Stream: Gora Sou “Living XXL”

28 Apr 2014 — Henning Lahmann

In our postmodern age, sleeping on things for too long has the beautiful and really rather handy advantage that once you get around to finally dedicate your precious time to that certain instance of pop cultural production, enough analytical material is readily available to simplify the writer's job, because seriously, almost everything is somewhere already: that Gora Sou's latest tape Living XXL explores the New Age while unobtrusively touching upon the throwback topoi of library music; that everything is cut and dried from the start if you manage to open your work with a track called "Catalina Golf Rental"; that the whole thing has a vaguely sacred ring to it. There's more to say of course, much more in fact, which may come across as a surprise considering that Living XXL is calling it a day after only 33 short minutes. Still, the sound palette of RBMA alumn Marc Übel, the man behind Gora Sou, is strikingly manifold, and though the eight-track offering never leaves the familiar territory of alienated, abstract ambient music, the compositions are refreshingly focused – not once does an arrangement get lost in mere synth fiddling. There's more, especially against the theoretical backdrop of Joe Bucciero's deliberations on Ferraro's elevator music, because if anything should equip every Berlin elevator for the next months, it's clearly Living XXL; and then, the tape's title itself subtly alludes to several latter-day forms of net art such as vaporwave, but also to that distinct kind of aesthetic that Steph Kretowicz recently found and described in Dubai's shopping malls; it all may be read as another tribute to late capitalist commodification, which seems remarkable coming from an artist who also counts as one third of one of Germany's more well-known and indeed quite successful 'indie' pop outfits. Above everything on Living XXL looms the shadow of OPN's recent oeuvre, most obviously on "The Family Heart Center", which we consider the effort's true standout moment; all that without ever sounding like a pale imitation. You see, there really is more to say, or would be, if only we had more time, but we don't so we humbly suggest you simply stream the whole thing below, and let those further contextualise who were born to theorize, or don't have anything else to do, or even, just think about it, are getting paid for something like this.

Living XXL is out on Noumenal Loom. Get it here, highly recommended.