Take in a steady dose of William Freidkin and John Carpenter flicks. Wash it down with a Starbucks latte. Browse Rodney King and Malcom X clips on the YouTube. Look out your high-rise condo window. Future R&B bass rattles your bones as infomercials play muted in the dark. Ads promote the safe use of fracking while Lockheed Martin toils away at work, unseen.
The audio aural equivalent? James Ferraro’s “Skid Row.” The always prolific, cynical electronic artist has been slowly asserting himself more and more into public consciousness, even recording his own vocals as of late. If his last album was a commentary on 9/11 and it’s New York aftermath, then this is the aftershock here and now in Los Angeles. And while that city is the perfect place to Snapchat police brutality, economic disparity and general moral ruin, we can still hear the crashing of a nation he’s arranging in sound collage for us anywhere.
Despite it’s interview clips, sirens, macbook text speak and Wang Chung samples, “Skid Row” is Ferraro’s most formed work to date. Nothing is wafting, every element is meticulously placed. He’s been on it that way at least since his “Far Side Virtual” release. But if that was mock-ideal of our global State, then this is a stare down at America’s dark heart. -Wade
