The writer Grafton Tanner argues that as the culture industry voraciously strip-mines ideas from the past, musicians respond by creating even weirder versions of earlier styles. Artists wildly mix genres and musical eras, expressing the social dislocation of living in a society where the line between the real and the online seems to grow hazier by the day. But this post-genre approach can also result in beautiful and uplifting work. Frank Ocean’s Blonde pushed soul music to new heights of sublime abstraction. The mysterious Jai Paul made instant pop classics that sound like they were sung by ghosts. UK artist Haich is the latest young visionary aiming to transform our idea of what a singer is in 2018.
Haich AKA Harrison Bernard describes himself as a producer and “still transitioning” vocalist. Originally from the UK, he began his artistic career making hip hop and grime, under his previous stage name That Boy Slim. But something was missing in those aggressive sounds – “When I started making that kind of music, it felt like I couldn’t get the sound to feel authentic. It would feel like an underwhelming copy”. But in opening himself up to new influences something clicked “After getting older and widening my taste, it seems obvious now, but I realised we can do whatever we want. The most avant-garde artists are doing whatever they want, no genre or mood attached. They are paving their own sonic lane- I’d rather try and do that”.
Two years of hard work produced his debut EP Unbalanced, which dropped last year. A dreamy genre mix, it sounds like James Blake submerged in a downpour of experimental electronics. This week, Haich is putting out the new song ‘Peak’. As with all his work, it’s inspired by the complexities of everyday human interaction in this wild century. “Unbalanced was pretty much all about growth and becoming an adult. ‘Peak’ is more like a distorted love story. I’m inspired by accidents, mistakes, imperfections. I’m trying to make those so- called negative things shine”.
“A visual dissertation, a meditation on time, place, memory and personal history; amalgamating the passage through life and dreams, bridging philosophy, politics and prose. A reflection of my being in abstract form.” – Nkhensani Mkhari on his work.
A dreamy reality caked with attention-halting architectural shots, documentary images and glamorous fashion depictions come together to create the visual language of a budding artist. Nkhensani Mkhari is a young multi-disciplinary practitioner who grew up in Mabopane, township in the North of Pretoria. “I consider myself a hybrid artist,” he tells me. Completing his studies in Film and Television production at the Open Window Institute in 2016, he traverses between directing films, script writing, photography, art direction and music.
Editorial with Ilaphulam for Inga Madibyi (2018)
His childhood was spent around a hum of creativity with his father practicing as a landscape artist and his mother as a Setswana teacher. Nkhensani shares with me that his mother’s vocation acted as an introduction to language and narrative. “I’ve had an affinity for storytelling and aesthetic for as long as I can remember. Cognizance of how concepts and ideas can affect society drove me towards wanting to participate in the creative field.”
‘Portraits for consolation’ (4) with Buyani Duma
Non-linear, acoustic, literary and artistic attentiveness attracted him to his chosen mediums of expression. “Growing up in the internet age assisted in idealizing and realizing my artistic vision. I always felt like we live in a multidimensional universe, which is also part of a multidimensional infinite consciousness we call God or the universe or nkulu nkulu or creation. We are multidimensional actualities. Therefore, I feel like my work should be multidimensional if it is to have a remarkable influence on human freedom. I make art in the hope that it will call me and the audience to a deeper awareness of living itself.” An interest in Afro Futurism was explored with his final film during his studies. The premise of the motion picture was that of software that alters human beings’ consciousness and is used by the government to indoctrinate citizens. Since graduation, he has been occupying himself with the writing of an African feature-length film. To add to his merits, the passionate creative self-published a photobook ‘grain’ Volume 1 and a conceptual EP, ‘23′ that he describes to me as a personal interpretation of science fiction soundscapes – released under the pseudonym, Ndzilo Xiluva.
Project Mayhem (1) in collaboration with Bambatha Jones (2017)
“I’ve also been busy shooting an array of photo series, portraits, editorials and experimental films themed on a range of subjects from mythology to Artificial Intelligence, I’m fascinated by the prospect of these ideas and how they influence society especially African communities.” The photographic side of Nkhensani can only be described as one of calculated risk. Utilizing manual, vintage Japanese film cameras and countless rolls of film as his visual narrative tools. “I come up with titles and captions from conversations, reading books or watching movies, certain words and phrases stand out. These titles usually form the centrifuge for my conceptual photographs like fashion editorials and commercial work, I’ll research the etymology of the word or the origin of the phrase or word and create a mood board from that. With my fine art photography, it’s a more organic cathartic process based on intuition, the work is unscripted.”
His widespread influences include Pantsula culture, African Neo-expressionism, conceptual fashion, Jean Michel Basquiat, Zanele Muholi, FAKA, Frank Ocean and Claude Monet, to name a few. Delving deeper Nkhensani shares with me the concept of his ongoing personal portrait series, ‘Portraits for Consolation’. It is focused on the idea of the “Gaze” and it confronts commonly held notions of beauty.
