lil hawk boy‘s modest offering in the song and video “ghost” is an understated contribution to his catalog of music, but carries with it unprecedented importance.
Devin is locked away from the world in his cinderblock basement dwelling, slowly collecting dust. He’s drifting away from everyone in his life. He can see it happening, yet can’t seem to help himself from widening this divide. He wrestles with the thought of being alone by his own devices, and he outright states these observations. The message is simple, and that’s fine.
The use of silence and non-action in the song and video add incredible impact. The vocals are classic hawk boy, he mutters some thoughts on tempo with washed out back tracks. As usual, 808’s boom, hats roll. Angelic, almost alien sounding strings and pads shimmer in the ether, with a veneer of intimacy that gives the impression that these sonic sheets of light are pouring from the soul of lil hawk boy himself. The song and video both abruptly end in the middle of hawk’s words, with nothing more than a few frames of text explaining his situation. “I wish I could help it.” It’s heavy, and sudden. Without a doubt. It just feels important. Special.
“Ghost” is a really good song. Really. However, what sets this apart from many songs is the cohesive integration of a visual accompaniment. As more and more visual artists contract “Run-and-Gun-itus”, (symptoms include sporadic movement and vertigo inducing transitions) music videos are seen as another opportunity to be a “shock piece”, at risk of compromising the original message, direction, and general feel of the song its supposed to compliment. It goes without saying that highly produced visual works have a place with certain tracks, but a video is an extension of the song and should not be jockeying for attention.
Hawk, instead opted to produce his own home video, and it’s incredibly effective in deepening the concepts he outlines in his lyrics. We watch and shuffle through frames of hawk simply laying on the ground, or sitting on his bed whispering his lines. Sometimes the scene will be stretched, flipped, or inverted helping to illustrate the untangling and attempted understanding of his introversion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8VgA6F9cy4
It is songs and videos like this that make me step back and realize what a magical time we’re all living in. A young man from the middle of nowhere can, in his own words, “cry into a mic, and people will love it’.
Depending on who you ask- music is a way to delve into another’s mindset, and hence, their world. One’s perception arguably builds the world around them, and an immeasurable amount of conclusions can be drawn from every given situation. This gives rise to an indefinite amount of variation in personality across humanity, an indefinite amount of worlds to be shared. For this reason, people can become so utterly attached to their favorite artists. For some fleeting moments, you can be all alone yet still be enveloped and comforted by the psyche of someone who understands what you’re going through. You can feel this person in the room with you, and develop a sort of relationship.
In the underground music scene, there is obviously rampant disdain by creatives for “the industry”. The hate has become such a cliche, and is so widespread, that often times people lose sight of why this sentiment initially arose. People consciously or unconsciously perceive that the industry’s Modus Operandi is to manufacture a false persona. A lie. The outsourcing of every creative input for an artist, to fabricate a hyper-stimulating personality. This method works to great monetary gains, but at what cost? Appealing to the least common denominator may attract more listeners, but if it’s all a game of numbers, what are you actually striving for?