suliman's blog

recent discoveries iii

I know I said in my last post that I’d update this series more regularly, but looky there, it’s becoming a pattern of mine to not live up to that promise. I think it’s better this way anyway since I’m not the type to listen to a lot of new music in a short span of time like others. I get people’s recommendations and it might take me months to get to them, but I eventually check them out. The following is a list of what I remember to have checked out since the last iteration of this series:

I was positively surprised by Pitfalls. The vocal performance on that record made me check multiple times who was singing and it was indeed a man, on every track. The singer’s tenor range is a rarity, especially in my female-dominated library, that made me doublecheck my ears. Another positive surprise was the recently released Torn by COBRAH, an artist that I had been thinking of checking out ever since I caught my little sister watching her grotesque, alien music videos. It’s a bit experimental, has many bops and some skips, but at least one song I really, really like which is Snow White.

I was less impressed by Diamond Life by Sade. I had been putting off listening to that album for months, but liking Love: Deluxe made me more excited for it, just for it to be okay, but nothing to write home about. Same goes for Control by Janet Jackson, which is just another one of those super mid 80s (New Jack Swing) albums that probably was amazing when it came out, but has been overdone since then. Another one which I was lowkey stoked for, but didn’t like, was All For You (also by Jackson). It overdoes the eroticism that I enjoyed on her other albums for me while being an otherwise unspectacular project.

Rhythm Nation 1814 was not the kind of album I expected from her, though, like not at all. It’s a protest album about poverty, dispossession, structural violence, child abuse, economic inequality, high crime rate from impoverishment, racism, and a tad bit of hope and eroticism (the last part is essential for a Janet Jackson album). It has that harsh industrial sound and the military aesthetic to signal the bareness and harshness of the life she’s describing. The rhymes are sometimes oddly placed, though that doesn’t weaken her point a single bit. It’s just sad that the reality she was describing in 1989 has only gotten worse since.

Another protest album I checked out was Girls by Princess Nokia. Rapping is not really my cup of tea. I don’t like spoken rhyming, but I enjoy Hip-Hop a lot (provided the artist is singing). What was a turn-off was the kind of „activism“ on this project. I went into it expecting this to be a queer-feminst project that would be harsh in its wording but aiming for a sensible critique. What I found was really flat, short-sighted and counterproductive. For instance, she resists body-shaming (Great!), but then turns around and body-shames back. This was most annoying on Medusa where she raps:

How dare you weaponize my looks? I'm a bad bitch
You're impotent and bald, we all know why you angry

Are we for real out here body-shaming others to stop them from body-shaming us? Another few lines are to be found on Drop Dead Gorgeous:

Free the girls, hope they all get divorced
Men suck, and they're only getting worse
Put your boots on, let's go have fun

Why are we generalizing bad experiences and making them into insoluble things? How does this fight for lasting and healthy change? Clearly, it doesn’t because that’s not the intention of Princess Nokia. She’s fighting for the right to be vicious like the misogynists she hates. This is indeed the gender equality we want!1 Aside from those two songs, a lot of the „activism“ on the album was just cringe. There were some moments where I wholeheartedly agreed with her because they were objectively cruel things I’ve seen firsthand, but they are by and large overshadowed by cringe 2020 soundbite activism. It’s a shame because there could’ve been so many different and better things she could’ve done on that album lyrically. I think I’m like 100% not the target audience, though. I‘m just gay. My „I‘m just Ken“ moment.

Then my personal and current favorite: LUX by ROSALÍA. I only decided to check this one out after seeing her role in Euphoria and being incredulous at how badass she is in there. The album and her role in that show are both badass, just in very different ways. While in Euphoria she plays the stripper with a bedazzled neck brace who cusses the fuck out of people in Spanish, even when they don’t understand her, LUX has her quite soft, dreamy, and thoughtful. She was inspired to make this concept album by reading female hagiographies from various parts of the world and religious traditions which were featured on the album depending on how they fit into her personal, non-conformist belief system. She sings in more than ten languages depending on the origin of the female saint which is how I learned that Judaism recognizes at least seven prophetesses and some Muslim faiths have saints! Aside from the intriguing concept, it’s a stunning musical project that blends all that I like about Kate Bush, Arca, and Björk and makes something so characteristically ROSALÍA.

When I embarked on this series, I wanted it to cover any kind of media discovery I make. So this time I have decided to talk about the anime I’d been watching lately. I finally watched Neon Genesis Evangelion after adding it to my watch list four years ago. Yes, it took me that long, but that‘s not really long by my standards. I was captivated by the show up until around episode 20 after which it just became incomprehensible. I was probably not paying much attention in the first attention because of the constant fighting, but also you shouldn’t switch the mode of storytelling halfway through your show. It felt edgy and like trying to be artsy and extra. It reminded me a lot of the ending to Euphoria season 1 which I still don’t quite understand after rewatching twice since my first watch. You shouldn’t switch up the narrative devices like that all of a sudden, period.

Then I also caught up with one of my all time favorite and comfort anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, with its newly released season. It was criticized for rehashing the first season in the comments on Miroru.tv a lot, but I don’t share that sentiment. I believe people who say stuff like that don’t understand what Frieren is about or trying to convey by its permanent calmness. Frieren lived for practically an eternity. There’s nothing that woman hasn’t seen or heard of yet. You get to feel that calmness that comes with old age when you finally know all that could be dangerous. However, in season 2 we see how not even a thousand years could’ve prepared you for everything so there is some added suspense.

Another recent roll-out was for Hell’s Paradise. I really like this show for its discussion of the legitimacy of violence. We see executioners and criminals convicted of murder among other things on an equal footing trying to survive and learning how each one of them is a human being. For us to justify ending or manipulating someone’s life, we have to structurally place them beneath us first. The executioners undergo a stunning character development, learning that their violence is the same as that of the criminals while being shrouded in political legitimacy. I really enjoyed this sequel and cannot wait to see the third season, same as with Frieren….

So, that’s it from me; media yapping time is over.

  1. I hope the sarcasm is obvious here.↩

#discoveries