GRIMES - KILL V. MAIM

February 2016

​

Right, well, we may as well waste no time in clawing straight at the heart of the matter. Grimes certainly doesn’t mess around. So here it is, summed up quite neatly in the repetitive line: ‘I’m only a man and I do what I can” - a comment on the continuous blunderings of the male psyche...? Perhaps. Or perhaps to be taken less literally; a hint towards the despicable lack of accountability that modern politics gives room to?

 

It features a bass line with a frequency so prominent it’s almost guaranteed to get on your nerves. But hold fire, because I think this may well be the whole point. Even the dissidence of girlish vocals and dark sonorous synth somehow revels in its own disharmony, and in turn parallels the raging turmoil that fuels Boucher’s art.

 

Whatever your interpretation, Grimes’ new age cyberpunk feminism is slammed into the back of your head right from the opening frame - and you’d be forgiven for mistaking the political art for a mild case of 21st century apocalyptic paranoia - what with all the blood, clinical masks, and more blood. God there’s just so much blood.