The eternally elusive James Ferraro likes to drop hot nuggets hinting onto his new musical ways via his Iguana City channel on YouTube. The comment section in his videos are always disabled, as if saying: “Here you are with a finished product, and I don’t care about your opinion”. He got us all used to sudden stylistic changes, from sleazy, lo-fi sound collages to glossy synthesizer artifice. Now he changes direction again.
In his newest piece, entitled simply “K-9”, Ferraro re-envisions the dirty, funky 1970’s brutal New York just before the ascension of no wave. Starting with the police description of “Black male suspect on foot, believed to be armed” and the barking of a police dog at the beginning (hence the title), Ferraro drops into the seedy, crime-ridden underworld with a distinctive druggy haze. A relaxed, slow rhythm setting pace for a lo-fi, slightly distorted guitar solo that seems to be coming straight from some hot basement. What is interesting here is the fact that James Ferraro is becoming more confident with his voice, using it more (maybe encouraged by Dean Blunt?) and thus getting the feel of the track closer to a sensual 70’s slow jam than the crazy plunderphonics of Night Dolls with Hairspray, where the use of electric guitar was also abundant. There are obviously still some Ferraroisms here, like the use of voice synthesizer in the beginning or James Brown’s iconic shout from “I Feel Good” dropped every few seconds, but here he goes slower and much more peaceful than before, making “K-9” one of his most accessible tracks to date.
• James Ferraro: https://soundcloud.com/b-e-b-e-t-u-n-e
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