Roads To The North

Breakups, No Makeups: Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”

“Midsommar” is Ari Aster’s second full-length writing and directorial effort after 2018’s notable breakout flick “Hereditary”. It shares many of that debut’s hallmarks as far as Aster’s style goes; he is not an artist whose instinct is to reach for the jugular, eschewing such naked ambition as relates to the horror genre in favour of slowly evolving, and in this case deeply felt, tension punctuated by narrative shocks. The effect is to possibly leave some fans of traditional horror wanting more, but general cinema enthusiasts are likely to draw great sustenance from his limited body of work thus far. Contrary to an off-kilter guess by one of my friends, the film is a movie most probably unlike any you have seen before, not a big-screen adaptation of the lightweight British detective show Midsomer Murders(!).

To a greater extent than “Hereditary”, I would venture that “Midsommar” is not a particularly scary film, regardless of how it was marketed. It is an extremely tense and eerie piece which ramps up in carefully prescribed increments. The movie chronicles a grouping of American friends who follow their Swedish college peer Pelle back to Europe to experience a once-every-90-years festival amongst his home community. The main focus is on Dani, played outstandingly by Florence Pugh, who has experienced very recent trauma and whose relationship with her boyfriend Christian (also in attendance and played by Jack Reynor) seems to have entered its death throes. Will Poulter is relied on for much of the comedic sarcasm as Mark and William Jackson Harper is another notable character in the form of Josh. The opening scenes of the film in America are highly critical in establishing the character dynamics at play, which they do very efficiently, clearly portraying Dani’s uneasy relationship with the remainder of the group. Aster’s pacing of the story is tremendous, with great value apparent in the expository scenes which occur around dinner tables throughout, acting as checkpoints for our characters as events spiral.

Aster has rapidly codified his position as a creator whose films come as puzzleboxes. Just as in “Hereditary”, he scatters visual clues as to eventual happenings throughout, generally in the form of actual, expressive images. This merely enhances the foreboding of the film. Having seen both of his films in the cinema with larger groups than I am typically accustomed to attending the multiplex with, I have already noticed that Aster’s work provokes considerable debate as to meaning and leaves the audience walking away with plenty to discuss in terms of what they have actually just seen occur. The use of drawn imagery within the tapestry of the story establishes a roadmap for circumnavigating a collective reading of the film, which has struck me as an effective and interesting callback technique. Although it may be malleable to argued interpretation, Aster likes to weave a mythos.

To me, “Midsommar” has several thematic currents running through it. One seems to be the hidden darkness of social democracy. Scandinavian countries and those generally affiliated to them (chiefly Iceland and, especially, Finland) have been widely acclaimed as paragons of societal excellence. In the same way that those on the Remain side of the hellish fever dream that is Brexit have largely ignored the rise of the far-right throughout mainland Europe across all of the continent’s classic fault lines (to say nothing of the once-unthinkable corresponding rise in fascist thought in the UK itself), any idyllic portrayal of Sweden would need to turn a blind eye to the constant march of the fascistic, nationalist Sweden Democrats party during the last decade, as the issue of immigration (as part of a somewhat unspoken debate on globalisation) has served to poison the body politic of the nation in much the same way as it has around Europe. Reading a rejection of outsiders and foreigners who fail to ‘respect’ and ‘honour’ the norms of a community into a watching of “Midsommar” is not the stuff of academia, although it can just as easily be taken as a play on Americans’ fear of the outside world, toying with American domestic anxiety in the way almost every great American horror film ever made has done.

Although much more subtle, gender relations seem a touchstone here as well, as I shall comment on momentarily. While in the context of the film Midsommar is a fictional festival, it is based on traditional Swedish summer gatherings. Part of the genius of Aster’s writing is to intertwine these ideas with concepts such as ättestupa, ancient Swedish sites where ritual senicide apparently took place, and the ‘blood eagle’ method of ritual execution, also drawn from Scandinavian history. These twists in the tale, among the movie’s wooziest and most nauseous, evidence a beautifully researched film and are embedded effortlessly, lending the movie what I would call a synthetic or confected authenticity from a melding of disparate but interrelated parts, which makes a profound sense to viewers of the film even if only subliminally, and is one of the hardest achievements in writing of any form; Aster seamlessly inserts dusted-down folklore from the cultural framework within which he has set his story, in an expert appeal to the comparatively contemporary form that is the horror movie. The character of Josh has some familiarity with these concepts and seems an on-screen proxy of Aster’s in this sense, as he aspires to complete his thesis on midsummer traditions. Aster still cannot resist a more typical nod to horror, as Josh, a black character, and despite race not having factored into the film overtly, is the first we see meet his end, with what is displayed as an at least minor form of insider knowledge shielding him not one bit once his curiosity gets the better of him and he attempts to steal the commune’s most sacred document.

It was not long after the film’s release before accounts of how some of these festivities have been experienced from a female vantage point surfaced, replete with sexual entitlement and violence. There is nothing to suggest that this is uniquely Swedish; instead, it only seems to be uniquely male, occurring as it does in a patriarchal society. I refer there to Sweden at large but the same seems to apply to Pelle’s community; the gender roles seem very traditionally imagined and, notwithstanding Dani’s merciless redemption, men still seem to be the smirking winners. Although Dani is not exposed to sexual harm on screen, undercurrents of sexual expectation and coercion permeate her one-to-one conversations with Pelle, which are deeply uncomfortable, and seem far more sinister than those she has with her feckless, sad-sack boyfriend Christian, whose behaviour and fashion choices in the movie combined to gain the character a meme as “scoop neck T-shirt guy”, someone women should steer clear of but only for reasons of deceit with a side-serving of significant disappointment. As opposed to Pelle however, he did at least never attempt to crowbar his way into a twisted knight in shining armour narrative as part of a wider scheme to position himself and Dani as figureheads of the cult at the centre of the movie while the bodies pile up in the background.

Both because “Midsommar” is a strange and unsettling film and also because some of it seems written for absurdity, audiences are likely to find themselves laughing as much as gasping throughout. That was certainly the case when I saw it, and this heightens the atmosphere in which this film should be viewed, for me. A scene towards the film’s conclusion when a villager selected by lottery is cheerily prompted to come forward to be considered for execution in the style of a “The Price Is Right” contestant had me suppressing a belly laugh. You may need to check both your pulse and your sense of the comedic if you can get through the film’s crescendo-ing centrepiece of a sex scene without some hysterical chuckling. This soon-to-be infamous scene is among the most musically-inclined of coital presentations I can recall on screen, requiring only the human voice as an instrument. The uniqueness of “Midsommar” unfolding almost entirely in daylight at the height of Swedish summer, possibly unprecedented for a horror flick, is worth mentioning and serves to enhance the already radiant cinematography and use of bold, striking colour throughout. However, to me sound, or more specifically a lack of it, is the most essential element of the film, and this scene is just one example of why.

