Rhyme Report

Published on October 1st, 2020 | by Guest Contributor

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Welcome to the Screen Age: Ruthless Cosmopolitans Perform an Animated Digital Exorcism

Who lurks behind the scene? Who worships at the screen?

New York’s Ruthless Cosmopolitans — a collaboration between guitarist, producer, and label-owner Jon Madof (Zion80, Rashanim, Chant Records) and underground rapper, poet, and performance artist, Eden Pearlstein (aka ePRHYME of Darshan) —  formed as a cathartic response to the cultural and political insanity of the last four years.

Citing diverse influences from Rage Against the Machine and Talking Heads to Bad Brains and Frank Zappa, each of the tracks on their 6-song debut EP Ruthless (to be released this fall on Chant Records) merges a dada-esque social critique with the visceral energy of political punk, the hyper-linked poetics of Hip Hop, and the liberating dissonance of free jazz to hold a creative mirror up to American society, which by all accounts has become a Jarry-esque Theater of the Absurd. Ubu Roi recast as reality TV.

“Great art should function like a weather vane or a radio antenna that picks up the signal of the culture and transmits it back to itself,” says Pearlstein. “We wanted to show the world what it sounded like. So a lot of my poetic practice for this project just had to do with framing or exfoliating what was already there and letting people see it and hear it in a new light.”

The EP’s first single, “The Screen Age”, accompanied by a short animated-musical film directed by renowned animator Abbey Luck and Prone Studios, hauntingly depicts the multiple dimensions of humanity’s collective addiction to the drug of the digital.  After months of COVID-19, COVID-inspired social-distancing, and migrating the majority of our personal, social and cultural life online, the influence of social media has acquired an even greater potential to completely Frankenstein our society and collective psyche. “The Screen Age” offers an unflinching view beneath the hood of this machine-made dream, in which we all play a/part.

As a creative attempt to reclaim some sense of perspectival autonomy, Pearlstein and Madof consider the song to represent a kind of corporate-social-media exorcism.

“Whether it’s political, religious, commercial, or motivated by some other form of identity politics, everybody’s waving their flag and trying to get us to join their team by putting their voices in our heads,” says Pearlstein. “We need to find our own voice within this maelstrom. To do that we have to at least try to expel these colonizing thought-streams that barrage us through all these digital mediums that now have more direct access to our medulla oblongatas than ever before.”

Madof’s sharp, staccato guitars punch in and out of the track’s surging rhythms, propelling listeners deeper into the guts of the grid, while Pearlstein’s tight, repetitive lyrics, punctuated with explosive exclamations, enact a kind of reverse hypnosis, seeking to lull and shock the listener back into their own body, the literal elephant in the virtual room.

‘Head spin cycle / Tail spin doctor / Leave this body / Leave this body’  

Ruthless Cosmopolitans was born as a band, a project, a concept during a time of extreme political unrest, cultural chaos, and racial tension, springing to life on  August 12, 2017 — the day of the white supremacist march and counter-protests in Charlottesville, VA, where Heather Heyer was run over by a car in cold blood. Says Pearlstein, “I was thinking and thinking and thinking, and a lot of stuff was boiling, bubbling, stewing and stinking. And then Charlottesville happened and it was just like the lid popped off. The frog jumped out of the boiling kettle, and the lyrics just came pouring out.”

Right after Pearlstein wrote the first song “Make America Hate Again,” he called Madof and said, “I think I just opened a door here. Wanna walk through it with me?”  Madof was intrigued,  and they agreed to get together soon. By the time they did, Pearlstein had the lyrics to the rest of the EP written.

They started working on demos in Madof home studio and traded ideas and flashes of insight back and forth over several months, perfecting them through countless versions with tweaks to the structure, sound, instrumentation, vocal delivery, tempo and all of the other elements that form the building blocks of the music.  When they were finally ready to start recording, Pearlstein and Madof enlisted Yoshie Fruchter (Sandcatchers) on bass and Manny Laine (Kanye West, Wyclef Jean) on drums and the quartet started recording at Bill Laswell’s famed Orange Music in NJ. Madof took on the producer role with Pearlstein serving as the conceptual and artistic director for the project. With master engineer James Dellatacoma at the controls, the band recorded the basic tracks.

Further sessions involved adding other musicians: Frank London (Klezmatics) on trumpet, Greg Wall (Hasidic New Wave) on sax, Brian Marsella (John Zorn) on keyboards, Marlon Sobol (Matisyahu) on percussion, vocals from Elana Brody (Bobby Mcferrin), and Madof’s 10 year-old daughter Talia. In addition, numerous layers of guitar tracks were added and extensive work was done on Pearlstein’s vocals, adding effects, layering and other techniques to get the character and intent of each song just right. Tracking and mixing were finished just weeks before the Coronavirus Pandemic hit the New York area, allowing Pearlstein, Madof and James to work remotely on finishing and mastering the music.

“These are crazy times that call for crazy responses,” says Pearlstein. “We’re no different you know, we’re not saying we’re better than anything else that’s happening. We’re also making a crazy statement, but we’re trying to do it in a playful and self-aware way that hopefully leaves space to escape from the dungeon of discourse that is holding us all hostage.

 

~benji michaels



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