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Originally Posted by SYRFox
Yeah it's my favourite work of his in a loooong time. Didn't really care for anything he did after Kindred and Truant, but this one is really good -love Beachfire especially! Glad he went for this sound for sure
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Wait wait wait waitwaitwaitwaitwait...
You didn't like Rival Dealer?!?!?!?
Ah man... I think that EP is his absolute career high-water mark so far. Every time I listen to it, it just completely sucks me into another fucking world entirely. It's a scary world, but also a beautiful one.
I can even paint you a picture of where that "EP" (really, I see it as one long track) takes me when I hear it. Here, I'll try at least...
Imagine life in post-second civil war Sudan (circa 2006-present) as a really fucking epic film directed by Ridley Scott in the early '80s. Imagine being a child in that setting, which takes on the hues and tones of the climactic fight scene in Blade Runner, with a sinister rain pouring down and neon lights flashing. A brutal reality chopped up and accentuated by bizarre existential maxims from angels and demons (or nuns and Replicants, whatever helps with visualization.) But imagine that instead of fighting robots, you're dealing with the pains of adolescence, drugs, sex, and the larger-than-life quality that all of these things take on when you are young and trying to figure yourself out. Plus you're in the fucking Sudan, so there's nobody on your side, you live in an authoritarian regime, and you're tired and hungry and scared... but you survive because flashes of divinity pop up to unexpectedly remind you that life is so much bigger than your immediate experience, and though you are harrowed by all of this, you find just enough hope in the melancholy beauty of these moments.
That's where Rival Dealer takes me.
It's honestly one of the most powerful pieces of music I think I've ever heard. I've got nothing to compare it to musically. I could say listening to it is like listening to some kind of condensed amalgam of the most potent moments of Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, John Lennon's half of "A Day in the Life," and Boards of Canada and Autechre at their most resonant and ethereal -- but that would still be REALLY far from the mark.
Rival Dealer is one of the reasons I love electronic music. It can elicit moods that truly feel like they don't belong in this world. In some ways, electronic music (as a whole, you understand) can be quite emotionally relaxing, as it usually doesn't contain as much of the human element... the pleading and moaning about love and anger and sadness that can be far too easy to relate to and be brought down by. In other ways, it's capable of creating textures and atmospheres and emotional collages that are more heart-breaking AND -warming than anything a human voice or potent set of lyrics with organic instrumentation is capable of capturing, except for in the most unique and extraordinary of cases.
I don't listen to Rival Dealer often, because frankly it's a bit too much for me... but when I do, I don't bloody well turn that shit off for *anything.*