The film is scored by visionary British producer The Haxan Cloak, whose 2013 album “Excavation” remains an intense capturing of how sound can shift psychic earth. His detailing of how he interrogated traditional folk music, employed a specialist in the interpretation of sacred texts through singing and had his own non-existent instruments crafted in the same vein in order to lovingly and organically ensnare the sound needed to bring “Midsommar” to its maximum potential is well worth tracking down. The score lends the film vitality and is every bit as central to it as any of the acting, photography or writing; there is no hierarchy. All of these facets coexist in a steadying equilibrium constituting the essence of the completed film. Whether he had any involvement in the aforementioned sex scene is not known to me, but would be no surprise since it is entirely operatic.

This synthesis between the writing of the film’s music and Aster’s story itself is best exemplified by an unnamed character; an oracle who is the product of incest. Disabled people seem to have an almost divine status within this community, and the paintings of this individual form the basis for the group’s sacred manuscripts. Although not seemingly formally mute, the oracle is essentially presented as such. Absence of sound becomes integral to the film as it develops. When Christian is paralysed during the movie’s denouement, he is also unable to communicate in any way as he meets a surreal demise. The deceased, who are served up around him in a macabre, ceremonial fashion, are presented in a way which suggests an excision of the head from the human body; a grotesque, mocking neutralisation of the vocal chords. This seems to nod silently to the way in which silence drives horror in certain communities, which spreads like contagion through cities, countries and continents in turn. Some viewers may scoff at my earlier suggestion that there were suggestions of the dynamic of rape or even sexual violence in some of the film’s scenes, but a critical tenet of rape culture is that rape does not have to be mentioned to be considered normal or even to occur. Silence, a central thematic thread of “Midsommar” to these eyes (and ears), brings sexual and political violence in its wake, from the Swedish backwoods to Washington, D.C. Every character to appear in this film deserves a better, more consensual and mutually understanding world.

One of the most astonishing things about “Midsommar” is that it is Aster’s attempt to fuse the traditional slasher film with a breakup film, the latter concept being the one which unlocked the realisation of the former concept for him, based on his own breakup. You cannot help but ask how savage a breakup Aster went through to devise this story, particularly once you have witnessed the choices Dani makes at the movie’s conclusion! One of the other most astonishing things, for which we should give considerable thanks, is that a movie this madcap was commissioned. We need to celebrate the fact that this is one of the barmiest movies you are ever likely to see. There is no doubt that it will divide audiences down its centre; among those I attended it with, one described it as “The Wicker Man turned down”, another independently as “The Wicker Man on speed”! The glorious and sometimes gruesome insanity of the film, which transports us to an otherworld where we catch potent glimpses of our own, ought to be enough for any viewer to take the plunge. Aster has hinted that he is done with horror, and even if “Midsommar” proves to be his magnum opus of horror or just in general, I can’t help but have the impression that what constitutes horror to us may differ significantly to what falls into the bracket for this most enthralling of young writers and directors.

Wu Bangaz

In the early 90s, RZA was busy assembling a crew of nine MCs from New York (including himself) with a plan for world domination. By the time the collective’s second group album “Wu-Tang Forever” smashed to the top of the US charts in 1997, transitioning out of what would be known as the “First Wave” of the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA the musician had vaulted himself straight onto any Mount Rushmore of hip hop producers. His vision of the capabilities and possibilities for several of his lyricists saw him reimagine hip hop music a couple of times over, spawn burgeoning sub-genres and remould the vocabulary of the scene. The term “Wu Banga” entered the lexicon for any track featuring multiple of RZA, GZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, U-God, Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa, Method Man and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, not to mention numerous affiliates of which Cappadonna, today a paid-up member, was the most prominent. Using a base definition which includes at least three of the aforementioned figures on any track, I have attempted here to do right by what I would consider the ten most vital, powerful of the Wu Bangaz. In truth, you could do a follow-up list of ten more of a barely less certified quality, and maybe I will one day!

TRIUMPH

From Wu-Tang Clan – “Wu-Tang Forever” (1997)

1997’s “Wu-Tang Forever” was the commercial peak for the collective, a furious crescendo of hype ultimately dead-stopped by one of the first and biggest examples of prioritising bloat over bounty in the hip hop genre. The album’s lead single inverted that formula, infamously clocking in at almost six minutes with no hook and still generating the white hot radio energy which powered that very same promotion. Opening with yet another of the finest verses in the Inspectah Deck arsenal (and one of the Wu’s most unforgettable starting gun bars: “I bomb atomically, Socrates philosophies/And hypotheses can’t define how I be dropping these/Mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery/Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me”), RZA launches a relentless, climbing orchestral payload which almost banishes any memories of the rickety beats which birthed his legend. Everyone except ODB, who briefly plays hypeman, is unchained on the mic. This is as savage but controlled an example you’ll ever hear of blowing up on your own terms, without compromise. It is a panoramic showcase of a group at the peak of the powers they would never quite recapture. To a man, the Wu’s finest mix testament with the wisdom of superior civilisations, referring incessantly to pestilence, warfare, slums and other contemptuously human delights, but never better summarised than when Raekwon’s voice is encompassed by static in another of those debatebly accidental studio watermarks he seems to magnetise so proficiently; “delegate the God to see God”.

GUILLOTINE (SWORDZ)

From Raekwon – “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” (1995)

This towering cut from Raekwon’s glimmeringly crafted, certified-A classic “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” is perhaps the most devastating of all Wu-Bangaz. The ominous, fluttering beat is signature First Wave RZA, parked equidistantly between the basement grinders he had specialised prolifically in and the new expansive atmospheres he was now mastering. The Wu-Tang tag is never as spine-tingling as when it opens this masterpiece; “allow me to demonstrate the skill of Shaolin, the special technique of shadowboxing”. Inspectah Deck sounds almost breathless to get on the track and then explodes all over it (“Poisonous paragraphs smash your phonograph in half/It be the Inspectah Deck on the warpath/First class, leaving mics with a cast/Causing ruckus like the aftermath when guns blast”), somehow leaving enough beat for Ghost, Rae and GZA to attack, and boy do they! This track enshrines the ultimate yield from RZA’s strategy of making the Wu’s elite rappers compete with each other for beats and studio time. Picking a best lyric from this is a thankless and indeed senseless task, loaded as it is with some of each MC’s finest quotables. Ghostface is at his stream-of-consciousness best, Raekwon richly details street life in another laureate-worthy performance (complete with that lubricious misspeaking of “stamina”, and when he declares “go to bat with 50 other niggas on the other side of the map”, the way his pronunciation rolls almost sends spittle flickering into the eardrum). Length-wise, GZA’s contribution is nearly an epilogue, but harnesses the magic of his “Liquid Swords” opus, hurling naught but poison darts, a clinic of flow and form. “The land of the lost/Notorious henchman from the North/Striking niggas where the Mason-Dixon Line cross”. Then we’re out. This is iconography on wax.

C.R.E.A.M.

From Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)

In terms of appearances from Wu members, this is the leanest track on this list. With Raekwon and Inspectah Deck verses either side of Method Man on his regular hook duty, this could be a low key affair. However, once again, the elements involved combine to fashion something of grand import. Lifting the opening piano tinkling from The Charmels’ “As Long As I’ve Got You” was about all it took for RZA to craft one of the most haunting loops in hip hop history, although to call it haunting suggests a certain deftness of touch. As feathery as those keys sound, they sear into the consciousness of the golden age hip hop fan, just as deeply as Meth’s seemingly simple but endlessly repeatable chorus. Cash Rules Everything Around Me is the eternal manifesto of hip hop, a genre as assimilated by capitalism as any other and which continues to struggle every day with that identity. The motto is out of necessity rather than desire, as these two verses document the harsh reality of being young and black in a New York City of 25 years ago (Rae: “I grew up on the crime side/The New York Times side/Stayin’ alive was no jive”). Like Common’s madly underrated “Chapter 13 (Rich Man vs. Poor Man)”, the track evidences how to celebrate the acquisition of capital in a tasteful manner, even as a necessary condition of mere survival. Deck, pacing himself hard to let the message slam, gets the final word on one of the most instantly recognisable and truly iconic tracks of hip hop history. “Leave it up to me while I be living proof/To kick the truth to the young black youth/But shorty’s running wild, smoking sess, drinking beer/And ain’t trying to hear what I’m kicking in his ear/Neglected for now, but yo, it gots to be accepted/That what? That life is hectic”.

HEATERZ

From Wu-Tang Clan – “Wu-Tang Forever” (1997)

This may seem like a surprise inclusion ahead of some of the much-acclaimed tracks vying for a spot on the list, but one of only two productions not laced by RZA here is titanic enough to warrant inclusion on its own. The way his understudy True Master flips “Giving Up” by Gladys Knight and The Pips into a monumental, skyscraping siren, with a seriously understated bass throb, makes it sound more like it came from time itself than any studio; you can imagine it wailing out at the storming of the Bastille, the completion of the Pyramids and the assassination of Julius Caesar. There is an additional unique feel to this track on this list also, in that it features a stack of supposed undercarders within the Wu roster, with the exception of Raekwon, closing as it does with U-God and Wu affiliate Cappadonna. Rae still steals the limelight from a technical perspective, with a sublime display of assonance and internal rhyming (“Cream redeemers, name your God Ukarema/Shout out Medina, federaloes Noxzema/Me, jury cleaner, Million Man March screamers/Rae Cartagena, cut your joint, Wolverin(e)”; bordering on the surreal) although Deck runs him close by reaching for his preferred gunpowder. When it comes to overlooked tracks, this is one of the deepest of deep cuts. “Hot like Pop Tarts/Aim me at the charts!” is Capp’s calling card on this one.

WINTER WARZ

From Ghostface Killah – “Ironman” (1996)

I’ve singled out Inspectah Deck a lot in this piece, and every noose drop he releases across these cuts haunts Wu heads with the possibility of what might have been. Fanatical followers of the collective know that not one but two basement floods in the early 90s destroyed a significant quantity of RZA’s recordings, torturously depriving us of a planned First Wave Deck solo album. Even the title of his eventual, much-delayed 1999 debut “Uncontrolled Substance” screams classic, though the completely reworked material was not up to the standard. A dreamy exercise in alternate history though it may be, this is one of the biggest recording travesties in music to me, and it is hard to think that mythical album would have been anything but plutonium grade judging by yet another fireball verse here. “Chrome tones hear the moans of Al Capone/Gun-pow! to the dome and split the bone/Wig blown off the ledge by the alleged/Full-fledged, sledge RZA edge”. On his own solo tilt here and hot off his co-headline role on Raekwon’s seismic debut, Ghost is already at work cementing his eventual status as the Wu’s most prolific and celebrated lyricist. As Deck does, he makes masterful use of pausing (subtly; this is Ghost after all!) to cut lines in half and switch the rhyme schemes on this track, a technique of incredible poetic and aural value. This is all before Cappadonna snaps, searing home with the longest and surely most furious verse of his career, which makes up for a lack of technicality with sheer passion (“My repertoire is U.S.S.R./P.L.O. Style got thrown out the car/And ran over by the Method Man jeep” is a highlight). All this over a tingling, twisted, burrowing circus melody from RZA and drums which skitter and tick savagely over a blustering low end seemingly syncopated to the percussion by dark magic; elements which comprise one of my favourites of his productions.

4^TH CHAMBER

From GZA – “Liquid Swords” (1995)

It’s probably better that we don’t know which circle of the underworld RZA had to reach down into, and what he had to do to gain access, in order to resurface with this beat. Talk about the sum of its parts. Every sound on this beat flows together irresistibly, creating a chaotic, densely sinister tapestry, from the writhing keyboard, the stomping bleeps, that Halloweenish central melody to that jack-knifing riff of static which pulsates up and down viciously. It is mirrored every inch by the line-up of all-stars on the mic, who each turn in performances so supercharged that the drums may constitute a sample of the very corpse of hyperbole thumping down on the lawn, so difficult is it to convey the absolute wizardry on display here. GZA even fires off a punning one line encapsulation of his producer’s entire oeuvre; “RZA shaved the track, niggas caught razor bumps”. This may well be the perfect Wu Banga; certainly it contends for the very pinnacle of all that is the hip hop genre as an artform and philosophy. “Liquid Swords” is quite possibly the strongest lyrical album of all time, with GZA exemplifying a style so surgical and economical that it seems gleaned from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” more than a study of any MC. Look at some of these thunderbolts he fires off; “disciplinary action was a fraction of strength/That made me truncate the length one tenth”. “Watch me blow him out his shoes without clues/Cos I won’t hesitate to detonate a short fuse”. Killah Priest, who contributes one of hip hop’s best ever tracks to the album (the legendary “B.I.B.L.E.”) also appears here alongside Ghost (“Ironman be sippin’ rum out of Stanley Cups”) and RZA himself, turning in one of his own most biblical verses (“the Ebola virus, under the reign of King Cyrus/You can see the weakness of a man right through his iris”). There’s little justice to be done to the track other than by hearing it.

DA MYSTERY OF CHESSBOXIN’

From Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)

Especially when combined with its instantly iconic video, this is as game-changing a track as is contained on the group’s colossal debut album. The flickering, otherworldly production, modelled on martial arts scores, such a critical tenet of RZA’s sublime aesthetic (brilliantly displayed by employing sword swipe sound effects as editing on the video version), is eye-of-the-storm perfection ripe for him to unleash his elite crew onto. The result is a slaughterous, marvellously exciting canvass of meticulous rapping which profoundly displays the diversity of RZA’s lyrical direction of the group. Ol’ Dirty Bastard shines here in his distinctly oddball way (“Rappenin’ is what’s happenin’/Keep the pockets stacked and then hands clapping and/At the party when I move my body/Gotta get up and beeeeeeeeee somebody!”), as does Masta Killa’s abstract sermonising, Ghostface’s high-intensity breakneck braggadocio (“Speaking of the devil, psyche!/No, it’s the God; get your shit right/Mega trife, and yo, I killed you in a past life” or alternatively “Yo, nobody budge, while I shot slugs/Never shot thugs/I’m running with thugs that flood mugs”), Meth’s soon-to-be-signature cameo as a hypeman on steroids, the grit-strewn authenticity of Raekwon, the chainsaw-precision of Inspectah Deck (“Don’t talk the talk, if you can’t walk the walk/Phoney niggas are outlined in chalk”) and even the dastardly flow of the oft underrated U-God. Long before Burial managed to ensnare the very essence of the London Underground with his Stendhal syndrome-inducing, night-dwelling beats, this track was the sound of the darkest of New York Subway corners, the underground rocketing into a hyperrealist mainstream. It is a challenge for anyone to articulate the black mass of atmosphere, ability and visionary conceptual formation encased within this track, even a quarter of a century later.

