him fundamentally, biologically, spiritually on a molecular fucking level. And while listening to the effects of this, it’s impossible not to be just a tiny bit changed along with him. 

Look, I could wax poetic about so many things Gould has done (Shit, I might even just do that ever now and again). His work as a producer with prophet-like intuition anticipating fuckers like me listening to him on a fat pair of audio cans is almost as inspiring as his tunes. Almost. But at least once a year I throw this album on. I’m not doing this to incite a conversation about who the fuck Gould was or why his shit don’t stink. I don’t see the point of hanging a painting just to talk about how expensive it is. Fuck that. Before all the rumours, stories, citations, and evenings spent gloating over the eccentricities of a man few seem to know, he was just some dude at a piano. That’s it. But what he did on it changed people. It excited. It abhorred. It fucking moved. All the statues, conversations, acknowledgments, comparisons, debates, interviews, dialogues, and silly reviews, just like this one, all come from that place. That sacred area. Where a man touched keys, made sonic waves in this certain way, and evoked masses of people to feel. Everything else is kindling to that fire. All of it is speculation on just how that dude, some human, could perform such a trick and call upon gods and create magic. 

Love him or hate him, the Gould everyone knows doesn’t exist, he’s a fable—more mist than man. What’s actually left of him is just some recording of a young punk playing Bach like a motherfucker. And that’s all that really matters in the end. 

Bread and butter, coffee and cigarettes, whiskey and depression, sex and sweat, Italo Calvino and A Winged Victory for the Sullen.

Sometimes the world offers you perfect yet surprising combinations like a bag of sexy gold: Kapow! Rich and horny? But let’s get real, shit’s been pretty bleak as of late. It’s been hella easy to get cynical. Stuck in our homes, saving the world in our dirtiest sweatpants, as spoiled idiocy tramples maskless spewing Orwellian 1984 type shit. Hear that? Fucking 1984? I’m boycotting use of that reference till the person saying it can tell me the plot or the name of the main character/narrator. Too many motherfuckers throwing shit around without knowing what the fuck it is.

I’ll save you the trouble, it’s Winston Smith.

Luckily, that’s not the case here. Italo Calvino is one of the dopest writers you may have never heard of. In my world he’s up there with the biggest of fucking wigs. I’m talking Texas-sized beehives, motherfucker. Certain yokels know him for best for being hella meta in his book If on a winter’s night a traveler, but that’s barely cresting the surface of the Calvino pool. In his book Invisible Cities (of which this fucking album is based on) the explorer Marco Polo (you know, the guy that made the pool game so famous) is telling stories about all these places he’s been to the ever-pissy and powerful emperor Kublai Khan. Polo tells the story of 55 different cities but it might actually be just one, you know, like telling a story about 55 different blocks and calling that shit the world. It’s a vibrant and perfect book composed by an absolute legend of a writer. Fucking read it already!

So, you might know one half the duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen (AWVFTS) Adam Wiltzie from his glorious co-project Stars of the Lid. And if you know Stars of the Lid, you just shit your pants a little cause fans of this band go deeper than fracking. The other half of AWVFTS is Dustin O’Halloran. He’s basically composed most of your favourite soundtracks (his tracks for the film Lion basically won all the Emmys), he’s released a bunch of solo stuff, and is an all around kickass composer. And these two motherfuckers decided to throw their talents in with a stage show adapting Calvino’s novel. That’s some art, begetting art, begetting art type shit. It’s like the Genesis 5, 11, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie having a week-long kosher sex party.

So, some motherfuckers got a hate on for this album. But I think they missed the point. Here’s a clue: check the fucking track titles. Take for instance the first track, So That The City Can Begin To Exist. If you give half a fuck, and I really do mean half, you don’t even need to read the whole book (even though everyone should) and you can figure out what the fuck is going on. Check it: “The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind. […] Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.” Pretty cool quote, right? And what’s it fucking from? Invisible fucking Cities. So this first track isn’t just about some fucking city, just like in the book. It’s about memory, and forgetting, and redundancies, and all those in-between feelings that are so delicate, beautiful, and evanescent you’re afraid to hold onto them too tight cause they’ll fucking disappear. It’s about how the passage of time goes so quickly after a while. All those years turn into snapshots like all your adventures and memories can turn into simple short stories.

