Come on Ralphieboi, let’s be serious, no, for real, it’s about time let’s make a Ft
2024Stage risers, MDF, laser prints, cardboard, rubber mat, wood, engraving on cd cases, 2 sets of chair wheels, acrylic glass, acrylic and collage on panel, china ink and watercolor on paper, heat transfer prints on car mats, heat transfer prints on cotton, car storage net, radio antenna, beamer and projection (loop 1’), four channel video and sound (loop 11’), hardware.
Come on Ralphieboi, let s be serious, no, for real, it s about time, let s make a Ft is the first iteration of an ongoing, expansive project started in 2023.
The work revolves around the idea of deploying music composition and all of its inherent disciplines (production, writing, beatmaking, singing) as narrative vessels for broader speculation. The functioning of the relationship between songs, albums, EPs and mixtapes has drastically changed during recent times, as a consequence of parallel swifts in the general music industry. Being relevant, for a music product, means nowadays being able to interact with extremised metanarratives, as a result of the hyperbolic state of meme, fandom and stan culture, which made music construction intertwined with ideas of hyper-layering in a whole new way.
Amongst a new generation of forward-looking young artists, emerging author-composer Ralhpie Choo’s research fascinated us as a case study around the unstable condition between anonymity and fame. With a baroque style ranging from jazz and Bossa Nova, to Flamenco to R&B and Pop, everything leads to a collapse of structure, and folklore is reimagined.
With this project we deliberately and extensively fantasized on the artist’s background and that of his collective-based label, as a strategy to inject an existing narrative with personal drawn imagery, with the ultimate aim to look into personal mythologies and self branding mechanisms.
To do so, our own musical product Beyblade, and a fictional merchandising campaign are overlayered with the imagery of our object of study.
Beyblade started as an attempt to produce a pop song as an investigation into the language of pop music itself, the project became a complex sound piece unraveling into explorations of hyperpop, experimental electronic music, hip-hop beats and ambient, lounge and jazz reminiscences. With the principle of juxtaposition being an essential part of the song aesthetic, clashing textures and referential supercollisions result in the dissolving of the canonic song structure, in a nonlinear and baroque sound progression. Humor, pitch- shifted voices and cryptic imagery come together with thematic cliches and structural tropes of the pop vocabulary like the forms of self celebration, sentimental indulgence, dissing, exhaustion of metaphores, wordplay and other phonetic rhetorical devices. Dissecting the communicative strategies and tools deployed in an industry based on emotional engagement, physiological perceptive modes of excitement are meanwhile analyzed. Beyblade, follows the fragmented narration of an intimate nocturnal drive, a tale of companionship rooted in a collaborative practice. Nightmarish, glimmering apparitions manifest along the trip of the idealized vehicle, following the transformation of the car space itself into a device for primary visual triggers, metaphorical experience and romantic abandonment.
BEYBLADE
[...]
Glass’n Metal vector mesh box
It’s a 4D type of vessel
Cross’n dot forever swap swap
If seen through this special drops-gauze
Dazzled by these catseye road studs
Like cells of fluorescent hives
Detonated all round us
The mitosis of headlights (that approach us)
They split quickly, they’re behind, they’re rejoining in the distance
It’s the flow of a point source to which direction counts for nothing
All the players in this gloom are just pulsars casting cones
Feels like I get how time’s flowing, in this booth no point in fighting
Even the tell-tale eyeshine of this smirking fox that goes:
“Can you imagine the fomo of not being homo “
Road trip’s the mundane guideline? Then how corny looks this gliding
Uff, your eyelids shut like safe vaults
Me no mirrors backing mine
(No, me no mirrors backing mine)
But
I’ve got the best night goggles ever
They’re included in my toolset
And if you reach into the dashboard
You can also find my toothbrush
That’s so sharp you won’t believe it
Like they did the work for me, ah
It’s my blade and yeah I mean it
But, instead I spin’n spin
[...]
(Babe, blade, babe)
[...]
Babe, wow
[...]
(Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade)
Blade
The bright tapestry
A shiny carpet, really
On the glazed walls of
These two cavities
There’s such grace in
This anatomy
(I put the grace in this anatomy)
Honey moon suites, suites
Equipped with canopy, canopy beds
Built-in luxuries
Coming in pairs, pairs
Got those gyros, gyros and some secret trees
Longest centimeters in between the ears
That’s an excellent excellent excellent duplex
In my realest state, emission theory
(The fuel) she had it handled, Aphrodite
(Poor girl) they didn’t buy it, I wanna buy it
(want to, want to, want to)
I’m all for gimmicks, gimme techwear
Will-o’-the-wisps, I’m jack-o’-lantern
I’m Jack of all trades and my night shades
Make for an excellent excellent excellent duplex
I’m the babe to your blade
I’m the babe to your blade
I’m the water down the drain
Wash, wash me away
So, so, fresh, fresh, cascade, hey
He-hey, always down for a playdate
Love a head rush and a U-turn
Now I’m gone the second you turn
He-hey Imma fire up your blade
Love a head rush and a U-turn
Now I’m gone the second you turn
I’m the babe to your blade
I’m the babe to your bla-ade
I’m the water down the drain
So, so, fresh, fr-cas-cascade
Love a head rush and a U-turn
Now I’m gone the second you turn
Imma fire up your blade
I’m the babe to your-
(Aha) I’m the babe to your blade
I’m the babe to your bla-ade
I’m the water down the drain
So, so, fresh, fr-cas-cascade
(Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade
Babe, blade)
Blade