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DAVID KING x MONTAGE II: 'MAKE THEM FREE': A shape-shifting instrumental panorama born of protest and solitude: King's "Glorious Days" of Montage I are gone, we must confront evil, and through this work we bear witness. Extraordinarily intertwined themes unflinchingly show animals in the slaughterhouse ending in memorial and imagined utopia, against brief flashbacks to endless summers and still nights of Montage I's biographical story. A truly developed symphonic work in modern idioms.
It begins with "Seeing Things", which symbolizes the realization that the prospect of a resurrection of a personal "glorious days" is over until I confront "the evil" I've seen in the world.
2:07: A short transition in the style of Nottz.
2:21: A continuation of the transition with some jazz guitar work. 2:48 reverts to the summery style of Montage I's first part, the childhood utopia of "Glorious Days", representing escapism after the purpose of "Seeing Things". I'm happy at the Hendrix textures I achieved here. The "endless horizons" aren't to be: the sun is absorbed into an expansive night sky (3:20), and in a pensive moment of tension, the bass oscillates and the individual is alone facing the existential reality of the world.
3:49: ExMemory bursts in, as either a symbol of forward progress or a symbol of man's industriousness, "action in the world".
7:00 is the Flume-esque track Midnight (Part 1), a reversion back into solitude, but now more percussive and machine-like.
9:37 is the beginning of the first big transition passage: the new transitions are composed of equal parts of the previous and upcoming main episodes, making everything truly interwoven in the classical "developing variation" tradition.
11:20: ExMemory recurs with driving force.
12:25: Transition and the beat "Black Rain" - a nocturne.
13:31: Protest begins in earnest, the individual confronts the world, to "Make Them Free" (in this case, the animals!).
14:16: "Death Cult" transition, the curtain pulls back on the subject of the protest, the animal agriculture system, here a slaughterhouse. The beat is razor sharp, its choppy loops rip flesh and the percussion overlays physical blows. It is brutal and in some ways is a cliche of the "banger"/"battle" beat that represents masculine aggression and ignorance. The sounds of misery and fear build, ending with the killing of the animal and silence, then a meditation on evil, and a moment where the soul ascends (17:49).
18:19: Another nocturnal passage, like sharp knives against silence.
18:46: "Midnight II", a chop of "Midnight Pt. 1", more machinelike and brutal, yet macabre.
20:25: It ends with hope emerging out of night, as a constructive vision of the future emerges. Glorious Days are again possible.
The epilogue is real audio of pigs in a slaughterhouse. The brief utopia of the finale is just a fleeting vision, as this is still the reality.
- Genre
- Hip-hop & Rap