Lip Critic: Sampling a Postmodern Ethos

In Towards a Concept of Postmodernism, Ihab Hassan describes the rebellious paradigm postmodernism as "Fragments, hybridity, relativism, play, parody... an ethos bordering on kitsch and camp." Resisting definition, postmodernism can only humbly be expressed through sister or family words and neither mimicry nor pastiche satisfies in describing the labor it enacts on the world. 

To me, postmodernism is not so much a definition nor is it a descriptive term. It's a medium for and by which articulation— or a lack thereof— is made possible, and its ethos— to Hassan's point— is excessive and (un)ironically distasteful (the lineage of irony is beyond lost on the archivist). It's taste is nothing other than a salty, chewy past and, according to Brian Eno, "sounds of things going out of control,"— 

hyper-accelerating— 

exploding from the inside— 

the inside within— 

the inside out, splattering each bass strum and 

note across a digital oasis. 

Poster from show

I saw Lip Critic in person at elsewhere in Bushwick last month. Undoubtedly, they were awesome live and I've been dying to see them ever since listening to "Been Born" off of the Kill Lip Critic EP back in 2019. Little did I know that the band was more local than I thought— supposedly having started at SUNY Purchase and unknowingly having met one of the drummers in passing back in 2021 (didn't get a chance to say "hi, I love you")? 

The band brought with them an eclectic mix of new and old—"kitsch" in the non-linear storytelling and bluntly verbose lyrics and "camp" in the merging of vocals with electronic, metallic, and copper-rusted samples, producing an aftertaste of hyper-stylized and volatile absurdism unfamiliar to blooming buds on your tongue. 

Of course, they played "Entry Level Stud"— one of their more popular songs—, and as I head-bang at the front of the stage, chanting "blood," a rage builds in the room with no expectation for escape— not because of a particular abundance of meaning in the band's lyrics, but because of its radical lack thereof— because of its borrowed sounds and samples, borrowed meaning in a hyper-acceleratory method not only creates space for music to exist freely— a "Dreamland" if you will—, but also simultaneously destroys it in a passionate fit of engagement. That's the sound of the postmodern ethos.

Art that embraces the binary between form and content will always have a place in my heart. Lip Critic is no exception. To me, the genius of the band is undoubtedly its emerging paradox between incomprehensibility and a resonance that is both personal and historical, and the genesis is extraordinarily fragmentary,
never existing as a knowable whole, 

but rather father-less, 

"crawling out the test tube / 

without a hint of a face."