It started two months ago to the day, when
a stuttering/strobing video of angry man obscenely rapping over a spasmodic drumbeat was posted on YouTube from an unknown group who called themselves Death Grips, with the promise of an album and a mixtape within the year. The next day,
a new track went up, not furious like the day before, but the rapper sounded a bit hoarse now. More tracks were uploaded every few days, and on April 26th
the mixtape was on YouTube,
soundcloud, and available to download
from their website and other places. Still, little is known about the group, beyond that it's probably a trio and
Zach Hill is involved.
Zach Hill is not typically associated with hip-hop, but rather guitar/drum duo
Hella,
one-time member of
Wavves, two name but two of
many groups he has been in or worked with (MySpace fan page).
There are reviews-a-plenty of the mixtape, which liken it to
club music on crystal meth,
more Scorsese than ’98 Eminem, and tie it back to the "very mid-to-late ’90s" when the
future of music would bring nothing but [glitchy] apocalyptic war cries. As for similar bands, dropped names include
Anti-Pop Consortium,
Atari Teenage Riot,
Techno Animal,
Kid 606 and
Dälek, to list a few. And it seems hard to get away from the lyrical content of
Tyler, The Creator (See:
Pitchfork's run-down of OFWGKTA). But it seems hard to be too tough when playing
West End Girls in your mixtape.
Still want more?
The group's website has a few more songs to download, plus embedded videos if you don't want to sort through
everything uploaded to their YouTube account. They're also active
on Twitter, where they
comment on the mixtape review on
The Needle Drop (
YouTube direct link).
I like this. Alot.
posted by gcbv at 7:01 PM on May 8, 2011