Dan Bodan’s Soft was a weird fucking record — I loved it — but it also kind of creeped me out. Basically, it gave me sexually & politically complicated shivers that shared visual associations with dusty-mustaches and white people wearing Hood By Air. When I wasn’t trying to figure out which pastel-lite band Bodan reminded me of (The Antlers? Wild Beasts? HTDW?), I did enjoy dissecting how the album explored the virtuality of the male gaze. Bodan toes the line between a put-on romeo creep and a beautifully emasculated archetypal macho painter. Regardless of the levels of abstraction happening, Soft demonstrated how even the representative character, the “lounge singer,” can sublimate sites of aggression and anxiety in the name of a greater good — the “good” being Soft’s ultimate realization of a vanishing point for the oppressive sensuality of Bodan’s own privilege-to-croon.
So, maybe it makes total sense that the “axis” of all that is good in progressive music rips apart Bodan’s sweet-boy voice to discover alt-enviros for it to mutate within: Lotic, KABLAM, Gobby, Draveng, and E+E come to “remix” his album! I’ll give you a brief rundown of each track:
1. Lotic brings to light that heartbreaking drama where the fashion finally goes numb and the sky opens up, pouring out the beautiful almighty straight into the mouth so it croons no more.
2. KABLAM gives us a vision of broken glass spilt on the marble floor while in the corner, the IDM-piano blasts breakbeats and Bodan-isms soothingly.
3. Gobby gives us a good remix.
4. Draveng recalls the initial slipperiness of “For Thin Soles,” giving us a deep slow-burning headphone escapade into phased-fuzz and techno-bile.
5. Elysia lets the sparrow perch on her outstretched finger for just a moment while the dust swirls behind her, not looking back — an inspiration to those who keep the pain inside, she reminds us we can always talk to waterfalls.
It’s also cool to see some of our favorite artists featured bright-and-bold on the DFA silver-screen.
• Dan Bodan: https://soundcloud.com/dan-bodan
• DFA: http://dfarecords.com
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