Thread by @tunedig

What's the deal with "these unprecedented times"?! @bbpoltergiest brought a psychotropic funhouse mirror to the 2020 party (a decade early) & demand we gaze long & hard into the abyss.

DEATH GRIPS IS ONLINE — stream our new ep + enter to win TMS #vinyl:

tunedig.com/deathgrips

Death Grips are one of the more divisive artists we've covered.

There are 2 types of people in this world: people who are very into Death Grips and people who ... are *not*.

Darius and Earn from @AtlantaFX illustrate those respective camps perfectly.

A central aspect of our Death Grips conversation is their inextricable link with the rapidly accelerating digital world.

To that end, "Darius from @AtlantaFX listens to Death Grips" is an entire genre of tweets unto itself.

To understand how something as unique & provocative as Death Grips could even exist in the first place, it helps to examine the context from which it arose.

This @timmaughan article captures our thesis: DG is a reaction to an incomprehensible reality.

link.medium.com/gXZDIE8Lwgb

Furthermore, there's growing evidence from research across disciplines that online spaces are shaping our IRL existence in ways we can't yet understand or even perceive.

Naturally, prescient artists like Death Grips would crop up to sound a warning.

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

The Death Grips phenomenon began in April 2011 — at the height of the blog era — with the posting of a mysterious, ominous music video ("Guillotine") that went viral thanks to its now-iconic lo-fi imagery.

In fact, @KylePStapleton's old blog was among the many reshares of the "Guillotine" video — from none other than @donaldglover's old @tumblr, where he mostly shared photos of women and architecture. One of the many ways 2011 was a decade or a century ago, depending on your lens.

The "Guillotine" video eventually reached the desk of @Epic_Records' then-head of marketing Angelica Cob-Baehler (RIP), whose reaction was as immediate and visceral as so many others who stumbled across it online — but this particular view radically changed DG's trajectory.

An infamous meeting with @LA_Reid led to a same-day signing to Epic, on a contract printed in @SimonCowell's office.

@1000TimesYes's 2012 @SPIN feature recounts the details of what amounted to "a confusing, kind of darker period" for the band.

spin.com/2012/11/death-…

For The Money Store's follow-up NO LOVE DEEP WEB, part of the 2012 saga w/ Epic, DG promoted it with an intricate alternate reality game and leaked it to @BitTorrent to the tune of 34.1 million legal DLs.

(The music industry could’ve learned from this.)

imgur.com/Bo6beR6

For DG, the internet was a vehicle to "open-source" their creative expression and have it mutate with the world it was critiquing.

Projects like RETROGRADE, detailed here by @ImYourKid, embody the band’s fearless commitment to that experimentation.

vice.com/en/article/535…

It's obvious when listening to DG that they're making a statement, but most reviews get caught up in their visceral response to the sounds & wind up dealing in hyperbolic cliches.

Instead, focus on the purpose statements the band themselves have revealed in their few interviews.

from aforementioned @CreatorsProject piece by @ImYourKid:

"Things are becoming archaic at a faster rate than ever before, and there's this closed-mindedness that can exist even within the creative realm, like accelerating towards these old notions of what's acceptable ..." (1/2)

"... The same mentality and processes apply to how we work on both video and music … We often work backwards, by starting with pieces of something that we purposefully destroyed." (2/2)

"We're into providing an environment for people to embrace the chaotic elements of people's personalities or lives or attitudes"
+
"We're very into the visual arts — we're all visual artists"

(@zachhill to @adultswim)

"We're thinking of each track as its own iconic piece of pop art, themed in intense struggle, sexuality, demons, addiction, mysticism and violence. We thought about Andy Warhol's work and perceived attitudes ..."

(@josiahhughes for @exclaimdotca)

exclaim.ca/music/article/…

"[Death Grips is] an outlet and a way to connect with people through something other than conversation or analyzation, to create something we don't have words for yet."

(@JCalvert_music for @theQuietus)

thequietus.com/articles/06583…

From that same @theQuietus article:

"[Once our art is released, it] becomes someone else's and mutates infinitely, like a feedback loop. The hope is that it's enhancing reality for the people connecting with it, like it does ours while we're making it."

"So it's weird to be like, 'Our band is like the internet!' But actually it kind of is: You have all the lowest-level activity side-by-side with the highest intellect … We want our music to work the same way: all at once."

(@Jayson_Greene for @pitchfork)
pitchfork.com/features/inter…

"We perceive Death Grips as … totally open source … we take our ego out. We prefer it to be this open collaboration with the world."

(the incomparable @jennpelly for @pitchfork)

pitchfork.com/features/inter…

Lastly, a real heady one:

"We talk about The Beatles all the time, how we want to be The Beatles of Rap. I say that without arrogance, it is just something to aspire to."

