For Clipping.’s third album for Sub Pop they have created a ‘transmutation of horrorcore’, stark vivid and terrifying in it’s detail. Fighting Boredom have been listening, read what we thought below.
Clipping. is hard core, it’s the sound of a nightmare, the sound of dying, bleeding out, being shot, hunted down, running for your life, terrified cold and alone. The raps are straightforward graphic stories of gang life, death, danger and coldness. The urgency of the tracks makes it feel like you are there. The sound behind the vocal is dense and suffocating. There are swathes of electronic music, clear hard beats and the industrial weirdness from Clipping. gone by. They establish very quickly that nothing is safe and you are going to fail, fall and die. They mix in soul vocals but they are not soothing or smooth, they are just another way to tell us what’s going on in this world of guns and blood.
It is the best rap album I have heard for a long long time. There’s no boasting here, there’s no posturing that doesn’t end in the inevitable finishing blow. The music descends into beautiful static and you think it’s broken. It’s not, you are, you dead. The sound of emptiness and lack of hope. This is harsh and this is harsh noise. It ends, the silence hits you and then it’s back to bass, strange noises and a vital, hard voice, talking about that Gangsta shit. This isn’t Gangsta Rap. This is just rap, not holding back and not playing for the crowd.
The further into the album you get, the harder it is to stop listening, the odd strange interludes draw you in more and the clear vocal and strange perfectly fitting backing to the songs just gets more and more intense, making you listen and absorb it all. Then to finish off, the last eighteen minutes of the album are the sounds of a piano burning. Death of music, cremation of art, or a fire to wipe away the sounds of the album away. Only Clipping. knows.
