Tiny Mix Tapes

Gobby - No Mercy Bad Poet

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One cannot restart No Mercy Bad Poet without experiencing “Cancer:” a brief[☎], a brief[☈], and a brief[☯] history

[☎]Gobby’s new album is holding my ears captive and is driving me to a musical hysteria that wonderfully proves impossible to grasp.
[☈]Pop music is difficult. [And that’s all you get b/c, why? It’s not really that important to idealize music these days; live enough to feel worth of existence.] Yo, everyone struggles to do everything. Everybody is getting paid, maybe.
[☯]Like all the other business trips, my pop came home wielding a few new books and same old luggage, only super exhausted this time, with skin removed from his left leg, which he says “Is now just a patch on my head that looks like a bald spot because of a mole I had that was malignant with ‘Cancer’,” using his fingers to imitate quotation marks around waves of sound, as if this were something I’d read — rather than hear — like a swan song that penetrates a conclusion.



“I am Batman,” said the five-year old imitating a Sinkers commercial she is watching in Times Square. This reminds her of the moment she finally jumped from limb-to-roof, conquering what she calls “Home!” As if every childhood memory were available in high-definition recall. And that bubble will eventually pop, erasing all types of thoughts from your min…

…TIME FOR WORK.

In a nutshell, No Mercy Bad Poet is the antithesis/antagonist of commercialism; ostrich-burger/-soup egg-roll. But a nutshell is impractical. No Mercy Bad Poet is more like an isolation tank. Let’s be realistic and say you left the shower on hot, closed the door for about three minutes [turn off the lights (and be careful)], and are now reentering the water closet, submerging with the steam. Your sturdy body in a shelter, in a city, surrounded by other cities, blocked by water that people travel across. Then [musician 1] sells you the bag of reefer you give to [musician 2] who’s confessing she believes [musician 3] is the new [musician ∞], but you think about how Gobby has been doing ∞ since before the Lantern EP. Y’all remember Lantern? ‘mad free shit’! Gobby been with us for a minute. That style keeps changing too. Imagine your sign-nif’s face while you pee on their razor by the drain in that sauna cocoon.

No Mercy Bad Poet is Gobby’s sensory deprivation. And shit can get grim. Modern living is so immediately isolating. But there’s always a way out of Brooklyn. Nobody has met someone who didn’t want their own private island. Gobby is presenting that as an audible offering. It’s color-by-numbers, only you do the counting. Or a game of peak-a-boo, but with ears instead of eyes. No Mercy Bad Poet is a tactical listening experience using layered sounds that increasingly tug at one’s psychology in a way that isn’t a minor note, but a stick in the mud waiting for its next adventure.

Truman Show [fade-out]