Balam Acab – Now Time
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Call it the precog blues. In this advanced stage of postmodern hypercapitalism, our brains are inundated with media flow—it’s a critical part of our consciousness. As such, we savor past, present, and future simultaneously; I am listening to the music, remembering my anticipation of the music, foreseeing my assessment of the music, slotting it into the taxonomy file and reminiscing the conversation I’ll have with a friend about it. Noah Baumbach put it perfectly in an often quoted line from Kicking and Screaming, one that William Bowers mentioned just today in his Pitchfork 15th anniversary piece:
“I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now. I can’t go to the bar because I’ve already already looked back on it in my memory, and I didn’t have a good time.”
That’s why sped-up, chipmunked vocal samples have become the lingua franca of the early 21st century electronic landscape. They have an inherently nostalgic tinge that in turn cues a Pavlovian response, conjuring memories of tape recorder experiments in childhood, memories in fast-forward. Complain all you like about their ubiquity, but you’ll hear those voices in the back of your head, the sound of your recollections fraying like magnetic tape. Like Kanye West, Alec Koone of Balam Acab understands this well, and on his debut album Wander/Wonder out next week, he tries to triangulate where we fit in the now time.
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Balam Acab – Now Time [download] [buy from Tri Angle Records]
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