fka will
For this week, here’s an excerpt from a personal essay I wrote about my past decade of experiences listening to the music of FKA twigs.
I'm sitting at my music station, trying to make literally anything happen. I’ve just listened to ‘Drums of Death’, and I want to make a simple electronic destroyer just like it. “Feel hot feel hard feel heavy”. I cook up some kind of beat and improvise on it for ten minutes. The floor of my Brooklyn apartment vibrates a half-second behind my tapping foot. Typical filter knob nonsense. Too compressed, too loud. Unsustainable. I have a little bit of fun, I even wiggle in my seat. I do not save it. I close Ableton, turn off my sampler, it's gone forever. This is my attempt to let things be fleeting, let things be what they are and not more. If I record it, I lose sleep. I start adding effects, I trim and extend, I put in a futile effort to make my fun perfect. We'll preserve nothing.
You can read the rest here.
There is now a Dice link for the show on March 8th! Get tickets here!
I am guest hosting the Tiny Slices on the last Sunday of March (the 30th). The lineup is real good. Flyers coming soon.
My friend Allie Young has a show tomorrow (Wednesday, Feb 26th) at Tubby’s in Kingston and another show at Umbra in NYC on Sunday March 16th!! Both with Natie. I can’t make the Kingston one but I bet both are gonna be sick
Misc. stuff I’m loving:
Movies:
I just watched Sing Sing at the Williamsburg Nitehawk, a film about an RTA program at the titular prison. There was a Q&A with formerly incarcerated folks afterward. It was a really enriching and important film and I strongly recommend checking it out. I also recently watched the Palestinian-Israeli documentary No Other Land at Film Forum, yet another extremely important film, about settler colonialism occurring in the West Bank. Truly a nightmare that the film mostly takes place prior to the onset of the genocide in Gaza, and also truly a nightmare that neither Sing Sing nor No Other Land seem to be getting the widespread attention they deserve.
Music:
Here’s the February playlist. I have also been listening to the original version of Against All Logic’s 2017-2019 (before it got mangled by sample copyright stuff), and working on a 2020-2024 half-decade recap playlist. It’s almost done and I am probably gonna yap about it in the next email.
Games:
Avowed!!! It tickles the same parts of my brain as Obsidian’s past game, Fallout: New Vegas, and for that I’m grateful. Also still working on gold staking all decks in Balatro, only three more to go.
Reading:
Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. Needless to say, my Spotify haterdom has increased exponentially. Also hoping to check out Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest, The Message.
Podcasts:
The It Could Happen Here weekly episode, The Darien Gap: Where Dreams Die. A truly harrowing portrait of the immigrant experience. Moreover, ICE must be destroyed.
I spent the past five days in Puerto Rico, first time back in ~sixteen years. I spent most of my time with my parents in Rincón, then wandered San Juan alone for a night and morning. Why is it hard for me, as a Puerto Rican, to feel like I belong when I’m there, but not hard for white finance bros to buy up “a hundred acres” of PR land for “small scale hospitality projects” (a real thing I heard)? But at least my Spanish was better than I remembered. Anyway, end capitalist settler colonialism everywhere. PR Libre, Palestina Libre. The vibes in this week’s email are kinda bad, but we keep it pushin’.
Thanks,
Will