The Style of Sound: Armor for the Alternative
Ooh, shiny! These metal-clad alternative artists strive to catch our eyes beyond their music, setting them apart from the already-niche fields they create in.
From the stage to the runway, The Style of Sound is a series that explores the intricate relationships forged between your favorite artists and their iconic fashion statements.
Written by Raymond Lam
Illustrated by Micaela Galvez
It’s common for artists of any sort to have a penchant for all things exclusive: blood sneakers, an entire shoe brand, whatever high fashion is doing, and so on and so forth. As an alternative, rehashing the consumerist nature of fashion (those thousand-dollar shoes are technically for sale) into armor is an everlasting statement, treating their bodies more like sculptures than a brand image. “Keeping up with the Joneses” simply isn’t essential for the fashionable (or unfashionable) metal-wearers of alternative music sects.
Photo courtesy of Dan Medhurst
MF DOOM had quite an elusive stage presence, and his mask often made more appearances than the late Daniel Dumile himself. In numerous times throughout his career, so-called “Doompostors” would don the mystical mask and lip-sync concerts in his place, much to the dismay of fans and promoters. The mask in his brand was more enraging than utilitarian, with DOOM gloating about purposefully sending not-so-lookalikes more often than not in a New Yorker interview: “They’d be like, ‘Who the f-ck is this?’ I might send a white dude next. Whoever plays the character plays the character.”
Had it been any other artist, DOOM’s antics would have been a cause for outrage, but it was all in line with his villainous Dr. DOOM persona lent from Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four” series — one of many faces that the British-born artist occupied.
His personas often came from comic books and esoteric, retro references: the King Geedorah character (named after a Godzilla antagonist), the true identity of the Dr. DOOM alter ego named Victor Vaughn, and the sampling of ‘60s era TV throughout their discography. Staunchly unlike his contemporaries, DOOM was rarely seen in streetwear or the latest trends — the dramatics of action figure-esque, supervillain disguises in his comic books were better, sticking to his metal-masked look to build his brand. Consistency!
MF DOOM wasn’t exactly a fashion innovator otherwise, showing up in plain baggy shirts — and later, polos and argyle sweaters — for interviews and performances alike. The Dr. DOOM persona, in all its grandiosity, is quite disposable: The mask itself is nothing more than a spray-painted collector’s mask from the “Gladiator" movie. Still, virtually every appearance of the reclusive Dumile featured the mask on, which MF DOOM puritanically referred to in the third person (but always in All Caps).
Photo courtesy of Mr. Mass
In a 2009 New Yorker profile, he seemed to revel in the persona that the mask had taken over his career: “I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about. Like girls being like, ‘Oh, he’s sexy,’ or ‘I don’t want him, he’s ugly,’ and then other dudes sizing you up. A visual always brings a first impression. But if there’s going to be a first impression I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?”
Although MF DOOM is known for his rather unconventional lyricism, his and producer Madlib’s prescient production samples seem to have the most influence on his legacy. Every track on their 2004 record Madvillainy contains a smattering of cartoon soundbytes, not unlike your average 24-hour lo-fi stream. In spite of the intricacies of DOOM’s deeper hidden lores and narratives, your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper — between the faux show appearances and the suburban dad looks — never took his persona too seriously.
Solange’s aesthetics and world-building tactics have a more classical flair than DOOM’s, taking on their own mystery and intricacy beyond a simple mask. The When I Get Home artist leans in towards the arthouse nature of her previous projects, and she isn’t afraid to make a show of it. The Houston singer followed up Afterglow’s 2019 Album of the Year with a 41-minute director’s cut of the When I Get Home film, providing accompanying visuals to the sparse and enigmatic lyrics of the original audio, while also flexing her talent for curating every esoteric reference and facet of her visual work.
Photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection
Aside from Texas-inspired cowboy looks and callbacks to Houston’s Third Ward, the film also delves heavily into Afrofuturistism, featuring CGI UFOs, spaceship command modules, and just about any clothing item cast in chrome, dotting the film and contrasting the otherwise dreamy shots. Just like the chopped and screwed production throughout the album, interpolations of technology serve as jagged, yet harmonious affirmations to the progress of time for her community’s residents. The metal fashion isn’t there to disrupt, so much as it’s there to prophesize her spacefaring visions of the future for her part of town, even outside of the U.S. Space program’s mission control.
