Stalin Bollywood by Rhys Langston

Spanning modes of post-punk, new wave, shoegaze, and art rock alongside his signature rap styling, Stalin Bollywood shows Rhys Langston in a sardonic spree across genres. With the cohesion of their live feel, a quick listen of the eight and a half tracks might garner surprise at the fact that they were produced entirely on his laptop (with a few string instruments at hand).

Appearing a stylistic curveball, this project, in fact, is a logical progression for Langston's work. For in our golden age of shock value and controversy, with subtlety in rapid decay, he trades his usual triple entendres for several rounds of acerbic frankness. In 25 minutes of seriousness and hilarity he fires from the hip.

On one track he might call the pope "an unrepentant rapist," repudiate the neocolonial and imperialist privilege of an Israeli birthright, or aggressively decry doing dishes for dirty whiteboys. Whatever it is, the Black Jewish polemicist vehemently and poetically portrays civil discourse, indeed discourse as a whole, in a total breakdown. Still leery of wide brush strokes or simplification, the title “Stalin Bollywood” represents as much the terms of engagement as caution at intended effect.

Beyond black and white divides along ideology or linear understandings of modernity, the semi-nonsense name is to say we are trapped in well-produced, convincing, and gaslighting spectacles of brutality and subjugation, not wholly consenting to the history we uphold or futurism on which we are set. And what’s more, the very means of critique we have are compromised. If in our frustration, flagrancy is the only resort, are we truly prepared for catching the crossfire?

From smoked salmon to freshwater microphones.

Langstonia.org
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