In The Headphones: clipping., SPELLLING, Daniel Carter & Ayumi Ishito, Eiko Ishibashi
Record Room: Sunday, 1/12
To whom it may interest,
Still catching my breath after 2024’s discography has finally settled in my mind and been offered room in my library, the first full business week of the year has brought with it some new sounds that I’m excited about.
clipping.
Dead Channel Sky
Sub Pop
Scheduled to release: 3/15/25
Following the brilliant two-album nod to horror with 2019’s There Existed An Addiction To Blood and 2020’s Visions Of Bodies Being Burned, the tech-fuck hip-hop trio known as clipping. has returned with a Williams of the Gibson and Burroughs variety paranoiac speed dream called “Change The Channel”, which brought to mind the digital hardcore sounds of The Prodigy and the Wax Trax! roster. The multisyllabic lucidity with which vocalist Daveed Diggs is typically known for is adjusted to suit hardcore’s shouty modes of lyrical conveyance, the sounds of hurried automated industry supplanting punk rock’s otherwise crunchy and untutored aggression.
This track is the latest to surface from clipping.’s upcoming album, Dead Channel Sky, which is releasing 3/15/24 via Sub Pop Records.
Links:
clipping. — Official / Instagram / Bluesky / X (Twitter) / Bandcamp
Sub Pop Records — Official / Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Sub Pop:
Dead Channel Sky is Clipping’s new Cyberpunk and Hip Hop project and the follow-up to the acclaimed Horrorcore Series There Existed an Addiction to Blood and Visions of Bodies Being Burned
On March 14th, 2025, Sub Pop will release Clipping’s sixth album, Dead Channel Sky, the group’s long-awaited Cyberpunk and Hip Hop project. The album features the previously released tracks “Run It” and “Keep Pushing,” along with the highlights “Welcome Home Warrior (Feat. Aesop Rock),” “Code,” and today’s offering,“Change the Channel.”
Dead Channel Sky also features guest appearances from Nels Cline, Bitpanic, Tia Nomore, and Sub Pop labelmates Cartel Madras, and was produced and mixed by Clipping and Steve Kaplan and mastered by Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering. Dead Channel Sky follows the release of the group’s acclaimed horrorcore series Visions of Bodies Being Burned (2020) and There Existed an Addiction to Blood (2019), also available from Sub Pop.
In the coming days,Clipping will also share the intense official video for “Change the Channel” directed by Merawi Gerima.
Clipping are also announcing headlining North American tour dates in support of Dead Channel Sky, which begins March 14th with a hometown show in Los Angeles at The Echoplex and May 3rd in Sacramento at Goldfield. Clipping will appear at Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival on Saturday, March 29th, 2025. Please find a complete list of dates below.Fri. Mar. 14 - Los Angeles, CA - The Echoplex
Sat. Mar. 15 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
Sat. Mar. 29 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival
Thu. Apr. 24 - Phoenix, AZ - Rebel Lounge
Sat. Apr. 26 - Salt Lake City, UT - Metro Music Hall
Sun. Apr. 27 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
Tue. Apr. 29 - Portland, OR - Holocene
Wed. Apr. 30 - Seattle, WA - Neumos
Thu. May 01 - Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw
Sat. May 03 - Sacramento, CA - GoldfieldDead Channel Sky will be available on CD/2xLP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com (US) and Mega Mart 2 (UK/EU) and your local record store will receive the limited Loser edition vinyl on Emerald/Forest Green Ghostly Mashup (North America) and Neon Pink (UK/Europe). There is also a Silver vinyl edition available from independent retailer Rough Trade in the US and UK (All limited edition vinyl colors are available while stock lasts!). The Dead Channel Sky album art was created by Designers Republic.
About Clipping’s Dead Channel Sky By Roy Christopher:
Because of their mix of hellified gangster shit and progressive compositions, I once jokingly called Clipping “Deathrow Tull.” Well, it’s not a joke anymore. While their last few projects have been record-long concepts like the classic prog rock of old, Dead Channel Sky is mixtape-like, a carefully curated collection of songs in which every track is a love letter to a possible present. Like a mashup of distinct elements, the overall concept is there, but the result is brief glimpses into a world rather than an overview of it. It sounds crisp and classic at the same time. When something strikes us as retrospective and futuristic at the same time, it’s a reminder of how slipshod our present moment truly is.
