Airport, a self-proclaimed; self-pitying creature of persistence and crusade, who has identified him/herself as a spokesperson for the full spectrum of emotions since arriving on the scene with the bewildering ‘Lorde Playlist,’ has since then shared fleeting moments of chaos, panic reaction and sketches of “mess, fun, whatever…” from the archives. It is here, in Lilies however where emotions, no matter how immoral, self-indulgent or honest are collected like souls on a plane and flung up into the atmosphere. Lilies is the craft and it is this craft, heavy with emotion that soars hardest towards the ground.
There is no doubt that as you start to understand what drives the compositions of Miranda FKA Hunter Pharis Johnson, you start to embrace an open and transparent soul. Airport is forthright about his/her emotions, where detachment shares the same space as joy, painful but vehement throughout Lilies’ 11 tracks.
Whilst Airport operates with heart on sleeve, pinning the effects of previous relationships, his emotionally enigmatic father and mishandled queerness to collaged soundscapes of car crash samples, 70s Kramer guitars and basses, processed keys and explosion sound-fx, there is still room for composing on another’s behalf. Bound Evelyn, Svetlana; not merely just track titles; exploring the hardships of women, comparable to the pressures of ballet’s ‘mafia code’ of silence that rules over its dancers and harnesses a preferred, yet dangerous body-aesthetic. Svetlana uses individual track imagery to express a different kind of abuse to the female body, see Svetlana posing with a black eye.
Airport is openly composing (At least in spirit) as female and in female hardships, either he/she already does or wants desperately to understand:
“I am blessed to be sensitive and effeminate. I attribute my compositions to an embedded feminine consciousness or sector of my brain. Nothing I embrace (unless it is being intentionally presented as grotesque) is, in my mind masculine. I am writing from an idealized feminine perspective, despite the inherent problem in co-opting the role of a historically marginalized group. Obviously I have considered this and no, I cannot ‘turn it off’.”
This inherent sense of belonging is transpired in lieu by the seductive and powerful voice of Baltimore singer, visual artist and writer, Kimberlyn Spira using the moniker Glisper. Bound Evelyn and My Collar don’t just seduce in sound-aesthetic; they are deep-rooted in the guilty pleasures of sexual desires or fetish. Lilies is Airport putting all cards down on the table, letting nothing escape the creative process, no matter how personal.
Furthermore, this is a body of work that digests emotion: fears and anxieties, rapture and elation, and marries their conflictions in one exhilarating collision. Embrace chaos, be destructive, don’t hide, and ‘find yourself’ in Lilies, Airport’s brutal triumph.
“I want ‘Lilies’ to be nothing but ‘bangers,’ my inner Miley Cyrus insisted. My inner Naomi Watts screamed from behind my eyes; I had to do something destructive for them.”
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