Dope, right?

I’ll give you a couple more examples. Track 3: The Dead Outnumber the Living. “You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.” Come on! That’s some deep fucking shit right there! Track 4: Every Solstice & Equinox. “You do not come to Euphemia only to buy and sell…. On your return from Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at every solstice and at every equinox.”

Just like these themes, this music is both subtle and beautiful. It floats like smoke in the air or fog on water. These subtle themes require massive talents with a delicate touch or order to be done right. But you can trust Adam and Dustin with it. Sure, some people like to toss out shit without knowing a fucking thing about it. They jump in all ignorant and flail about like delicate little bitches thinking they understand the ocean by drinking saltwater. They’d tear it apart, make it all about them, make it all grand and showy and probably wouldn’t even reference the fucking text that’s it’s all about. But not these two. Not Dustin and Adam. These guys live in the smoke and dance in the fog like goddamn fireflies. They’ve dedicated their entire careers to the subtle and beautiful. And they’re masters at their craft. Fuck, evanescent feelings are their bread and butter. A perfect combination for a collaborative piece of art.

Up the Belukha Mountain, within the Altai Mountains of Tibet, sits a large wooden door. The engravings on it are older than most languages and, somehow, it stands firm and beautiful within the mountain’s stone face. As it’s pushed open, it seems to breathe. Most people are both comforted and alarmed at its warmth considering the temperature and altitude. The world inside that door is not the same it is on the mountain. Grass grows fresh and long on the ground. Butterflies fly together in bundles and change colour at will. A large male elk calmly walks throughout the area as fireflies encircle and land on top of its antlers. Yet, despite all these wondrous things, that’s not what catches most people’s attention. The large tree has various doors and windows within it that don’t seem to be carved or cut, but naturally grown. The tree expands throughout the landscape, growing inconceivably tall at certain points. Its roots jump and climb throughout the earth like a monstrous snake travelling through an ocean. A beautiful young woman, half composed of various flora and fauna, walks through one of the tree’s door. As she shuts it behind her, the tree locks itself by quickly growing a large wreath on the door’s front. The air here feels crisp and electric. The more it enters someone’s lungs the more blissfully stoned they become. And, just off to the right, there’s a small cabin. It’s half-earthed with a lovely little garden out front. The chimney up top plumes clouds of smoke smelling of chocolate and good sex. From inside someone says, “My word, you finally found me. I knew you would, motherfucking audiophiliac, I knew that someday you would come find me.” There’s the sound of shuffling feet from inside. “Here I was just listening to some dope ass shit and yes, you’re right, it’s time for me to leave this fair hut and share it. Also,” the voice continues, “Have you checked out this fucking crib? Look at this shit. Sweet chocolate-Jesus-loving-tom-waits-fucking-Christ, did you know just living in here gets you high as a motherfucker? I barely know where I am. You’re the pizza-guy, right? Wait, can we even eat pizza here? Honestly, I’m asking. Good lord, there’s a monkey fucking a bat outside. Well, maybe there is, I’m not even sure what’s real or a hallucination anymore considering I’ve been stuck in here since … hold up, did Margaret Thatcher really resign as Prime Minister? Also, fucking a bat is a perfect way to start a pandemic, just saying. Goddamn hippies with all their free-fucking-love. It’s like Tolkien on acid up in this bitch. Also, am I really living in a tree god? Am I its food or or is this some sort of arboreal sex thing. I’ve got to get the fuck outta here.” 

