I’m probably not spoiling anything by saying this, but one of the Golden Girls’ sillier episodes hinged on the discovery of a double-exposed photograph—two images, fused into one. In contrast, “Nice Ass” layers several sample sources into a single disjointed fable, a brooding drip of sepia-toned pianos, treated tapes, semi-ancient machinery shuddering back to life. It’s the audio collage as mystic exhale, the sort of Sontag Shogun-worthy throwback ambience that Westworld would co-opt if it were truly committed to its miserablism.
Word to anyone born after 2000: minus that drum spangle, those clicks and snaps that open “Nice Ass” are what cameras sounded like before we could carry them in our jacket pockets. The rest? What life consists of once the flashes fade and we’ve turned away from magazine covers and towards the warped mirrors our own lives invariably are: doubt, regret, nightmare, ocean surf breaking hard on rocky shoreline, quick bursts of grace and/or peace.