City of God’s Son is an incredible synesthesic montage and re-working of a story that never really happened, but did for anyone who’s ever listened to 90s beats, watched gangster flicks and explored a city at night. Featuring “Nas“, “Jay” and “Ghost” as themselves, but not really, and narrated by Joe Bataan, director Kenzo Digital has created a world of magical realism for his a coming of age story. Set in a city much like New York but hidden deep within a jungle, the City is the other star of this musical/soundscape/movie for the blind/art installation.
More than a mere remix or mash-up, City of God’s Son explores the icons of “the gangster” through the media’s obsession as well as hip hop’s itself, using sounds, samples, original contextual quotes and references in an homage to arguably hip-hop’s most culturally potent era. It is as multilayered and as subtle as it is compelling. Huffington Post puts it thus:
COGS is part Sin City, part Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio programming, and part Nas’ Illmatic.
It features reworkings and quotes from Nas, Jay-Z and Ghostfce Killa, but also Samuel L Jackson, Delroy Lindo, Biggie Smalls, Raekwon and more, and can be experienced in full this Summer as Kenzo Digital presents a new form of cinema, theater, and opera, based on City of God’s Son, in New York’s Chelsea art district.
There, the listener will be able to experience City of God’s Son in the form it was initially intended — as a psychedelic, abstract combination of visual and audio sensory over-stimulation and deprivation in a unique outdoor setting.
Meanwhile, watch the trailer above, and download the “aural” experience here.
With thanks to The Huffington Post
