Razz Dazz Weekly is a playlist series featuring a selection of newly released standouts and recent discoveries, rounded out with the occasional old favorite.
Razz Dazz Weekly is a playlist series featuring a selection of newly released standouts and recent discoveries, rounded out with the occasional old favorite.
Little Simz feat. Obongjayar & Moonchild Sanelly "Flood" • "Flood" is set to appear on Little Simz's forthcoming Lotus LP, which will be released by AWAL Recordings in May 2025. (via The Quietus)
Brother Ali & Ant "Higher Learning at the Skyway" • "Higher Learning at the Skyway" is from Brother Ali and Ant's collaborative February 2025 album titled Satisfied Soul, released by Mellow Music Group.
Legible "the other side" • "the other side" is from Legible's self-released album Surrender Volume 1, released in February 2025.
Milkweed "Exile of the Sons of Uisliu" • "Exile of the Sons of Uisliu" is from the forthcoming album Remscéla, set for release in May 2025 by Broadside Hacks. (via The Quietus)
Viagra Boys "Uno II" • "Uno II" is set to be released on Viagra Boys' forthcoming Viagr Aboys album, scheduled to drop in April 2025 from Shrimptech Enterprises. (via Stereogum)
Population II "Mariano (Jamais Je Ne T’oublierai)" • "Mariano (Jamais Je Ne T’oublierai)" is from the forthcoming Maintenant Jamais album, set for release in March 2025 via Bonsound. (via Stereogum)
Husoul "wake up from my dream." • "wake up from my dream." was self-released as a single by Husoul in February 2025.
Underworld "Cowgirl" • "Cowgirl" was released via Junior Boy's Own on Underworld's January 1994 album titled Dubnobasswithmyheadman.
Mochakk feat. The RAH Band "From the Stars (Extended Mix)" • "From the Stars" is the title track from Mochakk's February 2025 EP, released by Ninja Tune.
Ted Lucas "Plain & Sain & Simple Melody" • Ted Lucas' self-titled album was originally released on his OM label in 1975, and was re-released in February 2025 by Third Man Records.
Frog Eyes "Television, a Ghost in My Head" • "Television, a Ghost in My Head" is set to appear on Frog Eyes' forthcoming album, The Open Up, scheduled for release in March 2025 by Paper Bag Records. (via Exclaim!)
GnarlyJevy, 'Vante & That Honoroll KID "GWHF" • "GWHF" was self-released by GnarlyJevy, 'Vante & That Honoroll KID in February 2025.
Noveliss & Hir-O "5 A.M. in Kyoto" • "5 A.M. in Kyoto" is from Noveliss & Hir-O's self-released June 2024 album, Cyberpunk Rhapsody.
Kendrick Lamar feat. SZA "All the Stars" • "All the Stars" was released in January 2018 via Top Dawg, Aftermath & Interscope as the lead single from the Black Panther soundtrack.
Crouched atop the hood of a GNX, with a spotlight raining down on him while a record 133.5 million people watched live across the world, Kendrick Lamar opened his Super Bowl Halftime performance with an introductory statement, closed by the words, "You picked the right time, but the wrong guy." I'll be honest, my eagerness to watch the performance largely revolved around not whether Kendrick would further escalate his shots at Drake, but how he'd do so.
Samuel L. Jackson's "Uncle Sam" appeared throughout the performance, attempting to bark orders and guide the set. A few cuts after commenting on its leanings as "too loud, too reckless, too ghetto," it was the song that followed (maybe presented to right the "ghetto" wrong and unite a crowd with its commercial appeal) which moved me the most.
"...Tell me what you gon' do to me Confrontation ain't nothin' new to me You can bring a bullet, bring a morgue, bring a sword But you can't bring the truth to me Punk you and all your expectations I don't even want your congratulations I recognize your false confidence, promises in your conversation I hate those that feel entitled Look at me crazy 'cause I ain't invite you Oh, you important? You the moral to the story, you endorsing? I don't even like you Corrupt a man's heart with a gift That's how you find out who you dealin' with A small percentage, who I'm building with
I want the credit if I'm losing or I'm winning On my mama..."
