So I was at an ice skating rink at midnight because colleges are crazy and funnel student activities fees towards all kinds of awesomely desperate nonsense (what better way to end saturday binge drinking than ice skating?), and in the chaotic tumult of whirlwind inexperience was this unhampered bit of pristine grace and skill. This person is still a relative stranger to me and the group I came with. He shows up to the library, generally in a state of exasperation, with the gauntness of a meth addict and the flamboyant concentration of a method actor, requesting a laptop checkout with the helium importance of Truman Capote’s voice. Apparently he is a professionally trained whistler and opera singer? Either way, he is an unsung genius on the ice, and I can only imagine what his vocal skills are like.
Unfortunately, my cameraphone didn’t catch the best part, which was the music blaring on top of this. Ice skating rinks are usually soundtracked with top 40 rotation, but the playlist last night seemed skewed towards dubstep in a way that made it feel like it had generation-defining import, what with the wobbling skaters and all. I’m not entirely sure how to frame the activity here, though, whether it is an act of valiant defiance or copacetic harmony, but the discourse around dubstep tends to center on is its bracingly violent disorientation. Once the breakdown hits and factory collapses we are all turned into strobe-lit army of malfunctioning robots programmed for war.
Not to open old wounds, but this seems like the perfect counterargument to that whole controversy regarding James Blake’s fauxminist concerns about the way brostep would alienate less masculine music consumers. This is delicate and poised under pressure, and though the music playing would help illuminate what I’m talking about, just throw on the hardest moments on Bangarang for a second and you’ll see what I saw. Because I’m a bad Jew I never bothered watching the Pianist (Hollywood and the Holocaust don’t mix, y’all!), but from what I understand there’s a really corny scene of Brody playing the piano while bombs are dropping. It’s kind of like that!
Semi-related, that new Skrillex video where a gang of thuggish young rascals electrocute a creepy, Snidely Whiplash looking ice cream truck driver is awesome and as worthy of plaudits as that M83 one about the telekinetic kids running amok in Midnight City or w/e. It’s kind of like Bangarang:Midnight City::Attack the Block:Super 8. This is really only Skrillex’s second video with a child/children wreaking havoc on predatory adults, but given his Korn collaboration it’s not a stretch to think that there’s a running theme of dubstep as an empowering barrier towards the adulterated childhoods that populated Life is Peachy or Follow The Leader and thus not solely the domain of frat jocks looking for new ways to haze any and all party guests.
