Suna – radicalfashion
Ballet – radicalfashion
There’s something vaguely discomforting here. I reach for words and come up just short.
It’s the feeling you get when a streetlight goes out just as you step underneath it. Or when you open the door to a room where someone left the window open on a cold night and you’re met by a gust of chilling, cold air. It’s a traffic accident in slow motion. It’s the sound of rain in space. There’s a hidden terror in here – and a picture buried in the midst of a thousand striking lines.
None of that sounds particularly pleasant does it? And yet, it’s strangely fascinating. And so I try again:
A mad play, with a background of metallic trees and stagelights that flicker and pulse like lightning bugs dancing in the night. On stage, the actors seem to flit in and out of sight. And behind them you notice deep, slowly moving shadows.
A man, alone in a room, eyes closed and mind drifting. He sees the town of his birth, as it was when he was a child. He walks the streets – empty, abandoned. A dining room table: dinner prepared but no one to eat it. A playground: a broken slide and a torn up field. There is no breeze, but the leaves on the trees rustle. And he feels on his cheek, a touch, a breath. An echo of someone he once knew well but now can hardly picture.
A world shifting in and out of focus. And in those brief moments of clarity you see, every time, a different face. And you wonder: am I going mad or is it only a dream? Or is there another option somewhere in between?
The band is radicalfashion and the record is called Odori. It came out last year, and it comes with both my recommendation and my misgivings.