I’d have to admit that I’m not watching much TV lately, although to be fair I’m fully dedicated to a couple YouTube channels almost on a daily basis, which in 2017 does in fact mean that I’m watching TV lately, right? Well, by that I mainly mean that the global Netflix and TV series hysteria club that has been going on for about 34 years now has just fairly recently lost one of its least proudest members, partly because in my humblest opinion there actually aren’t that many good shows around at the moment, and partly because the fact that I recently moved country of residence implies that I’m now enjoying vastly reduced catalogues and streaming service offerings as opposed to what I was used to in the mighty United Kingdom.

What I haven’t stopped being into for even a single minute is music though, and in that regard I recently launched a fiery and incendiary ether debate on Twitter by asking the Interweb.com to compare Vince Staples’s latest album Big Fish Theory with the one of leader and co-founder of the alternative hip hop collective Odd Future, i.e. American rapper, record producer, and music video director Tyler, The Creator. Tyler’s fourth studio LP Flower Boy dropped a little more than two weeks ago on 21st July and has since been on heavy rotation on yours truly’s high fidelity FM. I thus have been fiercely flirting and battling with the thought of delivering another highly-subjectively biased hip-hop/rap ARM instalment for the good part of the past week, only to then find out that there was so much more going on artistically with Tyler, The Creator at the moment worth mentioning to say the least.

Besides launching his very own take on the legendary Converse One Star shoe model in visual conjunction with his newest record, aka the One Star X Golf le Fleur, Tyler also debuted as the host and main mind of a brand new TV show on Vice Media’s channel VICELAND called Nuts + Bolts, accompanied by the following promotional caption: “Tyler, the Creator explores the things he loves and the ways they work, with the help of experts and personal heroes”. Needless to say I was extremely captivated by whole idea of the programme, and realizing that it would all be steered by the raw, twisted, and inspiring mind of Tyler only made for an even bigger excitement on my part. Nuts + Bolts premiered on Friday 4th August with an episode called “Stop Motion” dealing with… stop motion (!) and the exploration of a specific sub-discipline called clay animation (Wallace and Gromit anyone!?).

As I already anticipated over on holy grail Twitter when the episode first aired, great TV in an age of abundance and overwhelming noise to me is when it can reveal you something you didn’t necessarily know before, which in this specific case was my discovery of how cool of a movie technique stop motion actually is. The amount of dedication, precision, and effort that go into producing a segment even as short as a rad and badass one minute piece like Tyler himself did at the end of the first episode is simply astonishing and admirable. Make damn sure you check out the first episode in full on VICELAND’s site by clicking here (or head over to good ol’ Facebook if you’re not currently living in a country under Donald J. Trump’s presidency). The segment literally turned me into a deep admirer of said practice, to the point that I’m now super willing to learn more and get informed as to how and where I could potentially materialise a project on my own. Yet I’m digressing, the whole point I’m trying to make is that Nuts + Bolts is shaping up to become both a very entertaining and truly informative modern-day TV series/doc, stemming surprisingly enough from a man at times as despised as society’s biggest villains.

The amazing aspect about the show is that a quick look at its trailer – first released back in June – reveals that in addition to stop motion an incredibly vast and incredibly cool list of topics will be covered throughout the programme, ranging from sneakers and go-karts to donuts and time-travel. I’m just in love with the idea that as far as content programming, anything goes in the series and nothing is too wild to be omitted a priori, as it’s quite clearly very hard to find a lowest common theme encompassing every episode’s focus. I guess the formula to describe Nuts + Bolts was actually cracked by the man himself, when during the main trailer he says that it “[…] is a show describing how everything that I think is awesome is made”. I’m voting for this one.

I guess the funny thing in all of this is that thanks to Tyler, The Creator and his trademark way of making even bolts go nuts I will soon indeed be watching a lot of TV again, with its tentacles permeating through every possible gateway of my digitally consumed life. Not that this might necessarily be a bad thing per se, not at all in fact if all TV I watch is as catchy and cocky as Nuts + Bolts, yet I still can’t help but always be a little bit worried about not finding enough time to do everything my instincts tell me to, especially when it comes to checking out new music. The fact that the whole reason why I got into TV again with this show was actually because of me checking out new music is kind of uber ironic, I do hand it to you. Yet in life most things do indeed get a full circle if one looks close enough. Pretty much like nuts and bolts and bolts being nuts.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV