The Bulb Reviews : FEET OF CLAY
Feet of Clay presents couplets of short stories, that are scattered and spread across bleak ennui-ed production. It begins with a deft comparison to Amar’e Stoudemire and ends with Earl gleefully proclaiming that there is indeed more that he can do. In between 74 and 4N, songs saddle and float between heavy, drawn out soul samples and chaotic, out of tune triumphant sounds. Alongside one particular sample built merely off a probable middle eastern music influence that makes the chronically experimental architecture of Roc Marciano’s herringbone sound like child’s play. TISK TISK/COOKIES gives us little sonic spurts mixed in with referential vocal samples that clank and collude with the instrumental before alternating into a trap heavy, I don’t like shit type atmosphere. The sun-is-out, it does not speak to earl, so he cooks inside. Somehow heat shall radiate onto him.
Feet of Clay landed upon Earth and has since encroached my listening routine. I walk through leafy suburbs, phone battery on it’s last leg unknowingly rapping the closing lines to 4N. It is not precisely his words. Imprecise as they are, the flow is what creates a raft of overflowing joy within me. Also, there is a sense, even though this cannot be known that Earl, stood in the booth most likely hooded, with a rolled-up strain of the ever-so-refreshing purple punch is smiling. This instinctive sense of his joy when emoting words is present on The Mint, that featured crystallised piano keys which glittered and could even warm the heart of a depressed soul. Yap Yap! I’m runnin’ thingss!
OD, a personal favourite of mine perhaps presents the best short story on FOC. It also displays Earl’s nonsensical sense of humour. The song opens in an environment of student living, somewhere in a common room. A fellow “toots”, which a quick google search reveals to me is synonymous to a fart. Such events coincide with the ringing of a bell with the now anonymous fellow heading home to argue in what I suppose will be reddit forums. This on the surface sounds silly, and a riddling take on teen behaviour.
However, on first listen not really knowing what tooting meant, and in the context of the line “Somebody tooted in the student commons” tooting came off as an aggressive high impact sound resulting from a gunshot. I wondered if Earl was making a political statement on school shootings. This is even more possible with the resulting line. “I watched the doppler move, I watched the child get introduced to violence”. Doppler could equate to the multiplicative number of armed men, dressed in equivalent gear rushing into the school post-incident, hence giving this Doppler like effect. And the introduction of violence to the child is signalling that this is in fact a school shooting. It is brilliant how there are multitudes of interpretations gunning to be the one which is chosen from each listen of FOC.
At times though like all great literary writers, Earl peers his head and delivers a line filled with intense clarity and brevity without masking meaning through cubistic wordplay. On East he laments the lack of feelings for his girlfriend after losing his phone, the brutal pain of existing without his deceased father, and a deep sense of contentment amongst the hallow, crumbling anti-confluentialistic world we live in.
10/10
