pretty things 2
NewJeans - Get Up EP
I think the first electronic genre to really click with me excluding my Burial snob phase was UK garage, specifically the Conducta / Sammy Virji / Kiwi 2019-2020 wave. Like that nu UKG wave, the stuff Eldia / Swami Sound / dazegxd / gum are doing now, or even what salute is up to: there’s a version of this genre that’s bright, slushy, vocal-heavy, and still unmistakably distinctive. Given that quality, it’s unsurprisingly been a massive pop hit - PinkPantheress is the blaring example but Disclosure sounds a lot like a garage act these days too?
So then it’s funny to listen to a song like “Cool With You” where you can close your eyes, squint, and imagine that hook as a vocal ripped from a sample instead. I guess in some ways that’s exactly what cultural exchange is like in art, its component mediums being flattened by iteration and time, a Danish R&B artist writing demos for Korean teenagers who weren’t born when most UK garage standards were being released (not that I really was for a lot of those either).
Anyways this is the best Korean music released in my life so you already know I am here for the ride. Every song here absolutely rips especially the front half, instant classics. It makes for an interesting contrast to “Ditto” which wields equally critical influences (Baltimore / Jersey Club, bass) in a more understated way but it’s tough to say it’s much worse. I truly truly prayed for times like these.
BAMBII - “ONE TOUCH”
Makes me think a lot about the amaraee music from earlier this year, where you can pick out the dancehall, the Afrobeats, the jungle influences but the combined effect is something completely different and like a shot into the vein.
Sigur Ros - “Starálfur” (Ken Thomas)
One of my most embarrassing musical blind spots that’s finally clicked for me, this music is too good for this world and doesn’t really sound like it’s from it.
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee
This book - written by a Korean-American who immigrated to the US at the age of 3 in 1968 - seems to inhabit a type of Asian American anxiety that is partially familiar to me, but only in the way that history from textbooks might feel. All the component pieces are deeply familiar but are dead upon arrival as backdrop, context, archives. This is all Asian men who marry white women, minorities clashing with one another, Korean Americans who lose their native language. I also feel strongly that whatever makes this book feel foreign to me is what made it so important. The combined effect of this novel is a bit artificial and contrived, but I guess that's the form that anxiety at that time must have demanded: real intricacy / thoughtfulness in both its definition and its rebuttal.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
I think I probably just didn’t read this book when it was assigned to me in high school so it was cool to rectify that. With no incoming context I was prepared to be a little fucked up by this book but I was totally unprepared for it to be about an Asian-American second-generation son with a younger sister who grows up in Cambridge, MA and gets made fun of for his name. The contrast to Native Speaker was so perfect and instructive: a more recognizable arc but unrecognizable texture and detail. Also this is just much better.
Jay Caspian Kang - “Notes on Losing”
The best movies, music, etc. tend to stun me into silence but the best writing I read honestly pisses me off a little for being so good. This made me mad af
TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu)
I originally thought this was a “Jerry West would get cooked in today's NBA" situation in the first 15 min but it really grows over its course. Maybe part of the "slow start" is that I hadn't watched the other Noriko trilogy movies?
I know Ozu is Kore-Eda and Kogonada and everyone's daddy but i think what he nails is the matter-of-fact calmness with which he views life's sadness. Honestly the word "nails" doesn't really capture it because he IS that emotion, his movies are that, and that alignment between philosophy and aesthetic is something really incredible. Life is short, children disappoint, love turns to apathy, and Chishu Ryu nods and mhmms through it all.
I *gulp* am not really sure that I genuinely like the Ozu i've seen more than I do COLUMBUS or STILL WALKING but there's no real analog to the bravery with which Ozu approaches ennui. In that sense I can only bow down to the king.
Veeze - “Not a Drill” (Taz)
Best song on the best rap album of the year
Yellowface by R.F. Huang
It’s honestly pretty sweet I finished this a day after seeing BARBIE, another piece of art that juked criticism about its critical framework by choosing to be super super Meta. BARBIE’s core premise actually turns out to be somewhat flat (which is OK for a $1bn grossing summer blockbuster) and Yellowface’s is actually insanely dense, especially knowing a bit about Kuang's own rocket ship, and unfortunately it actually is pretty fun to try and parse that. But then at the close, I feel like I read / watched something that could be encapsulated in a premise, almost could be posed like a riddle or a brainteaser. I both admire the insight and am frustrated by it.
TWICE - “TT” (J.Y. Park)
I’ve listened to honestly a joke amount of K-Pop in the last 3 months trying to catch up on the decade I stopped paying attention and beyond NewJeans I’m still not totally convinced about how much I like it. This song is the primary exception, one of the best pop hooks I’ve ever heard in my life. The synth that rips through the hook defies belief.
Other things I loved:
Lucki - “Bby Pluto” (CAMEone, CuBeatz, Klimperboy & Tay Keith)
Rauw Alejandro - “CUANDO BAJE EL SOL” (Dímelo Ninow, Jorgie Milliano, Kenobi Sensei, Mr. Naisgai & Rauw Alejandro)
Babyface Ray - “Luh Tyler Flow” feat. Los & Nutty (Tana)
Luomo - “Tessio” (Luomo)
J Hus - Brutal and Beautiful Yard
454 & Surf Gang - FAST 5 EP
Faye Wong, just wow
CONTEMPT (Jean-Luc Godard) - I just didn’t know you could do this in the movies?
THE FIRST SLAM DUNK (Takehiko Inoue), the best movie and the best basketball game I’ve seen all year
https://nobells.blog/white-electronic-artists-love-pretending-to-be-asian/