WU BANGA 101

From Ghostface Killah – “Supreme Clientele” (2000)

If we consider “Wu-Tang Forever” to be transitionary between the phases of the Wu-Tang catalogue, then this is the only Second Wave track strong enough to make my final cut. It is the de facto seal on Ghostface Killah’s second solo opus, the only of the Wu’s sophomore gambits to live up to the legend of its preceding album. Laced by Mathematics, the wintry beat is smooth like caramel, cooked up as if by some suave-ass aurumancer. Only GZA seems to outshine Inspectah Deck in his individual appearances throughout this article; “no surprise, double disc touched five/Those elements kept environments colonised/With the high-flying, death-defying flow like the rebel/Right there but you’re one light year from my level”. Ghostface’s signature storytelling is at its comedic and observational finest here. “Slapped the pastor, didn’t know Pop had asthma/He pulled out his blue bible, change fell out his coat/Three condoms, two dice, one bag of dope/Oooooh! Rev ain’t right!” Raekwon is busy dropping only luxurious gems, while with Masta Killa it’s all about the usual change of pace and the critical enunciation; “Kicks to your face/Shots to the body that shake like the bass/I’m Ghostfaced up, military styled down”. Chronologically this is the last track on this list, and you would have to search very carefully beyond Ghostface solo joints to find Wu collective cuts of this calibre again.

WU-GAMBINOS

From Raekwon – “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” (1995)

This is one of the most towering contributions to the Wu-Tang mythology, and edges the preceding track on the same album, the also staggering “Ice Cream”, for that very reason. This monumental, apocryphal track, as much as any on the album, sent Mafioso shockwaves reverberating across the genre, pulling even Nas into its gravitational pull, so that when the one album legend returned to try to follow up “Illmatic” a year later he was referring to himself as Escobar and detailing the high risk, high reward lifestyle in similarly granular depth. Looping, skeletal piano fresh from RZA’s lab provides the launch pad. Method Man flaunts his sixth sense for serious ear candy; “who come to get you none/They want guns/I be the first to set off shit, last to run/Wu roll together as one/I call my brother son ‘cos he shine like one”. Unforgettable. His style was very often the most graspable of the Wu MCs, with that buttery smooth flow which seemed effortless, and every other couplet here is hype-worthy. This is before a stacked line-up of Rae and Ghost, RZA and Masta Killa turn things out. Any self-respecting Wu head wants to hear RZA on his own shit spitting “the grand exquisite imperial wizard, or is it?/The RZArector come to pay your ass a visit/Local biochemical, universal giant; the black general/Licking shots at Davy Crockett on the bicentennial/At the millennia two thousand/ Microchips, two shots of penicillin goes up your adrenaline”. Let’s let the lyrics speak for themselves.

PROTECT YA NECK

From Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)

The quintessential Wu Banga. RZA’s production is dank, dirty, utterly filthy, jarring back and forth with the aid of the outstanding use of blasts of sonic sqwauk to cover up curses, even on the album version (the rare unedited cut would become known as the “Bloody Version”), making it a rare example of a clean version which arguably hurdles its unsullied counterpart, if only for its contribution to the track’s Bomb Squad-esque wall of sound. Only Masta Killa is fully absent, and only Masta Killa fails to grace the track with jewels. A countdown of the ten best lyrical moments from this song would inherently involve stiff competition for inclusion, and might even come out entirely constructed from GZA lines (“First of all, who’s your A&R?/A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar/But he don’t know the meaning of dope/When’s he looking for a suit and tie rap that’s cleaner than a bar of soap”). Inspectah Deck drops a lyric which crosses over so hard that I once heard Jon Gruden on Monday Night Football paraphrasing it to describe Antonio Brown! “Terrorise the jam like troops in Pakistan/Swinging through your town like your neighbourhood Spiderman”. The track is packed with catchphrases like ODB’s; “Shame on you when you stepped through to/The Ol’ Dirty Bastard straight from the Brooklyn Zoo!” Vocally the whole thing sounds remarkably natural, in appropriately sharp contrast to the twisted shards of the bombed-out aural metropolis which fancies itself a beat. The entire composition is head-spinningly dense, especially as it locates the Clan prior to any of their solo breakouts. The track really distills not just this collective but the whole hip hop genre down to its purest form, with the basement production, the never-ending carousel of battle-ready verses, the sheer white-knuckle excitement of an entirely new constellation of artists who seem to have emerged from the creative womb as fully-formed soon-to-be legends. There are few tracks as visceral in any of the canons you may care to group this cut into.

Baths

Recently, I took a bath for the first time in a long time. Since moving home two and a half years ago, I calculate that I have graced my bathtub a grand total of five times. A casual and entirely unscientific straw poll of associates suggests that people generally lean towards showers, although not exclusively. Yet many agreed that baths are the more enjoyable, when we bother to enjoy them. A cursory glance at the Internet suggests that if managed correctly, showers are the more water and energy efficient option against baths, although this doesn’t seem to be a motivation for most people. I suspect that, much like many other vital, recharging activities such as sitting around doing and thinking about nothing and, erm, sleeping, baths are just another casualty of our contemporary, supercharged, late capitalist lifestyles. This seems inextricably tied to the fact that where bathing was once a very public affair, it is now utterly private, and therefore has little anchor in a world which demands that we let things play out in the public glow of social media. Yet like sleep, the bath is clearly invigorating and allows us to be reborn. It is literally and figuratively cleansing and seems to transform me each time I take the dip. The moments alone with only your thoughts can be reimagined as an act of resistance in this context. So exactly why are baths portrayed as locations of danger in much of our culture? I’d argue that this is evidence of their importance as a phenomenon.

Time and time again in much of our canon, the bath is a perilous spot. It seems that this is because bath-time finds us at our most vulnerable. Detached from a world from which we rarely escape, experiencing utmost relaxation and with nothing at all to hide (unless you don’t take baths naked, in which case OK), this puts us at our furthest removed from our daily demands and tribulations. It is a rare state of peace. My friend Sandra described it thus when I brought up the subject: “I believe people love baths because it feels a bit like how we felt when we were in the womb. Warm and safe…I truly believe it triggers that feeling in our brains. That’s why people get very relaxed; it reminds us of a time where there was nothing to worry about”. This fascinated me and is very much on to something, but raises intrigue since, as I shall discuss, the bath is regularly portrayed not as a haven, but a dangerous zone. There is an interplay here, a convergence between life and death which makes the bath so powerful.

**“The Death of Marat” by Jacques-Louis David, perhaps the most iconic bathtub death going**

One of the most evocative depictions of bathing in Western culture is a gruesome one. This is “The Death of Marat”, the 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David, immortalising the murder of his fellow Montagnard and French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat, at the height of the French Revolution, by the Girondin sympathiser Charlotte Corday. The fact that Marat was taking a medicinal bath to treat his notable skin ailments adds a layer of vulnerability, although a layer of complexity is certainly added on top by Marat’s significance during the Reign of Terror and the September Massacres in particular. This painting evidences a different convergence, of the mundane with the electrically political. This is iconic stuff for sure, and an immortal portrayal of the exposure involved in taking a bath. Corday strikes Marat at his weakest.

