Album Review: Blunt Fang - Coarse Light II OTW 4rom Heaven

Every so often, you hear something and you are so blown away by it, you can’t believe what you are listening to. Blunt Fang’s most recently mitxape, Coarse Light II: OTW 4rom Heaven is one of those rare listening experiences that is both astounding and confounding, all at the same time.

First and foremost, shout out to The Fader for their recent profile of Blunt Fang, because without that, I would have never been aware of that this album exists.

Where do I even begin with describing Blunt Fang and Coarse Light II? It’s the kind of album that makes Tricky’s Pre-Millenium Tension sound like Top 40 pop music; it’s the kind of album that makes Lil’ B stream of consciousness output easy to comprehend; it’s the kind of album that makes Cody Chesnutt’s The Headphone Masterpiece sound like cost millions of dollars to produce.

It fucking samples “Heaven or Las Vegas” by The Cocteau Twins.

Coarse Light is tagged as “shoegaze” on Blunt’s Soundcloud page—and the album is a bizarre, unsettling, innovative, and wondrous amalgamation of internet rap, spoken word poetry, lo-fi, and, of course shoegaze. It’s dirty and noisy sounding at times; blending feedback and scuzz with cheap sounding drum machines and keyboards—and even when there are lighter moments (and there are actually some), it’s still a claustrophobic, dense, anxious record, not for the faint of heart.

Despite how heavy this description is becoming, when he wants to, Blunt Fang can be funny, and he can craft a catchy song. The aggressive punches of “ Boy Stop (uacop)” can get stuck in your head for days, same as the slowed down sample running through “All Winter Long.”

Blunt Fang himself, as a performer, can be both extraordinarily profound, clever, and strange—often, all within the same bar. “You make me feel like I inhaled a mango scented dolphin fart,” he says, seemingly out of nowhere to keep with the rhyme pattern on “All Winter Long;” on “Feral n Obese,” he’s multi-tracked with an auto-tuned version of himself—“Hey rednecks, open carry won’t save you from Barack’s nanotechnology.”

Head scratchers aside, there are the clever moments that go by so quickly, you may miss the punchline—“David Icke is disinfo, and ‘Picasso Baby’ isn’t art,” he spits frenetically on “Graceface,” attacking a British conspiracy theorist (thanks, internet) and a shitty a Jay-Z song all in one breath; then later, on “Elements,” guest Fat Tony steals the show with a verse that references Oprah Winfrey and Amistad.

From the word go, I found Coarse Light to be accessible, but I listen to a lot of weird shit too, so I may not be the best person to ask about accessibility. Even at its strangest, Blunt Fang creates infections beats and hooks. He sings (sometimes not very well); he raps (sometimes a little out of time with the beat); but it doesn’t matter, because this is literally the most punk rock thing I have ever heard. This is beyond DIY in aesthetic. It’s dark and dirty, but it’s also funny, innovative, and thought provoking. Blunt Fang blends ideas and genres together effortlessly that, left in the hands of someone less forward thinking, would be a complete disaster.

By the time the reggae-influenced leanings of “99x” come to a close, it’s obvious that even with its faults, those are outweighed by the strangely endearing charm of Coarse Light II.  It’s probably the first truly fearless record I have heard thus far in 2015.

Coarse Light II is out now as a free download via Blunt Fang's Soundcloud page, or as a tape from Harsh Riddims.