Set and Forget 002
TLDR;
Music
FKA Twigs - Eusexua
Archie Shepp - Mama Rose (Album)
Irakere - Juana 1600 - San Batá
Film
The Substance (2024)
Visual
Four-Byte Burger - Jack Haegar and Ahoy
Music
FKA Twigs - Eusexua
Talk about vision. The first single from Twig’s upcoming album is one hell of a statement. It’s got me salivating for the rest of the record. This is stunningly creative.
But lets cut to the chase. The choreography. Wow. What they’ve done is breathtaking. It’s otherworldly, original and - on multiple occasions - gravity defying. Hats off to the entire dance team and choreographer Zoi Tatopoulos. They officially have my attention.
Archie Shepp - Mama Rose
Take your time with this one. Put it on while you’re making dinner and let it gently work it’s way into your blood. Let the warm water rise around your ankles and loosen you up.
This feel simultaneously timeless and of an era. I think it's the unusual pairing of Archie's tenor horn and the synths of Jasper Van't Hof. Jasper is calm, liquid, and understated. He gets a nice exnteded intro and then he sinks into the background and supports. Archie's horn is throaty. His tone achey; as if it's exhausted but ready to give 100% nonetheless. And it sings. Together they contrast beautifully. What a wonderful pairing.
And the space. There is so much space in this record. Space in the phrasing. Space in the record. The room itself where they performed stands has a presence that I love to hear on live albums. You really feel a sense of space. Even if it's not 100% realistic. It feels like I'm *there*. Wherever there is. There's a tactile sense of being on this record.
We get a rare vocal performance from Archie when he recites the title poem 'Mama Rose;. There's real guts in this delivery. Gusto. Half of the full-time singers out there don't have this much pathos. More, please.
Irakere - Juana 1600 - San Batá
Here’s another record that goes places. The extended percussion intro alone is meal enough, but wait for the major gear shift that occurs at 3:05 when the band enters. Pure fire. The energy is off. the. charts.
Just put it in my veins.
And whatever they're paying that horn section, double it.
Film
The Substance
Good Lort. Of everything that came out this month, The Substance stayed with me the longest. This film is intense, gross, obscene, unsettling, over the top, and it just keeps going. Far beyond the point anyone is expecting.
Coralie Fargeat has shot straight to the top of the directors I am keeping an eye on. There's so much confidence in every shot of this film and you feel it immediately.
It's a simple and direct morality play absent the trappings of today's "elevated" horror film (though I *do* enjoy those too). As my friend Joe observed, the story and style are straight out of a *Tales From the Crypt* comic book.
Most of all it is fun. As long as your idea of fun involves firehoses of blood. The body horror makes you squirm and Coralie revels in cranking up the intensity and absurdity of the situation and she doesn't take her foot off the gas until the characters literally have nothing left of themselves to give.
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are having so much fun here. Margaret plays the new "it" thing to perfection, but it's Demi who gets to go the farthest off road here. It's a fearless performance and unlike anything I've seen from her before. One particular scene in which she cooks up a Thanksgiving meal's worth of food had me cackling with delight. Her and Coralie take something uncomfortable and still find a way to make you laugh right along with it. If you can stand to look.
Side Note: I'm chuckling thinking about the voice mailbox of a certain character. There must be some wild stuff in their voicemails.
Visual
Four-Byte Burger
This is a loving work of recreation for an overlooked piece of pixel art from 1985 in the early days of computer illustration: Four-Byte Burger.
The software it was originally illustrated with was so new that they hadn't yet coded a save feature for the program. As a result the only artifact of Jack Haegar's original illustration was a photograph taken of the computer display (a literal screenshot) before the computer was eventually booted down and the artwork lost forever.
In his video, Ahoy goes to great lengths to not only recreate the image from scratch, but to simulate the screenshot by sourcing the original Amiga hardware, displaying it and then photographing it once more.
In all, this is a loving tribute to a wonderful drawing that's full of life and character.
Fun fact:
Ahoy (the video creator) also writes the soundtracks for his videos (which is great), in addition to the illustration, writing, narrating, editing and photography. I love that level of curation and creation for a singular piece of work. It's a real labor of love that shines through the entire production.
Four-Byte Burger, by Jack Haegar