Contemporary equivalence might be drawn with the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror classic and seminal slasher movie, “Psycho”. Now, I know this occurs in a shower and not a bath but it delves into so many similar themes and preys on such a rich vein of contemporary anxiety that it seems churlish to force the difference. Barely a canonical American horror film has passed since without conjuring up our most horrible, shared, public fears about the yoke of domesticity and what may lurk on the other side of a (in this case, shower) curtain. By all accounts, “Psycho”, and the shower scene in particular, was considered in equal parts revolutionary and abhorrent depending on who was asked. Cinema-goers had never seen anything like it on a mass scale. The cinematography, the score, the image of trickling blood circling the plughole, are all irresistibly imprinted on our cultural retina. The scene is nauseating, features fluid but undeniable sexual elements and marks the point in Western culture when violence, preferably with added sex, became an essential form of both entertainment and commerce. This is the epicentre of a head-spinning sociocultural vortex. What makes the scene even more significant for me is an often overlooked fact. Earlier in the scene is the first occurrence of a toilet being flushed in American cinema. This shattering of a, in hindsight rather weird, taboo is usually understandably forgotten, but clearly incorporates the bathroom as a whole into the stage on which Hitchcock orchestrates an insurrectionary unchaining of mass repression. Every theme involved is just as relevant to the bath, that other porcelain motif of the ideal home. The theme continues to be recycled for less stellar horror films, such as in 2000 flick “What Lies Beneath” and its accompanying promotional material.

**This poster for “What Lies Beneath” effortlessly invokes the bathtub as a Hitchcockian symbol of domestic terror**

Those are just two of several of our most prominent examples of how the bath intertwines with mortality. Doors frontman Jim Morrison, countercultural prophet and one of the most notable members of the 27 Club, was found dead in a Paris bathtub in 1971. More recently, Whitney Houston was discovered in a similar position, in Beverly Hills in 2012. Kanye West paid a reported $85,000 to adorn the cover of Pusha T’s 2018 “Daytona” album with a picture of Houston’s fatal bathroom, a crass and tasteless act on one hand, but also suggestive of the fact that West understands and channels controversy as well as ever and also appreciates the narrative undercurrents involved in the circumstances. The shot is morbidly fascinating as a twisted photo negative of David’s aforementioned painting and plays with the same horror in a modern context. Musical giants are our modern revolutionaries and like Robespierre, Saint-Just and indeed Marat, they seem to desire a temporal agelessness which currently remains out of their reach. As pleasurable as it can be for each of us, the bathtub is an inglorious enough rock on which to dash the ships of their otherworldly dreams.

Some 400 years earlier was the time of Hungarian countess and alleged serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, who reputedly bathed in the blood of her virginal victims in order to preserve her youth. Although this slice of yore is reportedly in fact a timeless fiction, at least so far as the bloodbath element of the tale goes, it is as evocative a form of cultural myth-making as the deaths of Morrison and Houston. Besides, it is easier to be seduced by such a folkloric yarn when it would make Bathory arguably the best ever example of nominative determinism (run close for me by the American Football cornerback Buster Skrine!). Nothing better summarises how the bath edges us closer to rebirth and death simultaneously than Bathory utilising murder in pursuit of vitality. When we bathe do we yearn to return to the womb as Sandra suggested, or do we surrender ourselves to forces which may undo us in the hope of emerging even better than when we plunged? The thrill of not knowing is part of why we should make the exploration more regularly if we can.

**The cover of “Daytona” by Pusha T, which channels Whitney Houston’s death scene at the behest of Kanye West**

Not all of our touchstones on this topic are as doom-laden or as leaden. In the 2010 comedy “Hot Tub Time Machine”, after travelling back to the 1980s via a time-travelling hot tub (come on, it’s a form of bath!), one of the protagonists witnesses his own conception in the most existential of the examples I am listing here. The gravitational pull of the thematics surrounding water appliances on the psyche of writers is seemingly very strong. When Alan Partridge looks to help listeners to his Norfolk Nights radio show relax in “I’m Alan Partridge” during his laughable ‘Alan’s Deep Bath’ segment (“brought to you by Dettol”), he can’t help but qualify his mindful instructions with the caveat “don’t fall asleep and slip under; some terrible statistics about that”. Although obviously played for laughs, and successfully, Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci cannot help but spike the idea of an inviting, soothing bathing experience with a shot of danger and impermanence.

How should we read all of this? If we all take more baths, could we change the world? Are cultural markings of the bath (and wider bathroom) as a hazard a form of unconscious, or even conscious, propaganda? Perhaps not quite, but British governments presumably only reach for the hosepipe ban in drought conditions because a bath ban would be practically unenforceable. I take the evidence of the bath as an icon of potential disaster and of the venue of a complex dance between forces of life and death in popular culture and beyond merely as proof of the state of deep and profound reflection it allows us to access. This places us uniquely in a position of exposure as discussed, which is fertile staging ground within cultural frameworks for the navigation of issues of politics, society, the impossibility of immortality and an incessant striving to recover a childlike sense of contentment. When we bathe, we unplug from the matrix, we care for our mental health and we grant ourselves an essential rejuvenation. In doing all of these things we rebel, which is why we should bathe more.

Yesterday

“Yesterday”, for anyone living in a cultural vacuum of late, is a Danny Boyle-directed, Richard Curtis-penned new film in which struggling musician Jack Malik (played by Himesh Patel) emerges from a worldwide blackout as apparently the only person on Earth who remembers The Beatles. Lily James plays his love interest Ellie, while the film also prominently features Kate McKinnon and, yes, Ed Sheeran. Boyle seems a half-decent choice for the sort of big, British event cinema Curtis likes to write, having directed harder-hitting flicks in a strangely similar vein and, most memorably, coordinated the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London to huge fanfare. I’m not going to comment much on Boyle’s contribution here; it is slick and efficient. I didn’t find anything interesting about it, which to me is probably a criticism. I have enjoyed his films before, but as we shall get into, a director does need subject matter. In terms of directing, nothing jumps out here. In terms of its substance, the film raises many interesting questions about nothing less than the nature of art, but not in as profound a fashion as that sentence might first suggest.

The main question this film raises for me is about how we should treat art vis-à-vis its intentions. If Curtis just wished to write another nicey-nicey film in the style of “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually”, two very popular and enduring films, and happened to stumble upon a way to do it which plays out on the backs of The Beatles’ music, is that OK? That is what has happened, after all. This film is perfectly fun to watch once. It is going to sound like I am annihilating it in the upcoming paragraphs. In truth I am, but there is a shadow version here where I have no qualms with this as a form of mass entertainment. I am no different to anyone else in that I go to the cinema as a form of escapism. However, I don’t think it is unfair to say I am possibly more interested in the artform than some, and certainly music is my favourite artform. A question “Yesterday” brings into view is whether I have any right to traduce something which failed to live up to my expectations if those expectations were formed from an entirely different angle to that from which Richard Curtis decided to write the script.

