Opening with Herman Bloom’s distinctively deep voice mocking the infamous “woah Kenny!” beat tag, stupidity is the central concept on Bloom’s latest release ‘No Filler’, dropping on Brighton’s sarcastically and fittingly named ‘Not Really’ platform. Helped along by stinking bass-throbs and visuals featuring Bloom rapping in various Instagram filters that, even in lockdown, really brings this comedic world of caricatures to life, ‘No Filler’ is ignorant to its core with lyrics like “unstable ‘cos I let my horses out… guess you heard it from the horse’s mouth”. However, it is through these clearly conscious aesthetic and musical features that ‘No Filler’s’ shameless ignorance begins to emerge as a carefully crafted choice- stringing together punchlines and rapping on high for the full length of the track, it ironically took me a couple of listens before I caught all the layered punches that the track’s lyrics and visuals have to offer. Even Bloom’s syllable and rhyme selection seems poised to maximise this ‘stupid’ theme, with there being a certain juxtapositional beauty in the choice to rhyme “stupider” and “Jupiter” (as a disappointed Dashwuud asks “is stupider a word?” in the background). Is juxtapositional a word either? I’m not sure. I am also not sure if ‘juxtapositional beauty’ is exactly the phrase that Herman Bloom was going for here, but hey, we fuck with it.
Catch ‘No Filler’ in all its glorious ignorance here, visuals by @trashchrystie.
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