Awkward

I’m sitting in my empty classroom. I came to fill up the fish tank so they don’t die. It’s summer. It’s hot. Like nuclear hot. School’s out. There are no students. My son is playing with a combination of cowboys and indians and World War II plastic figurines. It’s a colonial snake eating itself type shit. I’m too hot to try harder than that. 

This is a 180 degree transition between 180 days of instruction and the 180 degree weather of a Southern California summer. 180 days of molding minds and reading their shittily-composed persuasive essays. It was actually 179 this year because they closed school one day after a terrorist threat was deemed credible only to be later proven a hoax. That dude who did it is a dick, but it was nice to have the day off. 

Now I have another 180 days off, give or take. It’s more like 140 but to you in your cubicle it doesn’t matter. You’ll hate me either way. My girlfriend made us a bag lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She’s a teacher too. 

Summer is camping, swimming, video games, boredom and a lot of explaining to people why I am walking the afternoon streets fancy-free and sandal-tanned. I only get paid for ten months a year but prorate my checks so I don’t have to spend the summer tutoring your entitled brats in your mansion living rooms, or installing drywall, or painting bathrooms, or selling drugs. Or any of the other odd jobs I used to do to make June meet September, without stints living in my car. It can be awkward. 

Speaking of awkward, Briston, UK-based producer Awkward has released Torch Wave. And it is fire like radiating waves of ultraviolet light turning dark skin purple and light skin tomato. It is a shade that despite my socialist leanings belie my redneck heritage. Luckily I have sunglasses, SPF 100, and a worldview that flexes a strong sense of social justice. While the beats are blistering, I’m trying to avoid the melanoma. 

Torch Wave is self-described as a “instrumental collection of songs made during transition.” Maybe that’s why when I threw it on the ceiling it stuck. Right next to the Jell-o. Transitions are my favorite part of life. I heard described recently that in the circle of life, from seed to plant to fruit, that flowering is the part to be cherished. The time to shine! The meaning of life. What the hokey pokey is really all about! 

But… Anytime anyone has given me flowers, they die. I mean they smell nice but so does the girl spritzing strangers with expensive perfume at the entrance to a department store. I don’t exactly want to be her. Flowers are just next door neighbors to death. Their beauty wasted in frivolous jars on fast food furniture merely visiting to make coffins look pretty. 

I prefer it when seeds sprout - that time between ideas and fruition, that time of work, germination to giant fucking bean stalks! It’s the most exciting as old goes out to make way for the ooooooooooh shiiiiiiiiny! It is a time of strength. A time to grow. A time to change from the old to the new without the useless celebrations. I have little time for pageantry. Maybe that's why I teach. 

This little burp of an EP seems like this Awkward’s soundtrack of getting from A to B. Succinct, to the point, with a purpose, and seemingly possessed with an urgent desire to be heard. It’s a short stint, but a radiant one. Torch Wave is deeply groovy, but also bright with plucky synths and playful almost childlike harmonies. Torch Wave is a new dendrite reaching into the funky abyss to create a new neural pathway. It’s frenetic while somehow maintaining its innocent intentions. Torch Wave  IS the boat ride. And with production credits from Open Mike Eagle, N8NOFACE, Megabusive and The Cloaks, Awkward might just be the king of that shit! 

So as I transition from teacher mode to disgusting piece of shit, Torch Wave is the Awkward sound between the laughter.