Forest Swords - Dagger Paths

A first impression contemporary of Forest Sword could be Sun Araw, but that would only be to get an idea. Sun Araw has the knack to mix and processing things up into none recognition whilst Forest Swords tends to let his references and styles be more apparent. Dub being a heavy influence and faded base lines bounce along in the back of the mix accompanied with percussion that sounds as if it has been recorded from some distance away from equipment.

This gives a distinct ghostly and vacuous aesthetic that is in keeping with many of Forest Sword’s contemporaries. But unlike many of them his treatment of guitar is elevated up in the mix. But then these guitar lines are meandering and elusive at the same time as being right there in the face of the of the dub chamber, creating a stark forlorn estuary of dub wash. And the distinct impression from Forest Sword is of remoteness and a trawling of sad memories.

And of course sounds from the past are one of the stark unifying correlations of this H-pop (or its other names…) sound of the moment. But whilst uploading these past sounds and style fragments from exposure to everyday life, Forest Swords is able to create a spacious and still place that many others simple cant achieve.

“Melodramatic popular songs”

Sex Worker is the current solo side project of Mi Ami rocker Daniel Martin-McCormick. The name is catchy and as it happens the music can be catchy too, but in some dirty anti-catchy sort of way. This pop music doesn’t have bright corners.

For sure this is pop music and it comes courtesy of the Not Not Fun stable that has also brought us Sun Araw, Pocahaunted and other acts that seem to be riding that washed out, west coast and sun faded shitgaze, chillwave, hypnogogic pop or whatever term you may want to splash on it wave of popularity and creativity at the moment. Sex Worker along with their peers give us the flip side of pop, the pop that isn’t so easy to listen to, not so clean and pristine and the sound that you wouldn’t take home to your parents for fear of them suspecting that it’s a new generation of ‘play it backwards and the devil speaks to you’ songs.

Hysterical yelps are Sex Workers vocal style and his compositional palate mainly constitutes simple drum machine loops that punch away and synth sludge/drone that’s sounds as if it could be a waste product making its way through the drainage system of some dilapidated grimy brick building. But there is also pulsation and life to Sex Workers music and it exists in the face of corporate mass made pop. Often Sex Worker will faze in some exquisite high-hat and cymbal track into the mix that will elevate the mood that is pure pop class.

A few youtube video exist as well a some Viemo clips, this is under the radar stuff and even pitchfork have yet to drop the name. It’s hard to say if Sex Worker will break through, it depends on the focus of McCormick, but a lot of what’s on offer on his second release Waving Goodbye is catchy as fuck and a growth from Sex Worker’s debut.

Do the right thing

With Biutiful, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for the first time in the ten years he’s been making features works with out his usual scriptwriter, presumably from force of circumstances. But the rest of the back room team of editor, cinematographer, composer and production designer all remain the same from Iñárritu’s previous three features back to Amores Perros, the film that first brought him to international attention. And almost completely the temporal complexities of Guillerma Arriaga structuring have been discarded for a simpler linier narrative.

It could be argued, with Amores Perros these structural complexities paid off but the subsequent 21 Grams and Babel were impeded. The story development and lightness that Inarritu’s storytelling deserves, considering the ambitious Atlas like undertakings, mindboggling interconnectedness and hysterical realist interrogations require a character or something manifest to ground and channel the global concerns Inarritu precipitates

So a tabula rasa of sorts then for Inarritu. Set in Barcelona amongst the crowded, narrow and littered streets of the immigrant working class and poor Biutiful uses the story of the last few months of Uxbal’s life, who’s just been diagnoses with a malignant and terminal cancer. As it happened Uxbal ignored the initial symptoms and when asked by the doctor why he didn’t do something about it straight away he replies that it never hurt as much as it does now. But now, as it turns out, is too late, Uxbal is in deaths waiting room waiting to be taken over with a few months of ‘quality of life’ left.

For Uxbal’s this is a ‘few months’ to sort out the almighty mess that this untimely development creates. Uxbal’s a man walking in the valley of life and death and his life is tangled up in the lives of others, in other words he can’t just walk off and let the curtain drop. Uxbal has two young children, an estranged wife who’s a prostitute and bipolar and is unfit to care for their children add to this his dealings with corrupt police, illegal immigrant hawkers and sweatshops that become death traps. Oh and Uxbal has the gift of being able to talk to the recently deceased and make a little side earning by consoling the bereaved with messages from beyond the grave.

Uxbal is a man trying to make ends meet and is being pulled in different directions by said ends. Stylistically Inarritu has maintained his realist bleached out color palette and this gives rawness to light and we get to experience Uxbal’s sensitive eyes from too many sleepless nights. Barden as Uxbal is exceptional; he brings a nuanced stoic sensitivity to the lead role that operates as an anchor for the rest of the story and its issues to revolve. Uxbal is a struggling man trying to do right he is no superman.

A life, any life, is almost unbearably precarious and when woken from this somnambulistic tread of everyday repetition how will one confront that ‘light’ that we all must conform to. Using agents of capitalism's exploited itinerant victims Inarritu weaves a meditation for confronting your own time.