First learning that acts like The Beatles and The Beach Boys (more on them later) were among the most important groups in the history of popular music not just for their trailblazing pop but also for later becoming impossibly influential and keenly experimental bands who embraced the possibilities of the album and of musical recording is a critical rite of passage for any discerning music nerd, along with the Aphex Twin phase or the discovery of Norwegian black metal to name but a couple. Very little of the former’s finest moments in this second regard (I’m talking “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “A Day In The Life,” “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” etc) feature here. There are only 16 tracks from the entire catalogue employed in the film, and they lean heavily towards the pop end of the spectrum, although some of their best known later tracks do feature. All 16 tracks are great songs in my opinion, but it feels like a massive oversight to not highlight everything which made the band so mercurial.

One butterfly effect of The Beatles’ disappearance from the canon is that Oasis do not exist. Malik mutters “that figures”, for a neat little gag. At this point the question is why The Fratellis existed then? They exist prominently in fact, featuring on Malik’s wall and a t-shirt he wears. This is a bizarre inconsistency and it does feel churlish to rip the film apart to this detail, but expecting us to follow this is a huge ask! The Beach Boys are not mentioned despite the creative rivalry between The Beatles and Brian Wilson driving the late 60s magnificence of both outfits. I accept that you cannot mention every act going in this context, but to be thrown merely one bone would be lovely. It means that the film is not seriously approaching the premise it has been set up to tackle, which is very simply “what does a world without The Beatles look like?” If the answer is “Oasis don’t exist”, it’s not the most inspiring deconstruction. I have heard many music fans, mostly of the metal persuasion, ask the question of whether The Beatles would succeed if they emerged today. It is usually asked sneeringly, but is a good question. It is asked the wrong way around really as The Beatles obviously wouldn’t need to exist today and the question of what music history would be like if you removed them is the correct chronological rendering of the idea, or at least one which doesn’t ignore the fact that “Helter Skelter” is sometimes considered the first ever heavy metal recording. However, on paper it seems correct to say that there is no guarantee that a Beatles canon dropped into contemporary culture would succeed as easily as it does in this movie. Additionally, we may never know who Curtis had to call to get Neutral Milk Hotel’s name into this script.

History is written by the victors and Curtis can have his way in this script. He imagines a scenario where the magic of The Beatles’ music is all-winning, irrespective of era or cultural context. This is pure Hollywood and doesn’t celebrate their music in the way he thinks it does. The film is a wishy-washy diet product if you want any considered historical thought. In truth, Curtis abrogates any effort to grapple with his central issue via the scene in which two other characters present who, it turns out, also remember The Beatles. Initially the scene is correctly pronounced as foreboding, until we discover that they have only arrived to kiss Malik’s feet. If this actually played out, you have to suspect that the ensuing battle over the legacy of The Beatles would be far more fraught and bloody. No though, in “Yesterday”, The Beatles only have to be brought back into existence and that is enough (literally in the case of a late scene with ‘John Lennon’, which given the film’s mishandling of his music is surprisingly sweet). It is simpler not to ask what anything means. As I’ve already questioned though, does this matter? If people enjoy the film (and many critics have, audiences even more so), is my dislike of how it treats The Beatles even remotely relevant?

Many commentators have rightly raised the fact that Patel is British of Indian origin. The question that this raises is whether casting alone can be considered transgressive, independent of any evidence of exposition in the script? We can delve into the question here because this film is almost entirely free of any reference to race, weirdly given the circumstances. Casting an ethnic minority individual to carry the music of the band in this film is more becoming of the revolutionary elements of not just The Beatles’ early pop work but also their incredible strides in the second half of their career, truly reinvigorating the album format. Yet seemingly midwifing (some of) this music into the world runs without consequence in Curtis’ world. Malik’s race is essentially never mentioned during his meteoric rise. This could definitely be said to be welcome, although this universe is not entirely post-race. “The Beatles” album’s better known monicker of “The White Album” is utilised for a weak gag which is the only direct reference to Malik’s race, while a genuinely funny quip is made about Ed Sheeran’s toe-curling rapping and its relation to race issues. I can’t remember anything else. When you project this movie into our own society, you can’t help wondering if, when Kate McKinnon’s agent, no fan of mincing words, asks Malik “is this the best you can look?”, she might not be stating a preference that he was white.

Our world is certainly not perfect. Indeed, it is racist. I would certainly lean towards casting not having provocative potential on its own when a film goes so far out of the way to turn its head from the issue, but the other question raised here is this; is there any point in a film existing if it makes no attempt to interrogate the conditions of the world it is actually being made for? Is it OK for art in an unjust world not to make an attempt to interface with that same injustice? I have an obvious opinion on that but ultimately it’s not for me to decide; the almighty rule of the box office will be the final arbiter. “Yesterday” is unknowingly raising these issues loudly, however, for sure.

For Curtis, nothing bad ever happens. In a laughable turn of events prior to the film’s conclusion, after Malik has declared his long-dormant love for Ellie, Ellie’s current partner simply steps aside for them to be together. Is this feasible? I’m a big fan of suspending disbelief and consider it utterly essential to enjoy cinema, until it starts to spill over so relentlessly into cracks which run throughout a film. Curtis has no shortage of form for this and the ending here could only more strongly resemble a satire of a happy-ever-after trope if the dreamy couple literally ended up with 2.4 children. As is probably clear from this write-up, James’ character is almost entirely inconsequential. She is a cardboard cut-out hanging around until Malik decides he does love her after all. How he hadn’t realised this earlier wasn’t borne out by the writing, to me. The problem with all of this is that a supposed examination of what would happen if everyone on Earth except three people forgot The Beatles deserves better. It goes without saying that a film deeply and richly exploring that concept would be almost impossible to write in scope and implication, but this never truly approaches the same orbit.

McKinnon gives a playful turn, the film’s acting highlight for me, as Malik’s power-hungry, wealth-obsessed and rather ruthless agent, also the agent of Ed Sheeran in the film. However, her jokes about Malik’s supposedly off-putting appearance (in that he dresses like a normal person) are milked dead in the script. Sheeran seems to have been accidentally brilliantly cast, and not for his acting, which is especially wooden and cringe-inducing in the first scene he appears in. No, rather for the fact that he is the perfect artist to include in a film which seems so vapid in its ultimate results. It is practically believable that McKinnon’s character could be his genuine agent, given his real-life flirtation with admitting that he writes his music by algorithm to keep the money rolling in, and that a track such as the international smash hit “Shape of You” sounds joyless and dead-eyed enough to have been written with a gun to his head. I should mention that Patel and James are both perfectly fine, competent actors giving good turns and keeping the film watchable.

The only conclusion is that “Yesterday”, disappointingly, is a wafer-thin rom-com with (a small cross-section of) The Beatles’ music catalogue third-wheeling in it. It brings up lots of important questions as covered above but without intending to raise any of them, which is itself a question; can we consider a film thought-provoking if the thoughts it provokes weren’t actually intended to be provoked during its creation? Imagine.