For real? Is this where I was? Fucking maybe. It could also be that a while ago some idiot was convinced to write about an album a day and shit just went from there. It could also be that this moron got fucking tired one day after two years and with *gestures vaguely everywhere* and needed a break. Who knows? And then maybe some real fucking shit happened in this jackass’s life. Shit, who can fucking tell. It might even be that this stupid bitch finally got convinced to get back to writing some shit cause of dope-ass people like you kept asking and being persistent as all hell. Who knows. But one thing is for certain, The Brightly Off-Coloured Discophile is gonna be writing some shit again, motherfucker. Not everyday cause that shit was draining as all fuck (even though it helped keep that slick bitch on track and loved every minute of it back in the day). But that doesn’t mean that this pure pimp of a creature can’t write out some shit once a week. Like, damn. Get off your ass, ya sleazy fuck. We’ve got music to talk about! 

Most importantly thanks: gorgeous brutes, people of wisdom and class, royalty of sonic, kings and queens of racket/noise/and bangs, for keeping up with this shit and giving half a fuck about some motherfucker you barely know. If anything proves that this world has got what it takes to survive, it’s shit like that. So go enjoy a nice wank and give yourself a pat on the back, on me, you fucking deserve it. 

And also, thanks for listening and keep listening. There’s more to come.

If you’ve been anywhere near anything with an electronic screen for the past who-the-fuck-knows-anymore, it’s as obvious and loud as S&M sex in a quiet synagogue that people are angry. And rightly fucking so. Any audiophiliac worth their salt, or anyone that has perused briefly past this new-fangled bop ’n’ groove the kids call rap, knows shit’s been fucked and is fucked for black people in America. There ain’t a bush thick enough or hole deep enough to hide from this fact. Yet? Here we fucking are. Bush thick and supposedly living in the centre of goddamn Pluto. How the fuck? Why the fuck? Just fucking, what? HUH?! And this pressure? You know exactly what I’m fucking talking about. That child-sized weight sitting on my chest since this all started? Well, it won’t stop fucking eating. And the shit’s getting heavier. It’s sumo. And here I am carrying this bitch around like I birthed it. Goddamn, baby. I’m not your mama! Begone! And then all these tragically lost lives are used as political fodder. Surprise. Surprise. And now the simple fucking message this started with is, somehow, neglecting some piece of shit that feels left out of the party for some stupid fucking reason. Suddenly, bucked-toothed moonshiners are thinking they’re Plato by splitting the semantic hairs of mottos and picking out its lice but their only relation to the name is their malleability. And now this cunt is bringing up black on black crime? Of fucking course. Well, Cunty McCuntums, what the fuck about it? How’s white on white crime doing, or is that shit just called murder now? I don’t think that … wait a minute … let me finish. Hold up. Is bucktooth breastfeeding my chest baby? It’s matter, not are better. Sorry McCuntums, I gotta. Wait, huh? How is … But really how the …

FUUUUUUUUCK!

And that’s this album. This album is the expression of anger and confusion so many of us feel at this time. It’s finally letting go and screaming so hard your guts shoot out your ass like a bloody glitter bomb. It relieves tension by expressing it. POP! SPLAT! BOOM! It’s not all screaming, either. Plenty of tears in the album if you listen closely. And at any point if you get confused about who this album is about? Visit the website, that got released along with the album and see images of black people just living normal lives. Because this album is for everybody. It may not sound like it at first cause, let’s get real, it’s fucking weird. It’s jazz, funk, rap, grunge, and punk fused into a single form. Of course it’s fucking weird. But that’s how abstract art works, motherfucker. It can express the ineffable. And when you’re surrounded with this hyperreal, noxious, and gruesome reality of this every fucking day, honest expression tends to get a bit strange because that’s exactly how we feel. This album is the scream in the night that expresses our woe, frustration, and nausea. It’s the musical version of that anger-fuelled sigh when you realize that the person you’ve been talking to for an hour hasn’t been listening to you . It’s an echoing disappointment stemming from centuries of being used and neglected. Is it angry? Fuck ya. It is confusing? It better be. But most of all, is it honest? You’re goddamned right it is.