When hearing "All the Stars" ring loud and clear from the TV, and in this particular context, I was moved by the song in a way I had never been to this point. Could Kendrick have come out and said something blunt and politically motivated that would have captured the news cycle for a few days? Sure. But is that him? Is that what he does? As "All the Stars" peaked, Uncle Sam re-appeared, celebrating the song, "That's what America wants; nice and calm," showing as little care for any of its lyrical messaging as much of the audience likely did. The song sounds good. People want hits at these events and with over two billion Spotify streams, "All the Stars" is undoubtably just that. But what it said to me was more. Amid everything happening, Kendrick took to the mic to communicate that when standing in the face of corruption, character still matters no matter how little it matters to them. Undoubtably, the provocation of thoughtful reflection is unlikely to be the right weapon for the fight we’re currently in, but asking anything more than that is overlooking Kendrick's role as poet. Back to the performance where, then, just as things appeared to return to a copacetic balance, the set erupted into "Not Like Us," marking the point of "All the Stars" with an exclamation point. While, of course, this played to the Drake hater nation (sidebar: my favorite Bluesky post after the show said "Drake is the all-time biggest loser of a rap feud and that includes people who have gotten shot and died as a result of rap feuds"), it also spoke to the separation that was visually depicted earlier in the set by the divided flag. This performance wasn't for them. It never was and they were never meant to understand any of it, because they're constitutionally incapable of doing so in the first place. It was for us.
While, admittedly, I feel late to the party on Doechii, it's been wild to see her popularity swell in recent months. I hadn't heard her before her guest spot on Tyler, the Creator's last album, but after seeing her Tiny Desk and Nardwuar videos late last year I'm all in. I haven't heard J. Cole or Eminem's last albums (which were also nominated in the category), but am still willing to bet that Doechii's recent Grammy nod for best Rap Album was the right call. While I don't put much stock in awards one way or another, being nominated for Best New Artist and Rap Performance would only seem to further cement the fact that she is where she is for a reason.
I don't know much about Blusa beyond him being rooted in New Orleans, but this nine track release produced by Observe since '98 moved quickly with its impact on me. The tone, both lyrically and sonically, is a dark one, servicing a broader thread of illuminating the mind numbing hypocrisy of prosperity gospel perpetrators. I will definitely be digging deeper into his work.
DJ Premier & Roc Marciano "Armani Section" • "Armani Section" by DJ Premier and Roc Marciano will appear on the duo's forthcoming collaborative EP, tentatively scheduled for release later this year. (via Billboard)
FKA Twigs "Girl Feels Good" • "Girl Feels Good" is from FKA Twigs' January 2025 album EUSEXUA, released by Young and Atlantic Records.
I can't help but hear Madonna's Music here. Like, this is capital-E Electronica! This is the Crystal Method with vocals! How does this exist in 2025? I don't know whether it's a good thing or not that my ears were just as primed for this sort of sound in 1998 as they are today.
This album only just came out and already "Wake Me Up" ranks highly among my all-time favorite Michael Jackson songs. It's a great song, but oh boy - talk about wearing an influence on your sleeve. If nothing else, hearing this led me to revisit Justice's 2007 rendition of "D.A.N.C.E." on Jimmy Kimmel Live! which featured an incredible ensemble of Stevie Wonder, Prince, Rick James, Rod Stewart, and Michael Jackson impersonators. Silly as it may be, it genuinely remains one of my favorite late night TV music clips ever.
Lights "ALIVE AGAIN" • "ALIVE AGAIN" is from the forthcoming album, A6, set for release by Virgin Music in May. (via Exclaim!)
Riff Raff feat. Ku$h Drifter & YNG BNZO "Neon Hong Kong" • "Neon Hong Kong" is the opening track from the compilation album titled Welcome to Shaolin, released in January 2025 by Castles of Chrome.
The last few weeks I've been going over a lot of old photos and pieces of writing, which bit by bit led me back to a lot of old mashup stuff I was deep into in the aughts. I guess it was after his 2014 collaborative EP with Freeway where I kinda lost touch with Girl Talk (I'm sure I kept "Tolerated" on repeat at the gym for a year or two after the fact) but as I drifted away, I completely missed out on this album he did with Wiz, K.R.I.T, and DZA. In hearing it with fresh ears now, I'm taken back to how much I loved his mashup work - particularly 2008's Feed the Animals.
