W00dy - My Diary
A Closer Listen
Have you ever danced in your room with music you feel only you know how to move to? That’s the kind of ecstatic energy that My Diary exudes at every turn, its fast beats a kinetic celebration of self-knowledge, of the intimacy shared between you and that very special track. Your movements cut across your personal space, and in that moment of reaching out you become part of a collage that blends every step you take into something unique. And yet, there’s always something about dancing alone that connects you to the world, because you give back all those bits and pieces of itself that it’s invested in you, a free flow, a free exchange of precious, exciting mental debris. This diary is dense with fragments of voices, of noises, of electronic sounds, like all that stuff in the album cover that, scattered across the rooms from which our voice emerges, constantly fills and drains our beings; “Can’t Resist It” blasts us with cut-up voices and vertiginous beats, the virality of thinking pouring out excessively into dance, into the borderline selflessness with which you fill that space between you and your special track. The debris becomes irresistible – it’s you, and your energy is nuclear fallout, movement itself becomes contagion, endless, joyful repetition, like a meme.
“Like What U Do” starts out like an experimental pop track, its polyphony building up the repetition towards ever faster beats, as punchy and relatable as this diary can be. But then, right when the track seems to be going somewhere specific, it starts deconstructing, it pulls into variations of itself, into little worlds of sound that exist for a few seconds and are then pulled away into the rest of the detritus, adding levels and turns you’d never expect to be there in the first place. The fast and catchy quality of pop -its contagiousness- is here layered to the point of being baroque, reflecting that same kind of happy gloss and shine, an exuberant superficiality so jam-packed it signals wonder. But it’s not the one that makes you stop, it’s the one that makes you smile and sweat, the one that takes your breath away because it makes you laugh.
The intricacy of this diary is impressive, its constant impulse introductions and conclusions of sounds providing unexpected, humorous, wonderful moments to get lost in, to embrace the labyrinth of inner stuff that’s always pointlessly leaking outwards. “Came 2 Party” happily makes that connection, with its much more centered, stable beats allowing for the focus to shift once more unto the world with which you’re dancing, perfectly transitioning into the experimentally anthemic “We All Want the Same Thing”. My guess about that ‘what’ would linger around that playful connection, that swift exchange of smiles and moves that for a moment makes intimacy a shared space of exhaustion, your every nerve spent by the spastic rhythm, all those bits of selves scattered across the dance floor, sparkling with sweat, free at last from making sense. We ought to thank W00dy for opening up to us, because now we can do the same, and keep this happy contagion going. (David Murrieta Flores)
Sat Sep 14 00:01:45 GMT 2019Tiny Mix Tapes 80
W00dy
My Diary
[Self-Released; 2019]
Rating: 4/5
W00dy shares findings from metaphysical experiments. Passions and other potions bubble in beakers and travel through truly weird Rube Goldberg-like networks of resistance and doing, coming and wanting. At many points along the path, emotions explode from excessive heat, unpalatable pressure, risky reactions that fizz like baking soda mixed with vinegar but with an infinitely more incendiary result, all super sudden and nasty and ecstatic and absurdist and addictive and delicious.
My Diary insists its own imperatives. What could be understood as slightly more stable stuff, like vocal samples, for example, or even rhythmic drops, erupt in reaction or implode in relation. W00dy’s hypothesizing a wilder (as in yeastier) order built on grounds so biodynamic they’re practically immortal. (I recently read up on Hermes, Olympic god of trade, travelers, sports, athletes, and borders, able to move freely between the mortal and divine worlds, herald of Hades, famed trickster, father to Pan, patron of thieves.) It’s music sick with causes and effects that do not make straight sense, because they’re there to be sucked on, like a thumb. I have one hand with 10 fingers or 10 hands with one. It’s possible.
My Diary by W00DY
W00dy describes this album as “some of my most personal thoughts and feelings.” Its frenetic pace and extreme density make me understand my own mania, spirals, ecstasies, hyper-obsessions. What I hear is what I see when I close my eyes and try to focus on all of my thoughts at once. A totalizing mess, totally voided. If my picturing could be rendered into a coherent image, it would basically look this album cover: confusingly particulate and metamorphosed and tangled up in knots tied past solutions.
Gratefully, these songs acknowledge the way that things like dancing can tease and teethe at those knots’ twisted fibers — sinking into effects, spitting back affectations. Moving to this music might make your hair fall out if you’re not totally ready to throw your whole being into response, higher, higher, athletically (remember Hermes), aerobically, pogo stickily, bouncy castle-y, as silly as any act, theory, or food squeezed out of a tube.
I touch my tongue to your teeth on the dance floor. I swing out a frantic smile. Sounds for a world no longer suited to style.
Tiny Mix Tapes 80
W00dy
My Diary
[Self-Released; 2019]
Rating: 4/5
W00dy shares findings from metaphysical experiments. Passions and other potions bubble in beakers and travel through truly weird Rube Goldberg-like networks of resistance and doing, coming and wanting. At many points along the path, emotions explode from excessive heat, unpalatable pressure, risky reactions that fizz like baking soda mixed with vinegar but with an infinitely more incendiary result, all super sudden and nasty and ecstatic and absurdist and addictive and delicious.
My Diary insists its own imperatives. What could be understood as slightly more stable stuff, like vocal samples, for example, or even rhythmic drops, erupt in reaction or implode in relation. W00dy’s hypothesizing a wilder (as in yeastier) order built on grounds so biodynamic they’re practically immortal. (I recently read up on Hermes, Olympic god of trade, travelers, sports, athletes, and borders, able to move freely between the mortal and divine worlds, herald of Hades, famed trickster, father to Pan, patron of thieves.) It’s music sick with causes and effects that do not make straight sense, because they’re there to be sucked on, like a thumb. I have one hand with 10 fingers or 10 hands with one. It’s possible.
My Diary by W00DY
W00dy describes this album as “some of my most personal thoughts and feelings.” Its frenetic pace and extreme density make me understand my own mania, spirals, ecstasies, hyper-obsessions. What I hear is what I see when I close my eyes and try to focus on all of my thoughts at once. A totalizing mess, totally voided. If my picturing could be rendered into a coherent image, it would basically look this album cover: confusingly particulate and metamorphosed and tangled up in knots tied past solutions.
Gratefully, these songs acknowledge the way that things like dancing can tease and teethe at those knots’ twisted fibers — sinking into effects, spitting back affectations. Moving to this music might make your hair fall out if you’re not totally ready to throw your whole being into response, higher, higher, athletically (remember Hermes), aerobically, pogo stickily, bouncy castle-y, as silly as any act, theory, or food squeezed out of a tube.
I touch my tongue to your teeth on the dance floor. I swing out a frantic smile. Sounds for a world no longer suited to style.
Pitchfork 74
The Pittsburgh-based producer makes undeniably heavy music, combining hardcore techno, drum’n’bass, and footwork and sprinkling it with a bit of frivolity and chaos.
Wed Oct 16 05:00:00 GMT 2019