Innovative Leisure (label)
22 May 2020 (released)
22 May 2020
In the Year 2020, temporal context has collapsed. The perception of time has been reduced to flickering moments enmeshed in fleeting sensory memories. The tech-grid-net web’s (TGNW) pernicious vice-grip has taken its hold, cold electrical currents reign over warm, heartened blood. History has been reduced to a large trough that overflows with anything and everything. Ever.
An obsession with quantity not quality with the populace blissfully ignorant (and wilfully acquiescent) to the TGNW's nefarious charms and ‘services’. The old meaning of ‘connection’ transubstantiated to a point of obsolescence.
On a cultural level, the horizons are distant and the terrain arid. The preservation of bland-brand management from millionaire bread-heads has replaced artistry and talent, filmed, edited, (mal)adjusted performative displays of ‘action’ and ‘visions of reality’ dominate the online shopper’s panoramas. But, what is actually being sold? Scratch the surface and be wary of what’s beneath.
Where is the hope? Where are the psychic exit points? Who’s gonna provide the vim and tonic to ameliorate and alleviate the palates?
Enter skatepunk polymath, San Franciscan-doer, US of A’s Hanni El-Khatib with this all-embracing, arms aloft fifth album, ‘Flight’. A self-imposed exclusion from the commercial circus has only served to reenergise and revitalise his creative candour and proactive splendour.
An album chock-a-block and jam-packed-full of myriad sounds, styles, effects, affects and defects. Call it what you want: pop-pourri, sampledelia, plunderphonia, cut ‘n pastearama, 5GHD widescreen-o-vision, ultimately this is a (re)collection of creation that oozes lived air and emits the (evane)scent of shared space(s) and tactile tantalisations.
Marvel at ‘Carry’s chamber-popping post-punk that enthusiastically echoes the deranged genre-bending warpisms of the late Jay Reatard. The quasi-mystical line ‘Put a bullet in the air and watch it fall’ a metaquizzical conundrum of these times.
Revel in ‘Alive’, a raise-on (and up) d’etre to ditch the detritus and do more than simply exist.
Swivel past the darkened heart ‘n’ soul of ‘Gem’.
Bevel around the electro-futurism of ‘How’. A self-addressed all-enveloping mourning to a shattered affair that may still need rewriting.
Level within the neo-motor phunk of ‘Detroit’.
If evolution’s over, the revolution’s here and OUT NOW!
