023! Mini Digest: Steve McQueen, Young Thug’s Lawyer and Mystery Hits
Links o'clock
when I have music I want to feel its vibration, not only with my ear but with my whole body - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Last week I gleefully escaped New York (not like Lena Dunham did, just for the weekend). I passed by Dia Beacon to see the film director Steve McQueen’s art installation, “Bass”, which has been on for over a year now so I am more than unfashionably late.
Sitting in a 35,000 square foot post-industrial basement, amidst 78 concrete columns, the installation is made up of 60 light boxes that cast no shadow as they beam down onto the floor. It’s like being in a humongous empty club, and the room is filled with a soundscape made up of improvisations on electric bass, acoustic bass and an ngoni (a lute from West Africa), played by Marcus Miller and Me’shell Ndegeocello amongst others. The lights change hue persistently, from bright pink to red to blue, and as you walk through the space, your eyelids begin to change colour. In the flooded red, my eyelids became blue as I blinked. Rather than really hearing the music exactly, the sub-bass hits through you, looping without a discernible start or end. You become highly aware of your body in the space, “acutely sensitive to yourself” according to McQueen. I’m not sure if I need to feel more acutely sensitive to myself in this moment, frankly, but it was affecting to be soaked in light and sound.
The last time I had visited Dia Beacon was for Jeff Mills’ installation during high Covid, when all the clubs were still closed. It was a moving experience then, too, to be in a barren club space.
Coincidentally! I’m also working on a sound installation right now for a group exhibition at The Barbican in London, starting at the end of this month. “Feel The Sound” is an immersive exhibition designed to “rearrange what sound is.” I will share more intricate details at a later date here, but for now you can check out the preview at The Barbican’s site.
And now, it’s link time!
Sound
Minor mystery alert! This song by Atlanta act Mariah The Scientist is number one on Apple Music in the US right now, and top five globally. It got up there fast! And she’s the first woman to top the chart this year. How has it already surpassed Drake’s “Nokia” without trending on TikTok? Is it just the Young Thug connection? Answers on a postcard sent to me, please.
Burna Boy is now featuring on potentially the biggest Afro song of the summer - Shallipopi’s “Laho”. Hats off to Burna for always pushing for it to be “part 2” instead of Remix. Smart.
Ayra Starr & Wizkid collab on a track that samples Wyclef’s “911”. Into it.
NY producer & XL A&R Anthony Naples’ has a very nice new house record.
Rhythm N Sound’s Mark Ernestus is back with Ndagga Rhythm Force (the “dream Dakar-Berlin nexus), their first release in 9 years!
Detroit’s Hi-Tech have teamed up with George Riley for this very fun 160bpm summer-y ghettotech track.
Journalist Kate Hutchinson has started a podcast called “Studio Radicals”, featuring interviews with some of the world’s finest studio rats - from engineers to composers. The first episode is Italian engineer, mixer, producer Marta Salogni.
A very fun and turbo-charged set of instrumentals from St. Lucia, Dominica & Guadeloupe, put together into a compilation “showcasing the producers of the future of Caribbean music in 2025”. Fast and furious.
Vision
Nick Knight - the photographer behind Bjork’s legendary Homogenic album art - has collab’ed with Eartheater for this similarly beguiling shot. Now I’ve got baby shark in my head. Trigger warning: breastfeeding a shark.
Skiifall’s short film about Saint Vincent (the country not the artist).
Vybz Kartel has shared his Top 10 items he can’t live without for GQ. Spoiler alert: he talks about the theory of relativity, while wearing two rolexes.
I may have spent too much time looking at the Guinness World Records IG account. Most apples crushed in the hand in one minute is a pretty good watch. Stay away from the farthest eyeball pop.
A highlight of my year last year was playing experimental music festival Dripping, and I also got to watch Joy Guidry playing the bassoon under the stars while I was there. I’ve honestly never thought of the bassoon in such a beautiful way. Shame on me. Here they are performing on The Lot Radio this week.
Thought
You’re charged with a crime in Georgia, and you can afford the best defense. Whom do you hire? Well, there’s Drew Findling, the so-called “billion-dollar lawyer” with a quarter of a million Instagram followers, who has represented the rappers Gucci Mane and Offset, and has been likened to “Robin Hood with Jesus swag.” Or you could try Bruce Harvey, the High Times-reading, memorably profane barrister once described as “Atlanta’s preeminent long-haired, left-handed, anti-establishment liberal lawyer.” (His business cards shout: “stop talking.”) There’s also Steve Sadow, a combative, cowboy-booted attorney who is representing Trump in his Georgia election-interference case. And then there’s Brian Steel, whose sole flashy trait is his surname. Steel does not have an Instagram account, or a ponytail, or a Porsche with a license plate that reads “acquit,” as Harvey once did. He looks like a tax guy, which he nearly was, and he drives an electric car painted off-white, inside of which he keeps fruit and water for whoever may need it.
I predicted bassline summer, and now so has The Guardian. You heard it here first!
A radio station in Sydney was using an AI host for 6 months before anyone noticed. Oh naur!
The architect John Pawson on minimalism as a way of life, etc.