Hemlock Ernst Faces the Specter of Aging and Diminished Horizons on Industrial Hip-Hop Single “Remains”

Hemlock Ernst, image courtesy the artist

Hemlock Ernst (aka Sam Herring of Future Islands) and producer Icky Reels have created an all too relatable and poignant piece of beautifully bleak hip-hop with “Remains.” Streaming percussive textures and rattles run throughout the song as an urgent and desperate tone glimmers in the background while a fuzzy pulse sits in the foreground. It’s like if someone took trap production methods but plugged in the sound palette of EBM. The lyrics sketch out vivid portraits of what it feels like to get older and becoming increasingly aware of how your visibility in culture and social value diminishes when you can be dismissed as a has-been even if what you’re doing still has inherent value, even if as a simple human being you have a value of your own whether or not what you “produce” is perceived as cool or contributes to a narrow definition of the economy. This is especially true of creative people who if their work isn’t making as much money or isn’t perceived as moving forward, but too far forward, they’re set to the side. But often enough this is a product of being seen as “old” or “irrelevant” and in a culture that really only values utilitarian functionality and the ability to make money in established ways it isn’t enough to simply exist and not always having to chase the golden ring or certainly not by participating in a system in which all are disposable. The song sounds like a series of revelations that hit you hard as you hurtle toward and well into middle age. Because it’s then that you really start to take stuff of what you have left and what you’ve given and what’s been taken from you and you have to come to term with what, yes, remains of your time on earth and your ability and energy to do with it what you can that doesn’t feel like a waste of time if you can help it and trying not to despair if it’s not what you thought it would be and if you’re not where you imagined yourself when you were young. As if you have any idea or insight into that when you’re young. With contributions from Elucid of experimental hip-hop duo Armand Hammer the song’s words and sonics hit more deeply and with the weight of inescapable and undeniable truth. Listen to “Remains” on Spotify and follow Hemlock Ernst at the links below. The new Hemlock Ernst album Studying Absence LP is out October 16 via Tygr Rawk.