Review Summary: James Ferraro and the meaning of life
There’s not much in the room, but the main attraction is undeniably a glass, see-through table that extends into infinity, tinted a pale, cold blue. You’re alone at the head of the table, and stretching from you to infinity sit thousands upon millions of mannequins, with their cold glass eyes staring into nothing as they sit waiting for a meal that will never come, countless glasses of red wine sitting untouched in their jewelled cups made of tarnished silver. The silver was always tarnished, of course; the glasses of wine have been sitting there for eons in the exact same form, the wine evaporating and condensing in a perfect cycle.
At the other end of this infinitely lengthy table sits the strangely isolated James Ferraro, spinning the sounds of
Cold into the environment, giving the whole picture a liquidy tinge. The quicksilver beats and bassline melt into the cool water lapping at the golden legs of the table. Ferraro keeps playing the music, weaving the sounds out of nothing and fading them back into nothing when he finishes, much like a child and his wondrous toy box, discarding one toy in favor of the wonder another brings over and over again. A mannequin begins to sing, ethereal melodies pulsing from every fiber of its body, and the wine in its glass, undisturbed for many, many years, begins to quiver in tune with the otherworldly R&B emanating from all around.
Nothing much happens at this table. Nothing much needs to happen - Ferraro has merely awoken long-dormant ideas and tied them together expertly in the form of a picturesque trap-rap tapestry. You sit for a while, marveling at the synths and strings wobbling in and out behind hazy drums. You sit for eons, lost in the meticulously edited vocal samples woozily drifting between strands of the music, sometimes in focus, sometimes part of the backdrop. The mannequins sit too, unfeeling eyes ripping the world around to shreds and building it back up in the same instant. Finally, the music stops. You slowly emerge from your millennia-long stupor, blink twice. You take a sip of the wine in front of you. It’s as if it were fresh from a bottle.
Ferraro begins again, and the cycle continues.
