Photo by Sam Clarke
Sometimes you can look at the waveform of a track that pops up in your Soundcloud feed and tell its going to hurt. Peaks and valley smooth out into an unrelenting wall of noise—even on the page, you can tell you should be afraid. NON Worldwide cofounder Chino Amobi has had a few of these over the course of recent months, largely abandoning the heavy-lidded melodicism of his Anya's Garden EP in favor of sonic body armor as blunt and unforgiving as a brick wall. Yesterday, he returned with the call-to-arms "YOU WANT DEMOCRACY? YOU WANT FREEDOM?" and just looking at it you can tell there's no escape.The blown-out noise of some of this recent work matches the harrowing subject matter—whether that's exploring the horrors of drone warfare or the perils of international travel as a person of color. And this new track's no exception, using a constant wave of digitalist needle pricks and concrete static as the underpinning for an address (delivered by Amobi himself) about the control and power that government bodies can exercise over their subjects. So yeah, it's as harrowing in content as it is in form.Look and listen here.
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