It’s funny how the human mind works. Each new day for every one of us (though many would argue differently) seems to be nothing more than an attempt to separate ourselves from the masses and to become unique in our own right. And it’s not like we’re being self motivated in doing so either: the world we know–every magazine, website and television show– encourages it, or rather, discourages the contrary. Take Apple for example: Here’s a company that gears it’s entire ad campaign toward emphasizing the different ways that you can express your own personal feelings and be unique by using their products. Everything is customizable, and the iPhone does indeed, “have an app for everything.” However, there’s one thing that Apple fails to acknowledge, despite the fact that it contributes enormously to the success of their products, and this is the simple fact that every single one of the products looks exactly the same.
Like I said, it’s funny how the human mind works, for our drive to be unique and independent seems to have lured us into a giant black pit of uniformity. And it not just within the corporations that this type of trickery (although I do have a hard time calling it trickery seeing as we’ve elected into it) occurs. Think back to high school, and take a look at the punk movement. Punks seem to thrive off the notion of anarchy, because it is a concept that is quite the opposite of what the mass majority of people are interested in. They want to be unique and to avoid letting mainstream culture influence their lives, but again, the failure to be unique can be seen in this attempt to be just the opposite. Punks started dressing the way they did (tight black jeans with floss stitches, patches, odd hair colors and styles, and such, to place their image as far away from what is generally excepted as possible. Why, then, do they continue to dress this way, despite the fact that a Google image search on the word punk yields this picture? Though their mission statement may indeed be antiestablishment, punks are really just appealing to a different establishment, so that they might fit in among this other group of people. The put things concisely, they aim to be defined as punk.
The list really does go on forever, and while it would be quite feasible to write a book containing purely the instances in which this trend is followed, it seems much more proper to decline this challenge and skip ahead to an extremely rare find that recently poked its sleeve out from the bottom of the stack: an artist, who truly embodies the uniqueness that most only think they have.
Emancipator
Having spent an unusually large amount of time simply tracking down this Oregon producer’s album (which I can only assume was distributed by dropping jewel cases from an airplane out over the pacific and letting them do their thing) I had prepared myself for something out of the ordinary, however, what I received upon placing that album in my cd player made my expectations look like a hipster without a fedora: very, very wrong.
Though they certainly are not the kind of thing you’d throw into a dj set (or at least the kind we’re familiar with) Emancipators beats come from a different world, and could very likely be the perfect cure to your post party depression. For an electronic musician, he uses surprisingly little synthesizer, and replaces this absence a mastery of unlikely string instruments and natural sounds, and though there are clearly roots that stretch from deep in the realm of hip hop, many of his tracks also convey influences as obscure as the drill ‘n bass of Aphex Twin. All things considered, however, I feel nothing contributes more deeply to the sound of Emancipator than his refusal do be what has already been. His un-doctored ideas have an uncanny ability to make even the most restless child open his eyes wide, sit still, and listen, and that talent, in my opinion, is the rarer than a golden 8 track.
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Mobb Deep & Sigur Ros – Shook (Emancipator Remix)
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