Essence editorial (4); (2017)
A preference for analogue photography is explained in his statement, “I like how skin tones, light and tone are rendered on emulsions. I like the simplicity of the technology, the mechanics, chemistry and the historical aspect. I like seeing photographs develop in a seemingly magical way in the darkroom, it’s an enthralling process I feel like films limitations have been advantageous in developing my eye.” From my own experience, I tend to agree with Nkhensani; nothing develops your eye, technical skill and understanding of lighting combinations quite like the unknown world of an image caught on film, only to be reviewed after development.
Nkhensani, like many young content creators, chooses not to box himself into a specific field of photographic study. “I don’t think photography is fissiparous. I shoot from an artistic eye whether it’s fashion, documentary or fine arts.”
‘Portraits for consolation’ (7)
Nkhensani’s sound technical understanding of his gear, his unique focus on titles, the etymology of words as well as an uncanny ability to traverse a multitude of photographic disciplines shows not only skill but talent. The artist has another ability, that which is perhaps the most difficult to cultivate – Nkhensani is a psychologist. To be a photographer means to have an innate understanding of the human psyche. The intimacy recorded in his technically excellent images is a clear signifier of his ability to relate to the models in his unforgettable images. His experience orientated work is hoped to take on a more holistic nature in the coming year. Keep an eye out for him, he’s taken my cognitive consciousness by a storm. On another note, I want a print of one of his images on a t-shirt.
‘Portraits of consolation’ (5)‘Untitled Theory’ (1); (2017)‘Between distance and time’ (2017)
When I heard Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia Ultra for the first time in 2011, his captivating voice and dissolute lyrics were great enough. But what really made me flip out was a line on the song ‘Novacaine’ where he (or at least its protagonist) compare themselves to Stanley Kubrick. It’s a unique mind that thinks to fit a reference to the director of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket into a decadent RnB song. Appropriately, his first full length album, 2012’s Channel Orange,was like a series of great short films. A lot of media attention focused on Ocean’s sexuality and the autobiographical nature of the album. Clearly songs like ‘Bad Religion’ offered accounts of unrequited love that came from a place of brutal personal experience. But much of the album saw him telling fictional tales of characters on the extremes of society, including the idle rich, Las Vegas prostitutes and jetlagged drug mules. Like all great artists, Ocean was able to imbue even his most fucked characters with humanity and pathos.
It’s been four years since that massive achievement. Last week he broke his relative silence with the new album Blonde (or Blond, depending on which version you get). It takes a darker, dirtier direction than its predecessor. The lyrics are more cynical, the production more paranoid. After the critical and commercial success of Channel Orange, it would have been easy for Ocean to quickly release a crowd pleasing set of anthems. Fortunately, he has chosen to do something a lot weirder. The album‘s hazy beats and dread guitars sound closer to underground producers like Dean Blunt and James Ferraro. For a work that apparently cost $2million to make it sounds shockingly intimate, like it was recorded in a bedroom. But unlike some of his more subterranean contemporaries, Ocean also has a classical way with hooks and choruses. Beneath all the atmosphere, ‘Self Control’, ‘Nikes’ and ‘WhiteFerrari’ are just wildly catchy.
The album has been accompanied with the visual release Endless and the hefty Boys Don’tCry zine. Included in the latter is a list of his favourite movies. If you are considering going to film school, save yourself the student debt and just watch the 200+ hours of cited work instead. The list represents a substantial cross section of the classics of world cinema. And more importantly, it highlights some of the obsessions which captivate its author. The characters in the films range from Cuban crime lords to doomed lovers, murderous Samurai to suicidal Japanese yakuza. In particular, Ocean is fascinated with the night worlds of film noir– both the classics and more contemporary offshoots (Bladerunner, Blue Velvet, LA Confidential, Spring Breakers). It makes perfect sense that he would be inspired by these visions of existential misery, smoke and rain-swept neon.
But above all, the person on the list who seems to have the most affinity with Ocean’s aesthetic is American director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Hard Eight, There Will Be Blood and The Master all make the cut. They share a focus on the dark shadows cast by American success, along with similar career trajectories. Anderson’s breakout project Boogie Nights was a lovingly crafted epic about the Californian porn scene in the late 1970’s. Like Channel Orange, it finds both the humour and tragedy in its characters extreme lives. His later work has been less immediate but as rewarding. I feel the same way about Blonde as I do about The Master and There Will Be Blood. Initially, they may leave you confused or even underwhelmed. But with a bit of engagement, they lodge into your brain with powerful visions of money, religion and power. In fact, the two artists share a collaborator in Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who both plays on the new album and has provided several of Anderson’s scores.
Ocean is not the only musician currently playing with cinematic decadence. The Weeknd owes a lot of his recent success to his David Lynch inspired visual image. But he is doing it better than anyone else because he plays with expectation, fantasy and narrative so well. The biggest artistic success on Blonde is ‘Nights’, which is really about three songs melted into each other. Quickly going from upbeat to sinister, it contains some of his most personal lyrics. He talks about family problems and being a Hurricane Katrina refugee. But in the midst of such candour he adds unexpected dramatic touches, singing about driving to a recording studio as if he were some predatory figure prowling the streets, like Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. With the eye of an auteur, Ocean invites you into his surreal, empathetic, operatic creative universe.
