This is number eight in a series where I think about my year in music. Today, I talk about something by The Low Mays.
We live in the most developed era that’s ever existed with more information available on a small piece of conducting metal than in the biggest libraries in history. Somehow, we’re also a fragmented world, where the truth of what are supposed to be facts is questioned, politicised, and used to divide. But we also live in a world where cultures cross and mix, usually neither by land nor air, but through undersea cables channeling 1s and 0s. This is the way that The Low Mays come to make trap music in Cantonese about how the earth is flat. The Atlanta elements are there: eerie melody, bumping bass, snarling and yapping vocals (except, instead of Migos-like ‘brrps’ and ‘whoops’ they yelp ‘fact!’). On ‘地平 Flat Earth,’ they muscle their way through verse after verse, blaming the American government for spreading lies about the shape of the planet. I don’t know enough about the group to tell whether they’re serious but note that their entire 2018 album is about space. Regardless of their intentions, I laughed, but not as much as I marvelled at the execution.
Joel Mak 