Dead Channel Sky by Clipping.
Dead Channel Sky by Clipping.
American music and science fiction have combined very memorably: jazz explorer Herman Blount called himself Sun Ra and claimed to be from Saturn; Funkadelic’s members often portrayed themselves as Flash Gordon’s soul brothers and sisters; and didn’t Prince sometimes look and sound like a parallel-universe version of himself?
The rap collective Clipping. (period intentional) has been nominated for Hugo Awards by the World Science Fiction Society, and its fifth full-length, Dead Channel Sky, reimagines the present as the future envisioned by cyberpunk writers like William Gibson.
Daveed Diggs, the rapper for Clipping., is one of the best possible narrators for the future that is now: as forceful as Chuck D, with matter-of-fact verbosity and a flow that favors intelligibility over dazzling speed. In “Change the Channel,” he turns the refrain of “Listen closely/Everything is very important” into an edict.
Although Diggs doesn’t inhabit his narratives quite the way he inhabits his acting roles in movies like Nickel Boys, he’s a deeply embedded observer. When someone else is melting a pill under his tongue in “Run It,” Diggs knows the high and its side effects; when someone else is hustling in “Keep Pushing,” Diggs frames the hustle inside a collapsing world.
The other members of Clipping., Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, frame Diggs inside beats that match his moods, including the subwoofer throbs of “Go,” the dot-matrix grinds of “Run It,” and the uneasy wind-chime tones and sudden drum-and-bass ignition of “Ask What Happened.”
Spurning a closed system, Clipping. invites Wilco guitarist Nels Cline to skronk all over “Malleus,” gives computer improvisational group Bitpanic a chance to update Pink Floyd’s instrumentals with “Simple Degradation (Plucks 1-13),” and steps back to let Indian Canadian duo Cartel Madras knowingly slink across the club-ready “Mirrorshades Pt. 2.”
En toto, Dead Channel Sky uses hip-hop and science fiction to groove on our current reality in all its sleek grimness. If the future is bleak, those who survive it will bop their heads to the history provided by Clipping.
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Get Dead Channel Sky at Amazon here.
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