Madvillain "Operation Lifesaver AKA Mint Test (demo)" • This instrumental version of "Operation Lifesaver" is from the (at least somewhat infamous) Madvillainy Demos album, officially released online by Stones Throw last month.
What a bevy of riches the internet provides. About two or three times a year I think to myself, I should see if Henry Rollins is still doing that radio show of his, and of course he is. He's Henry Rollins. He never stops. In the closing months of 2024 I cued up one of his shows (always ready, always available via KCRW) and was floored by a track I heard from the Fall, vowing at the time to start making time to listen to the show on a regular basis. Here I am, what - maybe three, four months later? - thinking to myself, "There aren't enough hours in the day for everything, are there?" I suppose there's plenty of time for the things you make time for.
young friend "i like girls" • "i like girls" is from young friend's forthcoming album, motorcycle sound effects, set for release in April 2025 via Nettwerk. (via Exclaim!)
Legible feat. G Rico "tuff luv" • "tuff luv" is from Legible's forthcoming self-released album Surrender Volume 1, set to drop in February 2025.
Logic feat. Lucy Rose "Not a Game" • "Not a Game" is taken from Logic's January 2025 Aquarius III EP, released by BMG.
Thee Oh Sees "The Dream" • "The Dream" is from Thee Oh Sees' Carrion Crawler/The Dream LP, released in November 2011 by In the Red Records.
The Dandy Warhols "(Tony, This Song is Called) Lou Weed)" • "(Tony, This Song is Called) Lou Weed)" is from the Dandy Warhols' debut album, Dandys Rule OK, originally released in April 1995 by Tim/Kerr Records.
Shikimo "Stratos (Slowed + Reverb)" •"Stratos" was self-released as a single by Shikimo in January 2025.
Six One Trïbe "Paradise Lost" • Featuring Gee Slab, AndréWolfe, Blvck Wizzle & Riø Tokyo, "Paradise Lost" was released as a single by Six One Trïbe via Tribe Over Everything Productions in January 2024.
Samia "Bovine Excision" • "Bovine Excision" is the lead single from Samia's forthcoming April 2025 album, Bloodless, set for release via Grand Jury Music. (via Stereogum)
Perfume Genius "It's a Mirror" • "It's a Mirror" is the lead single from Perfume Genius' March 2025 album, Glory, released via Matador Records.
I had every intention of writing about Nosferatu this week. It's a brilliant film, exquisitely crafted and executed on all levels. It's horror in the classical sense, bearing an unparalleled richness I've not experienced within the confines of the genre in quite some time. Earlier this week I bookmarked an article by Douglas Greenwood titled "It’s Pervert Winter," referencing the film, but reading it now, in the wake of yesterday's sad news, it's difficult for me not to do so through the lens of David Lynch's passing. The piece focuses on media described as "[doubling] down on mystery, and harbouring a willingness to stay weird and misunderstood." That is, if anything, one definition of "Lynchian."
This got me thinking more about the word "perversion" within the context of media and how that concept truly reveals itself through David Lynch's work; perversion: "the alteration of something from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended." Certainly a caustic film like Blue Velvet resides in the realm of the perverse, but the idea of altering meaning through the corruption of concepts is what's now guiding this connection to Lynch for me.
Much of David Lynch's work reveals itself with an eye for a classic Hollywood aesthetic, overlaying a more sinister human experience beneath the topsoil of nostalgic charms. That feels true to me when considering 2001's Mulholland Drive, but isn't far off from why something like Twin Peaks continues to appeal to me. There's an aw-shucks-ness to the familiarity that bleeds through the show (or at least its original run), with Lynch leaning into the familiarity of the setting while simultaneously revealing dark forces at play beneath it. Even when all is well in Twin Peaks, something is always just... off. Also, it's hammy, but not hammed up for reaction. There's an ever-present distortion of reality, amplifying tropes such that they become both a mockery of reality and a perfect reflection of it at the same time.