Wyoming

During the early summer of 2018, Kanye West’s GOOD Music released five short-form albums; chronologically they were label head Pusha T’s third solo album “Daytona”, Kanye’s eighth studio album “ye”, Kanye and Kid Cudi’s collaborative album “Kids See Ghosts”, hip hop icon Nas’ almost-self-titled “Nasir” and finally Teyana Taylor’s “K.T.S.E.” This came hot on the heels of a period of spectacular public tumult even by West’s standards, including a number of endorsements of Donald Trump and highly provocative statements about the history of slavery in America, all playing out in horrifying, rolling news slo-mo, intertwined with much more sobering focus on Kanye’s mental health status. The political concerns are barely mentioned across Kanye’s contributions to these albums, which feels wise and welcome. West’s fingerprints are all over the entire project, all production having been led by him at a ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in what has already entered musical lore as the “Wyoming sessions”. This seemed a throwback to Kanye having holed up in Hawaii with a slew of collaborators following his infamous interruption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMA Awards and the subsequent public backlash (which again reached presidential attention), sessions which ultimately produced 2010’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, the most acclaimed album since Radiohead’s 1997 game-changer “OK Computer”.

West has a history of helming and heavily directing albums by associates in between his own albums and furthering the sound and direction having been explored on whichever record he had just released. For my money the finest examples were Common’s “Be” in 2005, which extended upon the sublime orchestration of “Late Registration”, and Pusha T’s solo debut “My Name Is My Name” in 2013, which mined the same abrasive, electronically-focused, multi-instrumental terrain as the stunningly short-circuiting “Yeezus”, dragging a generation of artists along with it. These albums are different in that they are a series of concise records containing a solo Kanye album amongst their number, but they offer the same form of reassessment and recalibration, while showcasing the fact that on his day, few producers in the mainstream or anywhere else can meet Kanye’s bar. Much was also made of the respective lengths, little over 20 minutes on average, which seemed a direct response to the bloat and overkill of many Spotify-era rap albums which beg for home curation, not least Migos’ early 2018, 24-track behemoth “Culture II”, although this briefer model had already been adopted by young rappers from the more dexterous side of the lyrical/mumble divide, such as Vince Staples and Earl Sweatshirt.

There is much to enjoy across these five albums, all of which are very fine in my view. Hopefully you will enjoy my countdown of my ten finest tracks from them, in no order!

Pusha T – If You Know You Know

Anyone new to Pusha T gets an elemental breakdown of what makes his work essential listening on the opening track of “Daytona”, which comes blasting out of the blocks at ferocious pace. The only artist whose enunciation it seems fair to compare Push’s vocal style to is not a rapper at all but comedian Frankie Boyle; both men share a lucid awareness of how hard pronunciation keeps an audience in thrall. Every couplet Push spits is as translucent as glass and equally sharp to the shatter; on this opener alone he maintains a Shakespearean rate at reeling off quotables. The extent to which the rhymes appear effortless sits in contrast to how inconceivably crafted they surely, impossibly, must be. Kanye West comes through with some statement of intent; a restless and writhing prog firecracker the likes of which he has regularly employed to undercut any genuine rivals he has had on that side of the boards. In that spirit, each line is either a portable insight into how to one-up your competitors or to celebrate doing so. “Daytona” never gets much more complex or varied in its unpretentious excellence.

Teyana Taylor – WTP

Teyana Taylor’s “K.T.S.E.” is a perfectly serviceable gem of RnB from a talented vocalist and writer, albeit one still currently underdeveloped. Harking back to much of West’s earlier musical work, the slow, soul-focused production throws up plenty of highlights as vehicles for Taylor’s style, sometimes gentle and summery, other times surprisingly sweltering (check out “3Way”). The strutting funk of the West collab “Hurry” is a made-for-radio standout. Nonetheless, all changes when closing cut “WTP” hits home. The track works precisely because it is so different to the rest of the material, and therefore is suitably sequenced as an epilogue. The thrill ride of that house bass is a direct reference to Kanye’s own Mr Fingers-sampling “Fade”, the video for which classically featured Taylor and her husband, Iman Shumpert. Much like the later trajectory of the house music whose underground 80s heyday is triumphantly paraded here, alongside bold nods to ballroom culture which are significantly heightened by the track’s accompanying clip, between-verse vocals from the enigmatic Mykki Blanco outline Taylor’s potential for world domination. More twists of this nature and that master plan could yet be fulfilled.

Kids See Ghosts – Reborn

While discussing “Reborn” seems to be the perfect point at which to encapsulate the overarching themes of the “Kids See Ghosts” album. Lyrically, it seems to me that West and Cudi grapple directly with the problems of mental health and related substance abuse which they have experienced, a very welcome entry when it comes to opening up about mental health and male mental health specifically, as well as vitally cooling West’s image after a summer of questionable political interventions which seemed too contradictory even for Ye. “Reborn” is refreshingly nursery-rhyme like in its approach, with a Cudi chorus which builds and repeats to a euphoria, fluorescent brick by fluorescent brick. The track is a microcosm of the whole record, a blinding, beacon-like shield against suicidal thoughts, isolation, loneliness and the darkest of times a la British electronic phenom Burial’s unparalleled 2013 album “Rival Dealer”. It strikes me as highly empowering that this was the most acclaimed and popular song of a strong collection of tracks. West’s rapped verse is one of his best lyrical efforts across the Wyoming albums, and sharply candid. The wider importance of this track cannot be understated.

Pusha T – Hard Piano

Kanye’s production on “Hard Piano” is an exercise in minimalism made maximalist; a shimmering peak into the alchemy of how less can be scintillatingly more. The simple, skeletal combination of steadily stabbing drumwork and piano keys rolling calmly in like contented storm clouds (to me, the title seemed like braggadocio; the musical tone is nothing if not gentle!) creates a swelling atmosphere over which Pusha T and Rick Ross can trade trademarks when it comes to comparing some of the sacrifices and responsibilities which come with high living (“the Warhols on my wall paint a war story” is the poetic peak). We find Push feeling assured enough to take aim at every mainstream MC going (“Had to find other ways to invest/Cos you rappers found every way to ruin Pateks”). West scores further points for making the Maybach Music tag sound so shiver-inducing in 2018, no small lesson in the standard of beat required to usurp the familiarity that comes with near-ubiquity. With that hook, there’s no telling how many thousands of times to date that the track has been blasted in the Dominican capital, and deservedly so.

Nas – Not For Radio

By mere virtue of his locating a supercharged Kanye West at the desk, “Nasir”, even at a sub-half hour, becomes the best produced Nas long-player in decades. Check the plural! Although the gleaming, statuesque “Everything” is the album’s undeniable centrepiece, the opening “Not For Radio” is my choice cut. In many ways they mirror each other; this may be the first ever Nas effort where the musicality outshines the rapping. Nas has free rein to lyricise about the structural analysis and sociopolitical conspiracies he favours; nobody will be surprised by any of that. The guest work and hooks are a serious strength of this record, exemplified by 070 Shake’s lubricious chorus contribution on this track. Much the same can be said of The-Dream and Kanye’s off-stage magic throughout the album. There’s no fancy way of saying that that Gregorian chanting on which the track is built slaps hard. Puff Daddy of all people parachutes in with a shouty cameo which will draw inevitable comparisons to “Hate Me Now”, a track which was very much for radio in 1999. Don’t be fooled; this particular track title ends up ironic.

