‘Dead Channel Sky’: Euronews Culture’s verdict
The experimental hip-hop trio are back with a new concept album which propels the listener into a cyberpunk club. It’s an ambitious and occasionally thrilling dystopian rave that may be too messy for its own good.
In the video for clipping.’s new single ‘Change the Channel’, an armed military officer enters a home and sees a slouched man on his couch, wearing an uncomfortable looking collar that seems to have him chained.
“User disconnected… User disconnected” repeats a robotic voice emanating from the man’s phone, which sits on the table in front of him.
The soldier knows exactly what to do. He plugs in the user back in, using a red USB cable which slides into the man’s collar. The slumped man can now resume doomscrolling on his device.
As far as metaphors go, it’s not a particularly deep one, but it is useful in encompassing the tone of clipping.’s latest album, ‘Dead Channel Sky’.
You see, the LA-based experimental hip-hop trio, composed of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes, have made a name for themselves not only for breaking the conventions of hip-hop by crafting transportive and frequently abrasive soundscapes populated with verbose rapping, but as keen aficionados of a good concept.
And when it comes to concepts, this is a band that commits.
They flexed on their second album, 2016’s ‘Splendor & Misery’, a sci-fi / afrofuturist concept album which was written from the perspective of an artificial intelligence within a cargo ship populated by one human. Then came the 2019-2020 horror diptych ‘There Existed An Addiction To Blood’ and ‘Visions Of Bodies Being Burned’ – their most accomplished meshing of concept and music. Both albums worked as a moody horrorcore ode to the cinematic genre, showcasing clipping. at their most melodic and frenetically inventive.
For their next narrative experiment, they’ve moved away from horror and delved into a cyberpunk world that draws heavy inspiration from William Gibson’s seminal 1984 text “Neuromancer”. In it, industrial beats meet acid techno while 90s electro sounds are repurposed to create a dystopian futurist rave.
That may sound like a blast, and for a while, it is. Standout tracks like ‘Dominator’ and ‘Change The Channel’ recall the likes of Orbital and The Prodigy, while ‘Keep Pushing’ and ‘Mirrorshades Pt.2’ get the balance right between committing to the cyberpunk conceit and just having a bit of fun with it.
Frustratingly, the ominous glitchy soundscapes filled with dial-up modem screeches and some on-the-nose lyricism get old real quick.
The theme of technofacism needs its lexical field, granted, but the repeated mention of implants, surveillance cameras, and synthetic threats verges on conceptual overreach. And while Diggs’ trademark rapid-fire delivery is always a joy to listen to – especially when it’s to the sounds of adrenalized 90s house – you get the impression that ‘Dead Channel Sky’ could have been more rewarding with fewer lines like “’the ingenue was an opp”, “fresh new skin for the avatar” and “virus – kill that shit, kill that shit”.
These aren’t as infantile as the conspiracy theory-inspired drivel Muse pass off for lyrics post-‘The 2nd Law’. But while clipping. leave the adolescent mulings of someone who’s just discovered Orwell for the first time to Matt Bellamy & Co., there’s still something an earnest overload here.
Unlike the far more consistent ‘There Existed An Addiction To Blood’ and ‘Visions Of Bodies Being Burned’, the band’s fifth studio album is far more scattershot. It’s not that the concept gets away from clipping.; rather that their creativity needed more marshalling in order to not become an insistent clutter.
Maybe that’s the point, the ultimate commitment to a main theme: ‘Dead Channel Sky’ needed to sonically mirror the oppressive digital nightmare of modern times. In this respect, clipping.’s consciously chaotic collage works.
However, be warned: unless your ideal night out is heading to an experimental Berlin-based techno club that simultaneously projects clips of Ghost in the Shell, Hackers, Strange Days and Matrix onto the walls, while the MC reminds you that societal collapse is near and that political corruption has graduated to state-sanctioned mind control, this sensory assault may prove – like this sentence – more exhausting than enthralling.
ADVERTISEMENT‘Dead Channel Sky’ is out now.
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