For ages I've held an emotional tie to a book called The Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock. It was one of the things that helped introduce me to a lot of great music in my youth, but I've never spent much time with it beyond skimming names here and there to find new (old) music. The whole thing is available online, but I've got the Bible-sized book at my desk here, and one of my resolutions this year was to start listening and reading my way through it (I'm updating Spotify and YouTube playlists with music that I'm enjoying along the way, in case anyone's curious in following along with me). I've got a long way to go before I get out of the "A"s, but an early rabbit hole I found myself in came from learning about the music of one-time Bad Seeds bassist Barry Adamson. The name wasn't familiar to me but when I began digging into his work, but his sound certainly was. Adamson scored several pieces for use in Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway, but what's more is that you can hear a clear through-line between his work and that of Lynch's beyond that. The Trouser Press listing for Adamson likens his music to "crime jazz," which conjures the perfect feeling for what the sounds beneath Lynch's neo-noirs tend to inspire. They are the perfect couple.
This morning I was listening through Adamson's 1996 album, Oedipus Schmoedipus, which bounces between the bubbly and terrifying. I recommend anyone interested to start out with "The Vibes Ain't Nothing But The Vibes" or "Something Wicked This Way Comes," which each lend the day a fitting musical bedrock to consider Lynch's influence. In a 2016 Q&A with Dave Simpson of The Guardian, Adamson referenced a phone call he received from Lynch, which I implore you to read as if abruptly blurted out by the man himself, in all his nasally glory. "Barry. This is David Lynch. I’ve been listening to your music for 10 hours straight. I would like you to work on my new movie. I will send you a scene. Show it to no one." Other than being a perfect example of Lynch's offbeat manner of communicating, it also portrays an important aspect of why his work remains so endearing: its earnestness. Adamson's music, which also sways into the realm of "sinewy dance" and "smoky bossa nova," holds space for the subversive, but doesn't stray into parody. This is tonally consistent with Lynch's films, which never portray their exaggerated characters are as either caricature or subversion. They're neither. They're a perversion.
While the Lost Highway soundtrack was probably the first avenue into Lynch's work for me in my youth (thanks the radio play Nine Inch Nails' "The Perfect Drug" and Smashing Pumpkins' "Eye" received) the first film I saw of his was probably Mulholland Drive. In college at the time, I surely picked it up from somewhere like a Wal-Mart, which is telling of the film's break-out success, despite its obtuse narrative and elusive storytelling. In the spirit of self-education I later watched Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, though both also failed to connect with me. They were all weird, sure, but I'm not sure I had a sense for what I was supposed to like about them beyond that measure. Many years later when I returned to Mulholland Drive, well into my 30s, I recall only just starting to feel like I could begin to appreciate it. In a 2019 Letterboxd entry I wrestled with how "aspirational" my motivation was for watching the film, which I suppose is something I still reckon with now.
"It’s weird we associate the entertainment That people gravitate toward with how big their brain is Where’s the line between seeking understanding And performing an exercise in personal branding?" -NAHreally "Smarter Than I Am"
Without realizing it, even just being generally informed about the work of David Lynch has become something of a short-hand for a bucket of traits that I tend to appreciate about people. Like, if you've seen any of his movies or can reference Twin Peaks, that's a fundamental tell about what kind of person you must be (cool, hip, interesting, sexy, intelligent, fill in the blank?). But so much of that is probably based in my own "aspirational" appreciation of his work, rooted in a personal sense of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is an outward projection of an inward feeling, right? Like, if someone is familiar with David Lynch's work, surely that's telling of the type of person they are, through to their core. So what do I have to do to make sure they think the same thing about me, so I'm not found out to be the unsophisticated fake I truly am? If I watch close enough, or read enough about the work, surely I'll understand it, and if I understand it, surely that will be telling of the type of person who I want others to think I am. No doubt, there was a bit of that going on subconsciously when I picked up that first copy of Mulholland Drive. The funny thing is, this over-intellectualization is counterintuitive and largely antithetical to the intention behind the works. The older you get, the more you realize, I suppose.
Maybe its a result of time helping soften the rigid corners of self-judgement, but I feel like I'm becoming more comfortable with finding satisfaction in the things I can't pretend to understand. About a year and a half ago I watched Lost Highway for the first time in a long time. I watched it with someone I was seeing, and surely I thought she was cooler for being interested in the movie. Likewise, I hoped she thought the same of me. But what was different about that viewing was how much I just enjoyed the experience of watching it, regardless of the surrounding context or any interpretation of what watching it might say about me. Its darkness wasn't something to be understood on an intellectual level, but merely felt, and to this day a shadow of appreciation encapsulates my memory of that experience. More and more, a fear of not having all the answers is morphing into a comfortable reconciliation with the unknown. Now thinking about it in these terms, any prospect that ambiguity might continue to supplant a perfectionistic drive for answers brings with it a point of hope. I don't tend to think of "hope" when reflecting on David Lynch's work, but maybe that's worth some reconsideration.
