Block to Block in Crocs and Socks

In which Kali Malone, Mercury Tracer, Ornette Coleman, Remble, Lil Yachty, Cam'ron Leslie Jamison and Dodie Bellamy collide.

Lygia Clark, 1952

The problem with recommending stuff is that recommendations always seem obvious. Is it possible that I could tell you about something you don’t already know about? Of course! Do I think that I could tell you about something you don’t know about? Not at all! That, in a sense, is my explanation of why I haven’t written a newsletter in so long. Conflating writing for fun with writing for utility is a fool’s game. Don’t do it. I am currently doing it. I am always doing it. In the interest, though, of bringing some of that enthusiasm for music and art and etc back for me, I’m trying to keep this loose. Unlabored. Fun. Maybe you’ll find something you like here. Maybe you won’t care at all. Mysteries!

Moving on, lest this newsletter turn into one of those dispatches about why there’s been no newsletter for so long….HERE’S SOME RECOMMENDATIONS.

Kali Malone - The Sacrificial Code (2018)
Every few months I come back to this album, which is long and droning and disorienting. Kali Malone’s organ work is a solitary thing to the point that listening to it is an isolating experience—more of a mental recalibration than a situation where you sit down to enjoy some songs. I’m definitely falling into the trap where I make drone music sound deeply not fun to listen to. It can be fun to listen to—or at the very least, it’s addictive. Is there a difference? Ah yeah, the addiction/fun continuum…There is something to be said for music that, in real time, fundamentally alters your perception, even if only for a moment. It’s the dragon listeners are all chasing, whether they realize it or not.

Extra points if you caught the even more stripped down, now private on her Bandcamp page, Studies for Organ, which laid bare some of the thinking and work that went into The Sacrificial Code. Maybe you can come to my house and listen to it some time.

BONUS BEAT OH DAMN: If you’re digging the unsettled/calm mental state that Malone’s organ put you in, may I recommend this too-brief EP from Mercury Tracer, aka Denver’s own Madeline Johnston, who records crushing slowcore as Midwife (I am also recommending Midwife here, btw). The Mercury Tracer EP, though, is perfect for solitary walks, contemplating life, or thinking about Mogwai’s excellent score from the first season of Les Revenants (was anyone else completely uninterested in the second season of that after being addicted to the first? Just me? No?)

Ornette Coleman - Sound Grammar (2005)
What was I doing in 2005? Glad you asked! I was listening to a lot of underground rap that has aged very poorly, living in Olympia, WA, maybe heading over to a Bad Club called The Barcode to see KRS One recite all the tenets of the temple of hip-hop. I was most assuredly not in Germany for the Ornette Coleman concert that makes up this recording, which has a marvelous sense of space. At times blistering, playful, and fully immersive, this is a great listen if you’re looking for a more grounded version of cosmic jazz. In other words, it’s not gonna alienate anyone who might be in hearing-radius, but it’ll also blow your mind. P.S. Coleman was seventy six when he recorded this.

Some thoughts about Remble and TikTok
If you’re a rap fan, then you’ve probably come across Remble. A San Pedro rapper who over enunciates every word so that his verses are hyper-clear, often chilling, and so calm and proper that they can feel menacing. All of the best descriptions of his style lie in YouTube comments under his videos. Some of my favorites: “man is rapping in Times New Roman”, “he is rapping at me respectfully”, “bro is rapping an english essay”. Most of the other comments—also entertaining—are one note, riffing on the idea that Remble says simple things in complicated ways, which is not quite true. Remble’s power is in his directness. Not only is he enunciating every word, he’s writing with economy. On its own, a line like, “bodies hugging bodies, it was as if they were cuddling” is haunting. When it’s being delivered with such precision, it becomes terrifying.

But chances are you’ve actually heard Remble on TikTok, where he is having something of a viral moment with a verse from “Rocc Climbing,” a song he did with Lil Yachty, whose amateurishness continues to be endearing (and possibly more calculated than it appears). The song is good, and it’s interesting to hear how the two rappers’ diametrically opposed styles clash and play off of each other, but the shining moment comes near the end—and no surprise here, this is the part of Remble’s second video that is currently making waves on TikTok—when the cascading piano drops away and Remble drops this knotty verse:

I done been block to block in Crocs and socks
Bounce in the whip, cock the glock, then drop the top
It's gonna be a long day if you watch the clock
You can either put your hands down, or box the chop
Um, is he getting put on at the park or not?
Come on, are you really put on? Let's just stop the cap
Are you gonna get on when they start to clap?
When it falls down, you will see how they start to act

It’s the sort of lyrical showmanship that Remble deploys often, but is masked by his dedication to his absolute dedication to vocal clarity. Surely, “I done been block to block in Crocs and socks” is one of the more vivid and brilliantly brief lines to be rapped this year (the line also reminds me, in a way, of Cam’ron’s extremely-New York-specific “Pull-ups in the park in the winter time” line on “Dat All” from his now forgotten, still very fun mixtape Ghetto Heaven Vol. 1). Remble’s Crocs line, though, is not the moment that is getting the most play on TikTok. The line that is doing that is “It’s gonna be a long day if you watch the clock.” Thousands of kids, many of whom have probably not yet had a job of any sort, mime glancing at their watchless wrists while dancing, unwittingly playing out a grim scenario of what happens when joy turns to work and you’re no longer sure what’s fun anymore. When you spend all day making content in bite-size chunks, the looming specter of time is all the more apparent.

Now It’s Time To Talk About Dodie Bellamy
Midway through the second chapter of Dodie Bellamy’s new book Bee Reaved (it’s sort of about death, hence the title). I began to wonder if the New Yorker had ever done a profile on her, and then I came across this Leslie Jamison banger from, uh, the exact day that I am writing this sentence. Cosmic. In addition to providing much needed context to San Francisco’s New Narrative movement, of which Bellamy was a part, Jamison gets at the curiosity and expansiveness of Bellamy’s writing, how she’ll toss and endless stream of ideas and cosmetically pretty sentences into a page, connecting disparate thoughts fluidly…and then she’ll drop some sort of heart stopping sentence that doesn’t so much tie up a thought as it does blow your mind (not coincidentally, Jamison also employs this tactic—there’s a sort of looseness, an off-the-cuff brilliance that sneaks up on you in much of her writing. I’m now convinced that Jamison’s Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath owes a structural and stylistic debt to Bellamy).

A favorite line comes when Bellamy is writing about clothing and capitalism (the undercurrent of death is always there too, just under the surface, hence the title of the book. Whenever I talk about her writing from here on out, just also think about the word “death” and what it means). That line is a good way to end this thing:

“The ghost of nameless workers vape from my silhouette, rendering me not one, but many.”