Thing of the Day
Death Grips - new video
July 13th 2011
These
things have become
seismic events. Who or what is Death Grips?
Appearing out of
nowhere around March this year, Death Grips just popped up out of the
ether with a web site, a video and a link to the name of Zach Hill,
drummer/composer extraordinare sparking the first bit of attention -
and then the thing kicking off as the sheer quality of these
near-anonymous transmissions is appreciated.
Death Grips are Zach and three or four other people in an intensely collaborative unit, based in Sacramento, California, they're a force unto themselves - the genre may approximate hip-hop, but the attitude carries echoes of the area's original counter culture and brittle, dangerous psychedelia - yet has as much in common with UK grime and dub. Someone called Flatlander does (most of) the video making; Mexican Girl and Info Warrior give vocals and who-knows-what-else, Zach Hill drums and no doubt more, and the face at the front with the fierce, deep words is MC Ride. Their work appears unannounced, Facebook-spread, seemingly lacking in any of the accoutrements of 'industry' - some kind of backroom industry, or spawned out of a compound in the desert (or apartments in the scummy, cheap bits of Sacramento). Hard-edged, futuristic, but there's some kind of mystical undercurrent - survival magic, stuff that you can't put a finger on.
There's a
whole album, Ex Military, to download for free - track after track
memorable and addictive, the whole already being whispered about as
being a seminal moment in underground avant hip hop history...
Latest video,
appearing unheralded this week, is to opening track 'Beware' - visually
the most straightforward yet, channelling Antonioni...
More videos, lyrics, downloads of Ex Military here: www.thirdworlds.net/
