DJ Boring - Like Water

June 12, 2020 - Technicolour

DJ Boring’s latest project, Like Water, is a four song EP that likens life and experience to water. At first the name and theme seem too on the nose. But as the EP progresses, real depth and emotional acuity reveal themselves. 

My first musings of Like Water, which the first track is also titled, went like this: Is this song like water? Is it like water in the way it sustains or in the way it feels on the body?  

To test this out, I determined to listen to the first track every time I was thirsty instead of drinking water for seven days. By the twentieth hour I was not feeling great and was getting tired of the song. It’s a good song, but it’s not water. At nine minutes and fifteen seconds the first track is as long as some bodies of water. I began to have a feeling ‘Like Water’ is about dance.  

The track is a clubber. And even though the intentions are pure, and the desire is to elevate dance to a spiritual level (where it belongs) it’s also not water and you cannot dance your thirst away, but you can quench something with dance. So I began this EP as a skeptic. 

‘Another Day’ begins with a straight hollow beat of a skin-drum and rhythmic inhales. Then it gets whacky. Big wobbles come in over the drums. A melody emerges from pads. We’re settling into a routine. But we’re not getting bored, we’re getting nuanced. It’s another day. What a blessing, what a curse, what an opportunity for gratitude and pain. The pads undergo heavy modulation. And we’re given over to the high-pitched whirring of 80s synth-pop. Most of the time I think, “It’s definitely dancing time,” but at 5:54, ‘Another Day’ dribbles out its synths and transitions to a rich-thick drum pack before dribbling the synths back in. This is when it is really time to dance. The four-on-the-floor we’ve been waiting for. Maybe it’s retirement. Maybe it’s any part of any good day. Maybe it’s realizing you get to choose any time to be conscious and change the way things feel and your relationship to those feelings. Maybe it’s just a good cry. The track features about five seconds of silence at the end to allow for plenty of funeral time. I crunched some numbers: At eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds, if we give each minute approximately ten years, those last five seconds offer up a little under a full year for you to accept your ensuing death. 

‘Stockholm Syndrome’ comes with an immediate “uh-oh.” It’s a frightening syndrome. Static clicks and dissonant pipes open up the track. A rainy-day kick drum enters. This is not dance time. But if you’re part of any rave scene and you hear this track, I’m sure you’ll be dancing anyway. The cacophony finds structure in some syncopated layering. Dancing is starting to feel more okay, but we’re not there yet. We’re still learning to love the life that captured us. The undertones from the title are highly troubling, and in this moment, they point to our tendency to defend a life and a system that has done a disservice to most of us. Stockholm Syndrome, is after all, a psychological phenomenon in which victims of abuse identify with or form attachments to their abusers. It’s often thought of as a coping mechanism. The song itself offers plenty of playfulness and dynamism, but is ultimately difficult to dance to for its connotations. At its midway mark, the pattern is disrupted and becomes much brighter, full of synthetic chirping and high-energy percussion. An organ comes in with a somber arpeggio which complicates but does not disrupt the big groove. Then a long fade out which features the paring down of instrumentation.  

‘Seems Like Yesterday’ begins with the sound of drum sticks on concrete in an empty room. A thick clay jar is hit. Shakers bring us into a less abstract rhythm. The track has a reflective air. The percussion is up-tempo, but the chords are slow to come on and have a long doleful arc. The difficult parts of time passing. The percussion echoes, and that echo mimics the memory. ‘Seems Like Yesterday,’ communicates the transition into the future, coming to terms with or at least confronting the things you’ve accepted and had to accept. Like Water begins to make sense. Life is like water, time is like water, the thing that will always move around you. At 3:34 a lot of the track has fallen away, except for the percussion. Strings come in, no longer mourning but bright. Now it’s dancy for real. Everything that’s been difficult, everything that’s hurt has still amounted to a danceable moment. ⛰️