Last year was the first time I watched Inland Empire. In an obituary published yesterday, J. Hoberman wrote of the film that it "all but refuses to be a movie." Critical as that sounds, it's still a charitable in my estimation. The three hour stream of consciousness styled production is challenging all the way through, which felt driven less by purpose than a desire to identify the limits of what might be tolerated by his audience. To use the Andy Warhol quote, "Art is what you can get away with," and that comes to mind here not only with Inland, but as a sentiment which broadly underscores the brilliance of David Lynch. Ahead of an era where production companies are becoming increasingly invested in creating "content" for a casual viewing audience, Lynch worked to steer them away from such a development. But when he did so, he refused to beat anyone over the head with his intention, welcoming misinterpretation of his work from his audience and critics alike. In an Instagram post, longtime collaborator Kyle MacLachlan wrote that Lynch "was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are." David Lynch enriched the medium by rendering our vocabulary to explain his work obsolete, and to the very end he got away with it.
Whether considering the song or video, where do you start when describing something like "Come to Daddy" to anyone unfamiliar? Or Aphex Twin, in general, even? For me, I suppose, it might not actually be with his music at all, but with another track from someone else within Aphex Twin's creative orbit: "Come on My Selector" by Squarepusher. My memory isn't great, and the timeline is likely off, but I think that song was what prepared me for Aphex Twin, such that when his music arrived, I was as ready as I could be for it.
This fragment of cultural cache sounds strange, now that I'm putting words to the page, but when I was growing up the music video channel we had ran clips sprinkled among ad breaks that regularly exposed me to music I'd never otherwise have found on my own. These weren't commercials themselves, per se, but brief interstitials merely reiterating what channel we were already watching - which, in this case, was the Canadian equivalent to MTV called Much Music. Slivers of music videos served up exotic new options to watch out for elsewhere on the channel and Squarepusher's "Come On My Selector" was one that grabbed me by the ears and commanded my attention. The closest thing I might've had to parallel sound would've been through someone like Goldie's work, but at that age I'd never heard anything like "Come On My Selector" before. I don't think many had. And later, when seeing the full music video for the song, I'd never seen anything like it, either.
IMDB's one-liner for the video explains it as "A girl and her dog escaping from [an] Osaka mental institution," but there's little to be said which couldn't be better understood by watching it yourself. Musically the song is jagged, rigid, fast, and maybe even a little obnoxious, but it's also wonderful. The music video complements the sounds incredibly well and was directed by Chris Cunningham. Cunningham's work was new to me, but he'd previously worked with Aphex Twin on "Come To Daddy," and followed it up with the maximalist 10 minute horror-satire, "Windowlicker." I say that "Come on My Selector" was a gateway to "Come to Daddy" despite being released after it, only because that's how I recall the timeline: "Come On My Selector" was followed by Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker," which - as memory serves - lead to an uptick in plays of "Come to Daddy" in the channel's rotation, which is where my journey began. It doesn't matter, really. This article could well be about "Windowlicker" as the influence it had was roughly the same. At times memory is as flexible as it is fragile.
In 2010 Pitchfork praised "Come To Daddy" as the best music video of the '90s. "Darkly comic and just plain dark," they wrote, "Chris Cunningham's tale of television unleashing hell in a dilapidated housing block plays like a gothic graphic novel, an ADD-riddled version of Village of the Damned, and an H.R. Giger-designed haunted house. All at once." (As a sidebar, I had no idea until I was preparing this article that Giger created a pair of sketches inspired by "Windowlicker." Neat.) Along with any talk of Giger's connection or influence, in my mind, is an inherent bridge between the visuals of "Come to Daddy" and the Alien franchise. This only makes sense, recognizing that Cunningham served as one of the principle effects artists for Alien 3, setting him up to design the hellscape that was later unleashed in the darkly atmosphere and twisted "Come to Daddy" video.
