<a href="http://blankstairs.bandcamp.com/album/pop-awareness" data-mce-href="http://blankstairs.bandcamp.com/album/pop-awareness">Pop Awareness by kuxxan SUUM</a>
BST006: Pop Awareness by kuxxan SUUM
BST006 comes from Asheville by way of NYC’s kuxxan SUUM. The piece consists of a dense 12 minute throbbing and leisurely paced dance track that supplies the listener with a healthy dose of kitsch. Cooper has been known to churn out hefty dance-floor tunes that serve the simple purpose of making the listener groove and jive in a way they never previously thought possible. Formerly seeing releases on the fantastic and prolific Brooklyn based Styles Upon Styles imprint, the Long Island based label, South Fork Sound as well as his own venture, End Fence; Pop Awareness stands as his introductory release for Blankstairs.
‘Pop Awareness’ is somewhat of a humorous exposé that serves as a simple experiment in medium, sampling, and context. Zach set out to achieve a reaction (of any kind) from the listener by merely placing samples from a hand full of commonly known pop songs in the midst of a completely different context. These samples, and subsequent placement, provide the listener with an alternative point of reference and challenges them to think critically and intentionally about the ideas and motifs commonly conveyed by contemporary pop music.
“I don't usually have much of a verbal explanation for my musical works, but at the risk of sounding like I take myself too seriously, which I don't (just listen, you'll see), the concept that led to this piece was important enough to me that I'd like to make my intentions clear, in words, to the listener/viewer.
The source material for this piece features vocal samples from contemporary American pop music artists. By removing these vocal samples from their original musical context and putting them in a very different musical context, their lyrical character changes, or seems to change. However, nothing has really changed. What is demonstrated by removing the original musical context of these lyrics, is the true resonance of the lyrics' meaning and their effects on mind and spirit. Hearing these lyrics in this way affords us an objective observation of the lyrics outside of the pop music realm.
Once we are alone with the lyrics and not blinded by the excitement of the musical production and the pop spectacle, we can actually hear and feel what is being said to us. My intention in this piece is to raise awareness of the kinds of subtle, and not-so-subtle, information we acquire through engaging with pop music, and media in general, in America.
The lyrical content of this source material was chosen based upon subject matters that I find rather distasteful with regards to mass consumerism; egotism, chauvinism, extreme materialism, objectification of women, sexual violence and fixation and fear of apocalypse and physical death, among other subjects that cripple mental and physical health as well as personal, domestic and societal responsibilities in Americans. This is not to say that artists should be avoiding these subjects as inspiration...certainly not! The artist should do whatever the artists wants to do in the creative realm. Furthermore, it is our legal right as Americans to the Freedom of Speech, and this should be exercised to the fullest extent by those who have creative skills.
However, it is the relentless capital-driven media perpetuation of some of these values that is comfortably and rhythmically pummeled into Americans through our various means of consumer-media-ingestion that concerns me.
If you are health-conscious regarding diet or physical activities, etc...why not be health-conscious regarding your information-diet? You are what you eat. What's eating you?”
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Written and produced by Zach Cooper
Packaging, Design, and Layout by Nathaniel Young
Mastered by Dietrich Schoenemann at Complete
***Praise for "Pop Awareness" via AdHoc and Mystic Groove
