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On The Sanctity of Tyler, The Creator

July 27, 2017 Bill X. Kirby

You are opening tabs. There are hyperlinks and advertisements and news blurbs and trailers that are really advertisements and buffering and moments of silent idle waiting and more silence and data entry. If you want to add some significant value to that experience, click PLAY on the above video. The vocal synthesis of softness and harshness here, the latter on the part of Tyler, the self- and universally-appointed "timberwolf," whose music beckons you to get high and hang and bob to it, occurs only when the two collide in the same note: synth piano keys auto-dilating to incoherence; a belabored drumbeat affecting most of the song's heavy-bass section; "two-seater" and bass guitar's noodling; saxophone crying and high-strings' wilting scree. The fractures and intervals of modulated vocals appended to a quick soundbite of a girl's asking Tyler to roll the window down "because it's windy," which moves seamlessly with Tyler's opining the all-goodness of when your hair blooooows, drone on and on in your head hours after the song has been STOPped. This is the stuff of comic-book collecting. This is quite literally a haven. Track "911" off Tyler's latest album imbues synth jazz and piano vibes which ring and resonate soulfully so as to make the individual consciousness taking in the sound and words and musical-medium's unique communicative mode sort of rise internally and float there. "Five-car garage / full tank of da gas / but that don't mean nothin nothin nothin nothin without you shotgunnin' the passsss-enger." There's this weird kind of candid genuine conversation going on between you and Tyler, even in the monologue of his bars, as if there is a glass partition divided into striations at its base so as to allow you to hear the stream of consciousness Tyler is sonaring out on the other side. He sings about the cage of caring, about what it means to be a highly sensitive organism within what is essentially a talking TV-screen, and the real value of cars when "what the fuck else do you want from me? / That was the only thing keeping me company." etc. etc.

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