By Phillipe Roberts
Anger doesn’t need to be righteous to be real or worth hearing. As the oppressive foundations of the good old USA crumble beneath us a bit more visibly these days, sharing our deepest, most visceral emotions shouldn’t require justification. Sometimes, “u mad” is all the recognition you need, and who better to unpack the boundlessness of anger than PG County label-dodger ESHOVO?
A frequent collaborator of ThrdCoast favorite Tony Kill, ESHOVO makes space in the cracks between genres, blending noise, cinematic atmosphere, and off-the-wall sampling across a universe of albums and singles that stretch back to 2013. He truly takes off on his 2018 project Listening or Of Empathy and Echo, where his sprawling sensibilities collide for an expedition into a loud mind that’s tired of existing in silence.
“Ok u mad,” the album’s second track, evolved gradually from a rant over a hastily-assembled instrumental, to the self-assured verbal sparring that rumbles out of your speakers. “Before actually writing to it, I layered a recording of myself speaking for a few minutes on the track,” ESHOVO explained, “I was saying something about perceptions, self and external. After writing it, I didn’t touch it for a few months, and when I got in the studio it was like I was right back in the shit, in a good way. That's where everything else came out.”
That refined stream-of-consciousness, punctuated by waves of twinkling synth delays and an arsenal of clattering percussion, throws punches against being misread and misrepresented, and keeps the focus on observation. “Watch my words and keep ya eye open,” he says, bobbing and weaving through the beat with glee.
The song’s video, which arrives today on ThrdCoast, follows ESHOVO as he dances, plays basketball, and wanders through tall fields on grainy video. Directed by fellow PG County artist R. Treshawn Williamson, the video’s sketch-like quality brings out the track’s not-so-hidden vulnerability incredibly well, capturing both the isolation and joy that comes from feeling that anger deeply and fully. The video’s treatment of lyrics about staying cool and validating aggressive emotions is particularly effective, juxtaposing these lines against two people slap-boxing from a skewed angle, just out of frame.
Playing with that tension between emotion and expression is key to their collaboration. “Emotions are really complex, and letting out your aggression is even more so. It’s just something really sublime about feeling what you need to feel,” Williamson says, “I feel like, for us, coming from where we come from, slap boxing is the most controlled form of aggression I’ve ever seen. But at the same time, you can only slap box so long before it gets actually real. That teetering point with aggression, that’s exactly what getting mad is about. When you juxtapose things together, like the slap box does, there’s only a certain window of time before it becomes something entirely different."
Check out the song’s video now and dip into ESHOVO’s discography at his Bandcamp page.