Kids See Ghosts – Cudi Montage

For my money, this is the most meaningful and deepest-hitting composition of the Wyoming sessions. Perusing the tracklist for the first time, I expected a closing Cudi solo effort; maybe some patch-worked freestyles. Unfairly, I judged the seemingly unexciting title as suggesting something half-baked. This is me asking for forgiveness. The title is a nod to the sample; “Burn The Rain” from the Cobain home recording vaults, first aired to a wider audience via the 2015 docu-film “Montage of Heck”. This is utterly perfect sampling, as that starstriking, understatedly frenzied acoustic line cascades repeatedly down the mindscape until entrancingly imprinted. By the time you reach this track you are highly familiar with the album’s thematics. West and Cudi deliver similar but differing choruses which are each their own; they say everything by saying barely anything. They are technically syllabic and vary in their degrees of pronunciation, West going for a more full-throated hook while Cudi contents himself with a mumbling “hm mmm”, but they may as well be indecipherable transmissions for all their alien sheen. The love, compassion and empathy which seems to swell in these vocals, which may have taken mere seconds to record, render them almost glossolalia as opposed to words. They are mere soundbites (“save me”, “stay strong”, “shine your light on me”) but shake me to my core with their pleading, as if doing so on behalf of all humanity. So intense a focus can and should be had on these brief, fragmentary pieces of sound that Cudi and West’s verses seem almost by-the-by, until they aren’t. West bursts through the sonic will-o’-the-wisp with the whiplashing line “everybody want world peace/’Til your niece get shot in the dome-piece”. Everything which makes the “Kids See Ghosts” album surprising and sometimes overwhelming can be found here.

Pusha T – Santeria

Of all the tracks on “Daytona”, this one trades in religious imagery to a much greater extent than anything else on the record, complete with a goosebumpin’ Spanish chorus for which Ye pulls away the aural fire and brimstone of sweltering guitar lines and crisp, skittering drums, apparently his favourite toys when sharing a studio with Pusha, then delaying its return long enough for Push to play preacher. One of the clearest strengths of the machine-like precision with which Push pronounces is his ability to make couplets sound exciting even when the incoming rhymes and wordplay can be spotted a mile off; “they say that death comes in threes, how appropriate/Triple back, they rush in (geddit?) like Soviets/At the Kremlin/Searching for the green like a Gremlin/Presidential emblem”. The way West understands the musical dynamics to surround his artist with so supremely on this track enhances the allegorical value of the song’s themes and marks him out as a suzerain of sonics, as if we needed further proof. Having Pusha T determine your fate could scarcely sound more sinister. “All praise, no jail bars can save/Leave you like Malcolm where X marks your grave/Hey, it’s probably better this way/It’s cheaper when the chaplain prays/Santeria!”

Kanye West – Ghost Town

There seems little doubt that “ye” is the most straightforward Kanye West album. It is the loosest, sparest, by far the shortest, and feels far less crafted and obsessed over than anything which preceded it. A mixed bag of ideas, it nonetheless contains this career stand-out track, which rises over the precipice with walloping emotional charge. A collage of samples and semi-mumbled, sing-songy Ye elevates us to a stunning crescendo. The message is simple; “we’re still the kids we used to be/I put my hand on the stove, to see if I still bleed/And nothing hurts anymore, I feel kind of free”. This uncomplicated, empowering mantra, delivered by Wyoming breakout performer 070 Shake, is an utter joy to both hear and sing along to, which you will do. Where the sequel cut on “Kids See Ghosts” boils the same strain of statement up to dramatic fanfare and sloganeering, West has always been underrated at his most tender. The coda of “Ghost Town” is every inch as tear-inducing, as nerve-tinglingly stormy and as genuinely moving as the Fennesz-like, Autotune hurricane of a rhapsody which acts as denouement to his signature tune, “Runaway”. That alone is worth the price of admission, without the fascination of the scrapbooked, crowdsourced theatrics which come first and seem to bundle all those Kanye eras which each unleashed their own sub-scene into one glowed-up power surge.

Pusha T – Infrared

“Infrared” is the closing coup de grace of “Daytona”, with Kanye uncorking a howitzer of a beat for Push to ignite the 2018 episode of his Drake beef (“The bigger question is how the Russians did it/It was written like Nas but it came from Quentin”), which later ended in him dropping “The Story of Adidon”, the nastiest diss track since “Ether” some 17 years previously. Your ears witness that burrowing vocal loop, the creeping, voyeuristic bassline and those breathless “heys” which flutter through the microscopic cracks of the production. Swift and deadly to the point of grand masterdom, we find Push in absolutely no mood to mess around. In a fell swoop he dissects the hip hop industry down the middle, treating us to the nuclear bars which comprise 2018’s lyric of the year; “Remember when Will Smith won the first Grammy?/And they ain’t even recognise Hov until ‘Annie’/So I don’t tap-dance for the crackers and sing Mammy/Cos I’m posed to juggle these flows and nose candy”. Elsewhere, between keeping his (female) associates in Moynat, more allegations of Drizzy being ghostwritten and managing parallel musical and narcotic empires, the only flaw is when Push misjudges a metaphor, misunderstanding that Tom Brady’s longevity and unparalleled success as a quarterback is rooted in his ability INSIDE the pocket(!). We’ll forgive him that. All in less than three minutes as well. This is pure venom.

Kids See Ghosts – Kids See Ghosts

Bringing in Yasiin Bey (the artist formerly known as Mos Def) with an earworm of a chorus which deals strictly in slow-burn, the title track of “Kids See Ghosts” is the stealthiest of black holes, pulling everything in proximity into its hyper-gravitational pull, from those breathy, electronically-candied vocals to a beat which flows at the speed of treacle, the best production to sound like water dripping down a drainpipe since Jeru The Damaja broke necks with his mid-90s boom bap warhead “Come Clean”. The moment West steps onto the beat should be studied by young rappers for technicality. For a snapshot it seems that the whole thing only feels so slowed-down, hung like a constellation, because Kanye is seeing it in zeroes and ones, manipulating sound and speed to his desire, such is the force with which he then attacks lyrically, producing his most firebrand verse of the sessions. “Don’t like being questioned and don’t like being less than/Any-a competition in any of my professions/So I got to guess then, I got to stay the best man/What else you expect from Mr. West, man?” is particularly breathless from an artist who puts the ass in assonance (it’s a compliment!). There is an almost lurid asymmetry in the contrast between Cudi’s deftly-touched, introverted soul-searching and this latest instalment of West’s very public trial with perception and expectation, which converts journeying through West’s psychosocial space into an exercise in dérive. Whether the Miami and Switzerland he references to close things are the real deal or paper Potemkins may never be clear. The open spaces in which the tribulations of West’s celebrity existence play out are but mirror reflections of the playground that is his own mind, a la Synecdoche, New York, while Cudi’s words are about a struggle to escape a Venus flytrap. Making it this entertaining for the rest of us is one hell of a sacrifice.