A little context goes a long way in terms of expressing how impactful this video was for me. Consider some of the most played music videos of 1997 and names like Puff Daddy, Jewel, Will Smith, Spice Girls, and Chumbawumba come to mind. Then, as if summoned by a demon, a music video channel unleashes the nightmarish squeals of "Come To Daddy" to be scattered among these in the same rotation. In discussing another track of his, Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) once said, "I wanted to make something so fast that they’d just think, 'What the fuck?!' It sounds pretty normal now, but at the time… you couldn’t dance to that, no way." That was about "Digeridoo," but it could easily describe this song in my estimation, as well. We'll never know how many thousands of "what the fuck?!" moments "Come to Daddy" no doubt inspired.
The visuals for the music video are one thing - which absolutely fed my still developing taste for dystopian sci-fi/horror - but the song might be what's had the greater lasting impact on me. In a way, I think it helped usher in an open-mindedness toward industrial that hadn't yet developed because… how could it have? I hadn't been exposed to anything like that and had little to no exposure to anything industrial-leaning aside from Nine Inch Nails or Ministry's "Jesus Built My Hotrod" to that point. (I'll add that to this day, I'm a big fan of the Dillinger Escape Plan cover with Mike Patton on vocals, which one could argue might even be a better version of the song; at the minimum it provokes an equally sinister feeling to the original.)
What's more with this, whether I'm thinking of "Come to Daddy" or "Windowlicker," is that they both helped introduce me to Aphex Twin, who has since become one of my favorite musicians. The double-album Drugks later followed (by way of mail-order via Columbia House... or BMG, I forget), which I tried my best to make sense of as a college freshman. These videos also guided me backwards into the albums and EPs that preceded them. File-sharing was the avenue that allowed further exploration at the time, but once I gained access to more music I became blown away by the otherworldly range of sounds that came from this one single mind. How could the same person who "irrevocably" reshaped the face of ambient electronic music create this just a few years later? What an absolute genius.
[This article is part of Best of the Best - an ongoing series reflecting on and ranking my favorite music and movies.]
David Cronenberg's eXistenZ stands as my earliest memory of a distinct brand of cinema: body horror. I don't even know if it's right to classify eXistenZ as "body horror," as much as just "Cronenbergian." Like, certainly, injecting a weird little gaming device into an oozing, infected physical port installed and located on a human's body isn't not-not body horror, but to me that's just Cronenberg being Cronenberg. If I'm looking at something like Wikipedia's definition of the phrase though, which refers to it as "a subgenre of horror fiction that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or of another creature," the description certainly aligns with parts of eXistenZ; parts of eXistenZ and much of The Substance.
The Substance is a body horror film through and through, but not merely in its use of absurd, maximalist on-screen mutation and disfiguration, but also in the "grotesque" manner which it characterizes the ideas of a "better" self, beauty, and self-actualization. In those ways, however, it might be as much an existential horror film as it is a body horror one.
The performances throughout are brilliant, but what continues to rattle my saber after watching it isn't the disturbing nature of any of the on-screen images, as much as the messaging behind them. The film focuses on toxic beauty standards and aging, but also the proliferation of a certain brand of unquenchable insufficiency. In the case of the film, this feeling characterizes the state of Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who - through aging out of her peak years as a fitness model - is introduced to a means by which she might course correct; a means to a "better self" - The Substance.
Elisabeth is provided a vial containing a liquid of mysterious origin which is claimed to cure her of her predicament. In reality, it doesn't revitalize her skin, cure wrinkles, or erase age spots, however. Instead it uses her body to generate a new self, a younger self, her ideal self - Sue (Margaret Qualley). I suppose if you haven't seen this and are following along here, whatever I'm writing probably doesn't quite add up... more specifically, The Substance separates Elisabeth into two people, distinct consciousnesses who are to share the act of actually being conscious. They are to each exist, seven days on, seven days off. When Elisabeth is awake, she is in charge. When Sue is awake, she is in charge. They should not be awake at the same time, however, and must never forget they are not two separate people, but are one. Always remember, you are one.