As a centerpiece at the beginning of the film, Solange approaches what can only be described as a shadowy rhinestone monster, vaguely reminiscent of a “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” puppet. The songstress is in more or less the same gear too, accentuated with matching rhinestone earrings and brasserie that contrast the concealed nature of her companion. She detachedly dances alongside the entity throughout the film, only revealing the person underneath by its end in the spacey closing track “I’m a Witness.”
Photo courtesy of Impulse! Records and ABC/Dunhill Records
Perhaps the spacefaring elements of When I Get Home are Solange paying homage rather than her own premonition — her tribute to the forward-thinking work of artists before her. Much of the mysticism in When I Get Home may very well be derived from the progenitor of Afrofuturism, the late jazz artist Sun Ra.
Solange even directly credits the composer in a 2019 interview with Vogue: “I’m thinking about the way that discovering Sun Ra 30 years after he was here and how that work impacted and influenced me — that many years later, how it helped me to understand myself better.”
Often seen in pseudo-religious drapery and chain mail (much like the aforementioned glitter puppet Solange waltzes with), Sun Ra used his shows to blend elements of Black nationalism, Egyptian lore, and a resolute belief in extraterrestrial life, forming a mythos that confounded even his audience and fellow bandmates. He’d proselytize his “Arkestra” and audiences of religious aphorisms, with recounts of his literal trip to Saturn, and naturally demanded quite a bit of musical productivity (about 60 studio albums, not counting the posthumous releases).
Solange’s work, while a lot more down-to-earth, has just the same level of mysticism: sending us to find all the references to a Houstonian upbringing, and to figure out what exactly Playboi Carti’s unintelligible verses on “Almeda” were saying. Solange’s music isn’t quite as religious as Sun Ra’s work, but it wouldn’t be wrong to say the esoteric mythos that the singer has built up is spiritually inclined, equally befitting of some metallic regalia here and there.
Photo courtesy of Carlota Guerrero
If Solange’s work is built on the familiar notions of home and community, Arca’s music stands to do exactly the opposite. The carbon-fiber stilts (Horse hooves? Leg extensions?) gracing the album art for Grammy-nominated KiCk i first debuted in Arca’s “Reverie” music video, produced just before coming out as a nonbinary trans woman in 2018.
The electronic musician also pairs her attire with knife-like hand extensions for more brazen cuts from the album, like the aptly-named “Rip the Slit.” The ballads from Arca’s previous work are largely absent from KiCk, replaced with glitchy affirmations of identity set to alien metal drones and beats. In album opener “Nonbinary,” she boldly rap-sings, “Don't put your shit on me / B-tch, I'm special, you can't tell me otherwise.”
There’s almost a fetishistic quality to Arca’s rejection of doing what’s palatable. Just about everything from helmets to bras to suction cups have been Arca-fied at one point or another, remixed into whatever combination of vinyl and titanium Arca wants for each photoshoot. And the fans have taken the jarringness in stride, with “ARCA IS MY QUEEN ALIEN” scribbled on their abs to plaster over the internet.
Still, instead of distaste, it seems Arca’s goal is self-assuredness. The campiness of her music and vision isn’t meant to disturb so much as it is to note contentedness, a rebuttal of the conformity expected of trans and nonbinary circles. In an interview with Garage, Arca highlights her obsession with preserving new “self-states'' she's found, saying:
“Rather than depicting gender dysphoria, I want to explore gender euphoria. (...) The decision to [be open] was always catalyzed by what I wanted to have seen more of when I was a kid, because I was trapped within the trap of another trap — in many closets.”
While these artists may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it was never their intention to do so. Having a few over-the-top metal accessories here and there is just the tip of the iceberg for the theatre put on by each of these artists. From the hushed acoustic nature of Solange’s work, to the in-your-face onslaught of Arca’s work, metal is just an extra accessory to continue to separate them from the rest.