- Punky cuts from the experimental underground, curated by Hood By Air's Shayne Oliver and executive produced by Yves Tumor.
- It makes sense that Hood By Air would return in 2020. When the brand first appeared around the turn of the last decade, creative director Shayne Oliver's extreme tailoring and surreal garments filled a specific void. Hood By Air channeled New York's queer underground into a palette of creative destruction, talking both to and about a community that had been long overlooked by the fashion and art industries. It became one of the pioneering cult brands of the time, and as soon as it solidified its place in the fashion canon, it disappeared.
That hiatus came to an abrupt halt last year, when Hood By Air came back as a three-pronged entity of cultural production, with new collections from Hood By Air's main line supported by Museum (an archival project that recontextualizes the brand's past work) and Anonymous club, an incubator for rising experimental musicians and artists who jibe with the brand's uncompromising vision. The latter project's first official release—following Prologue from Oliver's project LEECH—is Screensavers Vol. 1, a compilation executive-produced by Yves Tumor with help from artists like Rabit and IVVVO. (Yves Tumor is a longtime Hood By Air affiliate, once performing on top of a giant manmade sand dune at one of their fashion shows a while back.) This is a boisterous, brutal and at moments beautiful look into a corner of New York’s forward-thinking scene.
While Screensavers Vol. 1's tracks vary wildly, there's a punk energy and cut-and-paste aesthetic that runs through it all. Distorted guitars, post-punk bass lines, far-reaching sample sources and punchy digital beats are pieced together like upcycled garments ripping apart at the seams. On opener "Loosen Up," woozy rave pads, floating strings and Tama Gucci's chopped-up vocals collapse into dramatic blasts of gristly noise. And on "Bitch U Basic," an industrial trap track of cascading 808s, sirens and plucked strings that sound like they’re ripped from the Hereditary soundtrack give way to "Leave Out," a summery synth-funk track with an earworm hook.
The compilation's best tracks are its two singles, "Ketamean (NY Mix)" and "Bleedinout." On the former, a mash of more traditional instruments and heavily processed samples sits beneath Sabrina Fuentes' detached musings, which ask the listener in a half-interested tone: "What do you (keta)mean? Why are you so (keta)mean?" And "Bleedinout" was given the full music video treatment by director Jordan Hemingway, who created a surreal narrative of dusty limousines and angelic strippers to spin around the track's chugging metal guitars and Izzy Spears’ chaotic performance.
But for all the deadpan vocals and undeniably cooler-than-thou aesthetics, there's sincerity and emotional catharsis behind every track on this tape. Much like Hood By Air's early collections did in the '00s and '10s, Screensavers Vol feels like a carefully curated window into New York's scene—an alternate reality that presents a radical vision of pop culture that’s at once otherworldly and viscerally human.
Tracklist01. Loosen Up feat. Tama Gucci
02. Lunch feat. Tama Gucci
03. Ketamean (NY Mix) feat. Sabrina Fuentes
04. Bleedinout feat. Izzy & LEECH
05. Bitch U Basic feat. Hook & Chicken
06. Leave Out feat. LEECH & Ian Isiah
07. Permission feat. Tama Gucci
08. Pavement feat. Santiago
09. Backdoor feat. Izzy
10. Cruising (NY Mix) feat. Sabrina Fuentes