Chicago producer Heavee is somewhat of an unlikely success in the world of video game music. Not because he isn't talented, but because his music doesn't invoke any of the tropes associated with the medium or abide by the accepted pallet of its aesthetics. Essentially, he's a hip-hop producer, and as you would expect, he makes banging hip-hop music. But through some function of the righteous cosmic order, or mere karma, his boundary-pushing production work has landed him some enviable placements in games like Grand Theft Auto V. I could think of worse career trajectories, frankly.
His latest EP Audio Assault leans into Heavee's history with interactive digital art while avoiding becoming a prisoner to its maxims and cliches. While the cover very much resembles the cabinet art from a late '90s arcade shooter like Area 51 or Maximum Force (diverting adolescent attractions that were themselves attempting to reapportion the tone of a big-budget James Cameron action movie and arena-sized thrash metal albums by bands like Overkill into the world of gaming), it's far from a Duck Hunt rehash dripping with gore. Instead, it's a slick footwork hybrid that is so smartly mixed, that it doesn't even need to think about chambering a round to make you feel its impact in your chest.
There is a certain synergy between the story of the album and the violence implied by the cover, as the album is meant to score a series of escalating battles. But this continuity becomes fragmented once you start bobbing your head to the beat and your body weave around the crystal-clear rhythms Heavee is laying down. Audio Assault is compellingly whimsical. It wants to take you someplace, but that place doesn't appear to be treacherous. It's therefore difficult to imagine these tracks representing any real conflict... But of course, this discontinuity only enhances my intrigue.
My imagination certainly resists the idea that a fistfight could take place in the presence of the glassy, light funk of opener "Eyes On The Horizon" or the bassy sequence of disciplined synths that manifests on "Machines Can Talk," but it does end up being worth the effort as the mental exercise pushes me out of the routine associations of sound and action that have become matted together in my mind.
Allegory to quarrels and exchanges of blows become slightly easier to conjure when faced with the more footwork-focused tracks like "Watch Yo Step" and "Sonic Warfare," but only because the beats there come at you with a force measurably more persistent than on the rest of the album. Even then, these tracks are so comfortable and invigorating that it is difficult to imagine them flowing through a skirmish like blood trickling through the cracked seems of a concrete path. Audio Assault could accompany a dance battle, but nothing that might end up bloodying your knuckles.
Even though it breaks my brain a little, I do appreciate this juxtaposition of theme and sound. It causes me to reflect on the fact that sometimes dangers are hidden in plain sight, while in many other situations, seemly apparent threats are actually quite under control. Ask yourself, what is more dangerous: Crossing the street or playing a video game that places you in the driver's seat during a high-speed chase? Statistically and realistically, it's not the latter. In actuality, you are always under some kind of threat. Your life is ever tracing the knifes edge. It is only in fantasy that danger can become your plaything.
This groove is available through Hyperdub.