Redsex - Tumblr Posts

Footnote: recognize this? Feel like more? This is my new blog! Due to some technical issues with the old one, I will be rblging the original MMM and CFF posts on this account, as well as continuing future rambles!

Media Marvel Monday, #2:

I Fucking Love “Red Sex”(Vessel)

Fascinatingly unique. Sinisterly sensual. Deeply unnerving to the core. Haunting, comforting.

How does this one specific song manage so well to exist as the seamless bridge between its own dissonant themes? This is not where you belong, but you are so very at home. Something is going extremely right in the most and absolutely wrong way. Rigidly paced, yet under-toned in an all but frantic, manic urgency. Dripping with the expressions of rapture and terror at the same time.

The audio equivalent of a wet nightmare, in my opinion.

Like, literally what is there not to say about this track? There’s media that lives rent free in your mind, and then there’s fucking “Red Sex.” Rex Sex doesn’t live as a tenant rent free in my head. It lives more like a kind of festering mold, a kitty-horrorshow-esque, fleshy growth on the apartment walls that you probably could never completely scrape off even if you wanted to. You feared it when it first came into your life, but oddly, it’s part of this place now in a way that’s almost comforting once you got used to it. From horrific novelty to a familiar, perhaps intimate muse.

I know I’m sounding a little hammy as hell about it by now, but I’m being completely genuine when I say this *song* has been and continues to be like nothing else I’ve ever heard and it has left an impression on me scarcely few musical pieces have been able to do so before, and I’m far from the only person carrying that sentiment. Though, maybe I should have stated off answering the elephant in the room for some among you.

“But what even IS Red Sex, actually?”

Red Sex is, literally speaking, the name of a titular track included in Vessel’s 2014 album, Punish, Honey. The second of Vessel’s published albums, the collection as whole is best described as it is a list of bass/synth driven instrumentals of the sorta industrial, sorta electronica genre. It’s a little hard to describe the vibe beyond “experimental” if you haven’t listened to them firsthand, which I highly recommend you doing so. Neat stuff in there all around, take a pick sometime;

But this is about Red Sex Specifically, and the legacy it’s really taken on much farther than its siblings. You may think from my talk of it so far it’s more of a hidden and obscure gem, but it’s actually cropped up in some pretty interesting places, and I swear it works amazingly seemingly with whatever you want to use it for if you know what you’re doing. Most who know the music usually find it through one of its biggest features. Just a few off the top of my head, with the obligatory note/warning that the content of some of them is uh,, “suitably graphic” for this kind of music and its description, very so:

- The Far Cry 5 baptism trailer

- THAT one specific Happy Meat Farms video

-Official trailer for The Handmaiden

- An impressively done Made in Abyss fan AMV

And do not even get me started about Vessel’s own official music video. I could go on for a whole separate analysis of that uncomfortably artsy WTF-weirdness on its own another day, and heck, I just might.

But good lord I just- this freaking song itself, man. Did I tell you I’m low (high) key obsessed with this piece? It just scratches brains in such a weird “psychological thriller” way, AND it’s such a banger. The beat, heartlessly, oppressively rigid, pairing with such a more free-flowing push and pull of synth melody… It takes me to the mental liminal spaces of something I’d say- disturbed but too intriguing to pull my eyes away from. And it does it in only a few short minutes. That’s something. I could summon commentary out of myself for probably each individual 30 seconds of it if you forced me to. I just can’t shut up about it. Go listen to Red Sex at least once in your life, for the same innocently morbid reasons you ride roller coasters and watch horror movies. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it is I think a powerful thing whatever it invokes to you.

If all that from my mouth isn’t enough of a take on Red Sex, here’s a couple other words on it I think have been said just as well from others:

“-my eyes are closed and the synth bass is fat as fuck and the weird, wonderful synth lead is causing waves in the environment while calling to me. And in my mind’s eye it is transformed into a cloud of smoke that has taken the form of the hand of some lady of the night. And that lady’s hand is making the ‘come on’ gesture in my direction. I mean, what am I supposed to do here??”

-Boston Hassle

“His warped sounds present a mucky atmosphere, with wailing synths and industrial drums churning out a challenging, but rewarding listen. Everything is slightly off, detuned as if on the verge of breaking, and it sounds right at home with the rest of Tri Angle’s forward-thinking output.”

-Complex Networks

The song can be the void that calls out to some. You are welcomed to plunge into it, at your own discretion.

“I’m coming over you BETTER not be daydreaming about your blorbos having a mental break to those alternative/industrial beats again”

Me:

When life makes you this abnormal about the last audiobook you finished, I guess you make a tribute video/edit.

Content warnings: parasites, maggots, worms, body horror, blood, general disturbing audio and imagery

Spoiler warnings: The Troop, By Nick Cutter

The Troop, narrated by Corey Brill, mixed with a together mix of stock and film footage I cobbled together to the tune of Vessel’s “Red Sex”

Inspired by another video I saw putting the cognito ergo sum speech from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream to the same song. Making this made me squeamish and it doesn’t do the novel’s own ick factor even 4% of justice.

Rookie mistake: listening to one of your favorite jams (which got a massive bump years ago from a popular arg) and deciding to look at the comment section