Upon one’s way up Beacon Hill — East going West — around 5:53 PM between Monday and Friday, one bears witness to an aged, sturdy man hustling everything he’s got on an obtuse incline, toting a basketball under his sweaty, sleeve-free arm. What was once a white headband is now grey-ish, haloing his straggling hair, and his shoes tied tight, keeping the fellow balanced, embracing the weekday challenge of Beacon Hill. The moving image of him playing b-ball at Bar Beach with LL Cool J is a possibility, but most likely, the man tossed that rock up and down the court alone, admiring peace during a wonderful, summer afternoon. And then one day, one sees this marvelous man riding a bike up Beacon Hill, and the thought “Death is certain, life is not” comes crashing down on one’s mentality like the forbearance of sweat, perpetually entangling mobile coordination. Or plainly: existence. The next day, one sees him standing, halfway up the hill, hands on his hips, pits airing in the wind, wisps of hair gusting upward toward his destination. He’s also thinking about the balance of existing. And though it’s not the physical distance halting this venture, his mentali… oh, shit wait: he’s tying his shoes. Sometimes alleviating a problem without figuring out the underlying cause is exactly how we all survive.
Cracking open the Portugal package containing World Tour by a Japanese fellow named +you, I realize the only thing [outside my car] I can play a CD on is a Sony alarm clock in Grams’s room. Picking up this CD player, I recognize it as my father’s alarm clock that he used while our family went on a pilgrimage throughout Europe. World Tour is the first CD that’s been played on it since he died in Europe. Grams has owned it since and doesn’t understand the device outside telling time. So I took it home. And sitting on my couch, I think of how none of the voices heard in World Tour had any intention of +you using their soul as art, thinking one of these murmurs in the distance could be my father’s voice, unrecognizable. Then around “morning coffee,” it hits me: acceptance is purely existence. If I can’t balance the yin and yang in any part of my life (e.g., socializing, deity, anxiety, hair-loss, vision, air conditioning), fate’s pathway will most unkindly diverge downward.
{{ Savannah’s hair wrapping itself around my underwear and danglies, while I wonder how it arrived there in the middle of a workday. The children downstairs telling me about the beach where I asked Savannah to marry me, the kids’ communication a mix of Hebrew and hand gestures. My boii Salvador on the way into work gabbin’ ‘bout how he’s king of the outside parking lot because he arrives earlier than everyone else. That bald, bigger gentleman suited up and sweating in front of a window-only building eating a dripping candy/ice cream bar. Me walking into the office: Mahdi chic. Nodding along to Greg talk about his accident outside the Waldbaum’s we’re standing in, as he barely has any teeth left to articulate himself. Sitting at mework desk a bit drunk, because. Thinking how the sounds of World Tour take my mind away from everything I deal with on the daily. The feeling in the pit of my stomach, pondering how +you decided to balance these samples and melodies, their speed and drop-zone blends. Cutting up organics into a macrobiotic diet of sound. }}
The practice of organizing a mess is dreadful to most, but it’s an occupation to others. Even if the reality of it is barely scraping an hour of listeners’ lives, World Tour perpetuates generations of existence, rooting people down to an immeasurable amount of process improvement. +you’s guidance is led through the emotionally embracing collage of sounds entombed in World Tour. There are no correct answers. Just old pictures of people you recognize, but have never met; maybe they live or work around the corner. Most of these pictures were taken before your birth, and if they weren’t, here are these pictures for you to look at instead.
Nobody can tell me +you’s name IRL. This guy Myles in Austin knows a dude in Spain named Erik — who was mentioned in the recent Illuminated Paths interview — who might know +you’s name IRL. Yet, for name’s sake, it’s all about sharing an attachment to something that crosses language barriers, and learning how to feel audibly connected involves flat-lining one’s mind around that same Antonio Banderas 12 Warrior buffer zone; I eventually grip the lingo: acceptance is existence. Feel it, you know. Presenting listeners the experience of sound is what makes +you the perfect new creep. How many albums, under how many [potential monikers (Nicole Brennan, pure♥hearts, ltd., OROKIN, Pachinko Machine Music, Lil $ega, Wasabi Tapes)] has +you dropped in 2015? And he’s working on an Orange Milk tape dropping soon? As who? This is creepy! But to list some modern art/musician creeps: James Ferraro, Laurel Halo, Amnesia Scanner, Arca, Gobby (omg, Gobby), Felicia Atkinson, 0PN, Dean Blunt, Holly Herndon, that Ducktails dude, etc. These people are artistically creepy. It’s nice to know you agree with specific creepy people on a level outside face-to-face or digital interaction. These are the people who alleviate YOUR creepy. World Tour is the perfect blend of +you’s stylistic creepy and completely tuned-in-2-out that finally does something past the shtick (PC Music vs. grime) and hacks (vaporwave), while remaining persistent in sound and measure of an imaginable suspension, posing as reality.
More about: +you
