Spooky's The Book of Ice, released this past summer, is a motley collection of photos, essays, data, and relics of an imagined People's Republic of Antarctica. It's also just one chapter of Spooky's Antarctic opus, which includes a film (North/South), and Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica—an acoustic portrait of melting ice molecules that's part science experiment, part symphony, and part cautionary climate-change narrative.
Climate change is just one of several causes Spooky, 41, has tackled over the years. His 2009 album, The Secret Song, slams corporate America with tunes like "The War of Ideas," a new version of The Coup's "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO," and a title track whose lyrics are based on economist Adam Smith's "invisible hand" theory. "The Secret Song," Spooky says, is the sound of "credit card fraud and jazz motifs made into stock exchanges." The album's brainy tracks are also supposedly hidden in smart-phone-scannable barcodes scattered around Manhattan. (Occupy Wall Streeters, after all, could perhaps use some additions to their repertoire.) His remake of D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "Birth of a Nation" turns the original—a glorification of racism and the Klan—on its head, making a once-silent film into one of rich sound and transforming a work of bigotry into a powerful educational tool.
Really? A DJ spinning microeconomics? For sure, the high-brow concepts Spooky throws around can occasionally overwhelm. But he's still a sight to see—an artist with bold imagination, remarkable tech savvy, and undeniable spunk who makes a mean mashup—and (as you're about to learn) can drop a Freud reference like it ain't no thing. Amid his global tour for The Book of Ice, I caught up with Spooky via email to talk about his geeky college years, Antarctica adventures, and how he really feels about climate skeptics. (You can check out his upcoming tour dates here...)
Continue reading
Hannah Levintova @'Mother Jones'
No comments:
Post a Comment