Are we sure Detroit rapper Danny
Brown and Glasgow producer Rustie aren't twins separated at birth? Never mind
the age and race differences. When I hear Brown's schizoid voice doing
cartwheels across Rustie's rapidly shifting electronic landscape in
"Attak" my mind start's inventing JFK-sized conspiracy
theories. One household could never contain so much fiendish energy, so the two
were split up for the sanity of their parents.
Developing such an outlandish
theory is all I can do to explain why Brown and Rustie work so well together.
Some of Old's
most awe-inspiring moments came when the two were teaming up and creating
addictive, MDMA-fed trap rave. But efforts like "Side B (Dope
Song)" and "Break
It (Go)" are relatively "sedate" when compared to the
blinding speed of "Attak." The drum machine hi hats tic faster than a
clock in a time travel montage. Futuristic air raid sirens swirl around the
track at F-5 tornado speeds. What I can only describe as glitch-ridden noise
swipes across "Attak" like an insanely judgmental person on Tinder.
In short "Attak" is fast, but remarkably Brown is able to keep up. He
raps "back in 2003 used to post up and roll up bag of pounds of meat, used
to trap OG with E, Greyhound bus one pair of jeans," with such lightning
quick detail you'd swear it happened yesterday. Brown never seems to be
straining, whether he’s remembering his days of slinging or the times he had to
scrap. "Knock your brain out the hat while I cop that," he nasally
threatens in the second verse. If he doesn't follow through on the threat,
Rustie surely will.
Rustie's sophomore album Green Language drops August 26 on Warp Records.
Not even 10 minutes after Vancouver native Claire Boucher aka Grimes put up her
latest song "Go" on Soundcloud, there were loading problems for the
track. I can't imagine I was the only one nervously clicking,
"praying" I'd get through in time to replay "Go" to my
heart's content. Though I'd just heard it on Zane Lowe's BBC 1 Radio show
at 1:30, I wanted to hear it again. If I spent the rest of day letting it boom
out of my speakers and failed to get anything else done, including this review,
it'd still be a successful day.
Now some of that is obvious
hyperbole, but not much. "Go" is that kind of entrancing effort. The
same week Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal told us about the joys of well-timed
bass drops in a music culture desensitized to them, Grimes upped the ante
further. Rustie's "Raptor" features an unquestionably terrific drop,
one best compared to a waterfall of noise if you're intent on using any kind of
"dropping" or "falling" verbiage. But "Raptor"'s
drop is necessary when you consider it comes after a stretch of silence. You
need noise to drown out the quietude in that case. The reason "Go"'s
anvil-like drop is so fascinating is that it may not even be needed. Before its
leaden appearance "Go" is a mid-tempo languisher with an eerie clock
rhythm and elegiac piano ringing out. Grimes half-whispers about dreams and
memories being indistinguishable and time cruelly stretching out past some
far-off horizon. Bolstered by mechanical drum claps, its best described as
"haunting."
However once the bass goes from
a mid-volume rumble to a speaker busting boom, "Go" becomes something
else entirely. "Bubblegum trap rave" may be a clunky way to describe
it, but that's what immediately came to mind. If that is the descriptor though,
it's not syrupy sweet bubblegum pop you'd hear on an AM station in the 60s.
This is the sugar-free variety, where the bubble's been popped and
disappointment hangs where a smile once resided. Under Blood Diamond's massively
stuttering samples, you can hear Grimes' head hanging down when she sings of
"stupid dreams." Her best work often captures peril in mundane
situations (night-walks becoming panic-stricken runs on "Oblivion")
and "Go" is no different. We all dream, it's just rarely as vivid or
panoramic as this.
In an on-air interview with Zane Lowe today, Grimes intimated she'd be releasing a new album "sometime next year" so "Go" will have to tide you over until then.
