Video: Aesop Rock: "Pigs"
The tracklist says Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass ends with the spooked-out "Coffee", featuring the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, but if you've actually heard the now-San Francisco-based rapper's 2007 album (or checked out Jason Crock's Pitchfork review), you know better. Hidden track "Pigs" is, in Crock's words, "another seeming live track of gutbucket slide-guitar funk, once again darting sideways in the face of expectation." It's also a blunted, free-flowing verbal assault on all things porcine. The video, directed by Dan Wolfe, is a display of visual artistry in keeping with the album's vividly illustrated cover art.
That should come as no surprise, because the clip stars Jeremy Fish, the San Francisco illustrator who designed said cover art and worked on Rock's pig-headed "None Shall Pass" video. Fish and his helper, Rick, are shown at high-speed, clambering up ladders as they draw what appears to be (judging by the Statue of Liberty) a mural-sized Gotham. Meanwhile, Aesop Rock is unstinting in his densely packed pork riffs: "Final words for the finer birds taking notes/ I dig a chick in pigtails, 'That's all folks!'"
[from None Shall Pass; out now on Def Jux]