In time, Sue's dominant abuse of her time creeps the two halves out of compliance with The Substance's guidelines, resulting in rising levels of conflict between the two halves: One which feels the other is holding them back and one which feels they aren't being respected as part of the whole. I was listening to a podcast recently which referenced this split as an analogy for addiction, particularly mentioning a scene in which Elisabeth binges on food, which then impacts Sue's body the next day in a rather body horror-y way. This visually depicts the consequences of one state of mind influencing another, but I don't think the scene reflects addiction, necessarily, as much as themes of self-rejection. Sabotage is often borne of guilt and shame and jealousy, and when caught in a trap of such feelings, sometimes the best way to escape is to do damage to the source. Feeling better isn't the point so much as feeling different is. Any consequences are for future me to deal with.
This got me thinking more about how we're nurtured to manufacture such a level of crisis in our own lives, a perpetual cycle of insufficiency. Think about how many people approach New Year's traditions, for example, segmenting themselves off by way of calendar turnover; shunning the old in favor of the new. Come January 1, our Sues are permitted control, weaponizing resentment against the old self for all such sins which stand misaligned with this new vision for a "better" self. I know in my past this has shown up as a new gym regiment or diet - all actions, intentions, and motivations installed to rid oneself of one's lesser self, in some way. A byproduct of the split between the old and the new is typically guilt, anger, and shame though, if the actions of these two selves fail to work harmoniously in support of this new way of living. It's funny that the same desperation which inspires the moonshot attempt at turning over a new page is rarely implemented with regard to nurturing a sense of self-compassion, grace, and understanding. What a difference we might see if such traits were valued more highly than a firm ass or bulging biceps?
In Elisabeth and Sue's case, this escalates into a wild scene of self-violence, culminating in a deformed and grotesque final state being unveiled to an audience of disgusted onlookers. This, to me, was (director/writer/producer) Coralie Fargeat bringing about Frankenstein in the most Cronenbergian of ways, begging a question of whether the hyper-gore witnessed on screen was any more or less disturbing than the emotional chaos which fueled it. What bothers me isn't on the screen but within myself. When Sue is revealed, she is presented in a comically hyper-sexualized manner, representing a reprehensible level of empty vanity, but it's not like I was thinking to myself "No, please stop. Don't show any more of this garbage!" A part of me remains hooked by the surface level appeal of it all. While I can intellectually demonize Sue, on some level I've also bought into Sue's value and the rejection of Elisabeth. A part of me says she is better while another part is disgusted by the admission. The same sort of conflict appears in my own life, as I grapple with my own aging. Some days I reject what I see in the mirror while others I don't. If my memory is correct, eXistenZ focused on the expansion of the self into the digital space, a separation between the life and the lifeform. The Substance, however, asks what to do when both halves of the self are fundamentally incompatible, and what's to make of the paradox of living through such a scenario. That's the true horror of it all.
The past couple weeks I've been returning to bits and pieces of the new compilation Aphex Twin released called Music From the Merch Desk (2016-2023). Largely as Aphex Twin, though also from a smattering of aliases ranging from AFX to Polygon Window, Richard D. James has become of my favorite artists, and certainly one of my most listened to, so a new bucket of music like this is a welcomed gift. Aside from bouncing around within this new 38-track collection, however, I found myself inspired me to trace when and where I was first introduced to his music. It has to have been one of the Chris Cunningham-directed music videos, be it for "Come to Daddy" or "Windowlicker." It's weird to think about a teenage me latching onto these videos, not merely for their subversive visuals but for their otherworldly sounds. Weirder yet, how that person became this person.
A while back I remember seeing a video from writer Jason Pargin spelling out a reason fans (and creators) of horror are drawn to it, particularly the most extreme of its sub-genres. The concept of escapism in this arena, he says, serves as a means of wish fulfillment. He doesn't mean that people who watch or create horror want to commit crimes or see horrific images in real life, but that we wish the nature of terror wasn't as banal as it is, fueled by people who look and act so normal that they can get away with it for decades. We want our horror to be the sort of monsters and demons, not of what it is in reality. The Substance is as heavy as it is for me because of how the nature of horror is expressed through self-rejection; it's too close to reality to feel like fantasy. Aphex Twin's music, on the other hand, doesn't take on a feeling of horror (though those two videos mentioned fit the bill), but it does serve as escapism. There's nothing natural about it and its artificiality is what might be what finds me regularly returning to it. Some days the last thing I want is more reality.