(@KiddFuture for @TheSource)

thesource.com/2012/03/16/dea…

Again, to describe Death Grips's music itself is an exercise in futility — it's better to "RIYL" a state of mind.

But for open-minded listeners, there are a few interesting elements worth honing in on, in particular their unique approach to sampling.

"For Death Grips, sampling has moved ... into uncharted territory; a seemingly endless journey of self-reference & refinement that creates a dialogue with their entire output, as if all timelines of their work are infinitely co-existing."
(@highsnobiety)

highsnobiety.com/p/death-grips-…

The band's approach to sampling is all part of its highly intentional, counter-cultural, world-building artistic intent. @zachhill expounded on that idea to @Jayson_Greene:

"There's a majestic quality to that rawness."

Take "System Blower", for instance — its @whosampled page reveals some interesting source material:

- Cell phone recording of @Venuseswilliams grunting during a match
- YouTube video of @TransLink SkyTrain accelerating out of the station

whosampled.com/Death-Grips/Sy…

One sample of particular interest ("Get Got") draws from @sahelsounds' "Music From Saharan Cellphones" compilation, which celebrates the "cyberpunk" culture of lo-fi electronic music creation & sharing in Northern Africa. Its story is fascinating.

link.medium.com/k6ceDEqcygb

Perhaps the definitive document (for us) on The Money Store's musical DNA came from Australian blogger @BoilerRhapsody. This fantastic piece zooms out for context, then zooms in for close readings of song construction and parallels to other art movements.

boilerrhapsody.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/alb…

DG's choice to focus first on the energy of their music, then the sound underpins how it still manages to draw listeners in with pop structures & movies, even if sonically abrasive.

They call it "glorification of the gut." It's why @tylerthecreator says "Death Grips is my meth."

That process of manifesting energy came in part from learning about @wizards_magic's Control Deck.

"If you pay attention, it's just insane how there's this dialogue you can have with life and the unknown. If you're awake to certain things in life, they tell you what to do."

Another key aspect of Death Grips's world-building came from visuals — they released 14 music videos in 3 years (not counting RETROGRADE) all with a consistent aesthetic.

This @MinaAnnLee piece for @MTVMusic summarizes their ideology + methodology.

mtv.com/news/2695717/d…

If you start with one song or video from The Money Store, make it "I’ve Seen Footage", a dystopian take on a bona fide pop earworm with a "life on tour" video.

And just for fun, here’s the "I’ve Seen Footage" video slowed down 10x so you can see all of the photos in their slideshow. The music becoming an ominous, enveloping ambient score is a fitting touch.

(h/t @leamingtonbooks)

The digital-focused ecosystem Death Grips built resulted in a fervent fan culture — as @antidotemag cleverly put it, they became the "Band of a Thousand Memes."

antidotemag.com/sound-advisory…

To our earlier point about reviewers:

"there are people who spread those memes but don't actually like the music. They hear the crazy intensity of the music & ... their aesthetic ... & they think it's a joke bc they don't know how else to deal with it."

reddit.com/r/deathgrips/c…

The fervent, absurdist fandom around Death Grips arguably took root when @theneedledrop, the most *extremely online* music person and self-professed DG superfan, gave his first-ever 10/10 review to The Money Store.

The "open-source" fan culture around Death Grips reached terminal velocity in absurd fashion when, after a social media hiatus, the band RT'd anyone who said that "Death Grips Is Online."

That meme became a song, which in turn became another meme.

dailydot.com/unclick/death-…

This absurdist subversion leaked into every aspect of the band's approach, culminating w/ an infamous "appearance" at Chicago's @thebottomlounge: "a looped recording of [their] music, and the stage backdrop was of a suicide note allegedly written to DG."

consequence.net/2013/08/suicid…

The house music before that show was released in 2019 as "Gmail & the Restraining Orders", a 28-min blast of fractal free jazz that felt a lot like DG coming full-circle & swallowing itself whole. It’s their last output, save for a single w/ Les Claypool.

Before their inevitable demise, 2012 found DG at the height of their eerily prescient powers. Late in the ep, we discussed how recent headlines about sentient police drones and AI deepfaking music felt like fodder from Death Grips's sonic cannon warnings.

theguardian.com/music/2020/nov…

So what to make of the Death Grips phenomenon? Their rise and fall —assuming Zach Hill's new @UndoKFromHot project signals DG's end — reflects the seeming inevitability of humanity eating itself. DG is an ouroboros, the abyss gazing also into us.

More broadly, what's the takeaway from these digital expressions about modern life?

We aren't sure, but DG shows us that just fighting to exist may be enough. To combat the violence of "post-reality," focus on the raw power of amplifying what's real through pure, primal release.

Once you get going thinking or talking about Death Grips, it gets you feeling like that True Detective meme — so we'll stop here for our health.

Now we wait for DG's extremely online fans to come out of the woodwork & reply w/ everything important we missed 😎

🌈 stay noided 🌈