♫♪  Airport - “A World Alone”

When Logan Snyder bought us Face of Death Volumes 1 & 2 VHS tapes from Vac N’ Videos — because he was 19 and we were still only 16 and 17 — and it contained a clip of this woman getting stabbed in the neck by a mental patient that still shakes me up. The build up was the most intense part about it because that screw driver went into her throat so quickly it was the suspense and shock of watching this nurse bleed out, while nobody could help her, the patient trying to kick off the gang of cops piling on. But like, dial-up still had porn and Korn lyrics, so suffice to saying: the age of information began when accessibility enticed curiosity.

Next thing that got my youthful ass terrified of death’s reality-check was watching a base-jumper’s parachute snag on cliff-side rocks, hitting the ground, surviving, trying to stand up, only to completely snap their spine and leg bones, reaching-out, and crippling helplessly to the ground. All on the internet. Only, this whole video was shot from the base-jumper’s POV helmet-camera, connected to a microphone. One hears this person happily say good-bye to those up-top, only to start yelling as soon as those legs crack loudly, hitting the ground then trying to stand up, articulated screaming in a slur of speech that still exists in my haunted memory of viewing it.

Earlier this year, Lorde Playlist (TMT Review) dropped on Afternoons Modeling, which I reviewed, and all I’m saying is I predicted Miss Cleo’s death this year; Airport’s album’s framing with Lorde tracks surrounded by harsh, violence, it nearly became a new-age representation of terror in sound. So, when witnessing the visual of Airport’s “A World Alone” video mingling catastophe with a visual-vocal performance by Claire Maisto covering Lorde, there’s no real shock value after cocktailing horror with innocence, but bless up in education. Get a fucking mattress:

Artist words:

A World Alone is the closing track on Lorde’s ‘Pure Heroine’. What you hear as the ‘song’ is a musician named Claire Maisto performing a cover of it. Her rendition is beautiful, her expression shifts from almost disinterest to joy, but there’s something deeper and darker embedded in the whole affair. This is where I took things into my own hands; I was at the time using an Aluminum necked Kramer with a Roland hex pickup and a GM-40 guitar synthesizer and my friend’s childhood Casio (incidentally, it had a MIDI in.) I ran this through a plethora of other effects-most importantly a Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl MK-II-to get the antiquated lonely sounds that comprise the chorus and reinforce the piano chords. You can only hear them clearly at the beginning of the verses in a very ASMR way. The song had a repressed violence in between the lines; a very suburban, drowsy, repressed violence…the kind that ends up putting politicians in office. Also, there was a sense of loss and temporality. I guess that’s life. The cinematic percussion is gathered material from movies and trailers that meant things to me as a kid. The song talks about being young a lot. Young and alone. I know that feeling and with the somber audio I had, which was to be the last track on Lorde Playlist, I thought almost half a year about how and if I should attempt a visual accompaniment. After a life-hiccup, I recovered by trying to put things back together and make the video rather than being self destructive. I guess it could be considered self destructive to work on something for two nights without sleep, but it felt like I’d lose momentum otherwise. It ended up how it is; a micro-to-macro of ‘problems’ and states of comfort/discomfort. I don’t regret that some people may find it distasteful. Confronting pain and tragedy is the kind of ‘hardness’ that breeds empathy.

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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