In my book Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, I draw what Walter Benjamin would call correspondences between early hip-hop culture and cyberpunk literature, the binary stars of the solar system at the end of the millennium. I exploit their similarities to illustrate how the cultural practices of hip-hop have informed the cultural practices of the now. Hip-hop was borne of the post-apocalyptic scene in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. Its repurposing of outmoded technology, the hand-styled hieroglyphic screennames on every colorfast surface, and the gyrating dance moves—an entire culture forged from the freshest of what was available at hand—mirrors the post-apocalyptic techno-scrounge of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Rudy Rucker’s Software, and other early works by the contributors to Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology (Pat Cadigan, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, and Sterling himself, among others). Add the leather-clad mohawks of Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force or Rammellzee’s B-boy battle armor and a blend of the two comes further into focus.
Juxtaposing high-tech, corporate command-and-control systems (the “cyber”) with the lo-fi, D.I.Y. underground (the “punk”), cyberpunk proper starts in 1982 and ends in 1999, from Blade Runner to The Matrix. There are works before and works since that embody the visions and values of cyberpunk, but these dates act as rough parameters for their assimilation into the larger social sphere, for the time it took cyberpunk to become cyberculture. In the meantime, hip-hop matured, went through its Golden Era, then melted into further forms. Over the same decades, it went from “Planet Rock” to “Bring da Ruckus” to “Hard Knock Life,” from Fab 5 Freddy to Public Enemy to Missy Elliott, from Run-DMC to N.W.A. to Notorious B.I.G. While other genres flirted with it, hip-hop was fickle and fey. Any tryst with the odd bedfellow was a one-night stand at best. Rap and rock birthed mutant offspring maligned by most, and hip-hop’s relations with electronica rarely fared any better.
Those twin suns—hip-hop and cyberpunk—both rose in the 1970s and warmed the wider world during the 1980s and 1990s. What if someone explicitly merged them into one set and sound? After all, both movements are the result of hacking the haunted leftovers of a war-torn culture that’s long since moved on.
On Dead Channel Sky, Clipping texture-map the twin histories of hip-hop and cyberpunk onto an alternate present where Rammellzee and Bambaataa are the superheroes of old; where Cybotron and Mantronix are the reigning legends; where Egyptian Lover and Freestyle are debated endlessly, and Ultramag and Public Enemy are the undeniable forefathers; where the lost movements of the 1980s and the 1990s are still happening: rave, trip-hop, hip-house, acid house, drum & bass, big beat—the detritus of a different timeline, the survivors of armed audio warfare. That war at thirty-three and a third, its atrocities imprinted upon yet another generation, what someone once called, “the presence of the significance of things” without a hint of ambiguity.
Clipping are very story-oriented. They deal in ontology and narrative as much as beats and rhymes. They’ve been approaching making music like writing science fiction since the band’s conception. Two of their records have been nominated for Hugo Awards (one of science fiction’s top literary prizes), and a novella spun-off from their music was nominated for a third. As Clipping, they’ve collaborated with as many of their fellow experimental noise artists as they have fellow rappers. Here those co-conspirators include everyone from the guitarist Nels Cline on the outro to “Dodger” (titled “Malleus”) to their labelmates Cartel Madras on “Mirrorshades, pt. 2,” rapper/actor Tia Nomore on “Scams,” as well the wordy wordsmith Aesop Rock on “Welcome Home Warrior.” Diggs is known for intricate lyrics and rapid-fire rapping, and the tracks that Snipes and Hutson build in the background are no less complex. On “Code,” they sample narrated memories from the Afrofuturist documentary The Last Angel of History; and on “Dominator,” they repurpose a line from the classic Dutch hardcore track “Dominator” by Human Resource. All of the above serves to give us a glimpse of an adjacent possible present, where hip-hop and cyberpunk are one culture.
Binary stars are often perceived as one object when viewed with the naked eye. Like those twin sun systems, it’ll take some special equipment and some discerning attention to pull the stars apart on this record. As Diggs barks on the fire-starting “Change the Channel”: Everything is very important!
SPELLLING
Portrait Of My Heart
Sacred Bones Records
Scheduled to release: 3/28/25
SPELLLING (the sobriquet of singer / songwriter Chrystia Cabral) announced a new album coming out on 3/28/24 titled, Portrait Of My Heart. The title track has emerged with a video and Cabral’s tilted approach to pop expression continues to push a distinct and lush narrative. Anthemic and vulnerable, “Portrait Of My Heart” has an accessibility to it that may draw a larger audience, which would fulfill the single’s task. Curiosity with regard to how Cabral’s ear for melody and knack for instrumental arrangement carries through the rest of the album, though, is high.
Portrait Of My Heart is available for preorder at Sacred Bones Records.
SPELLLING’s 2023 album, SPELLLING & The Mystery School was reviewed at No Ripcord.
Links:
SPELLLING — Official / Bandcamp
Sacred Bones Records — Official / Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Stereo Sanctity & Sacred Bones Records:
SPELLLING (aka Chrystia Cabral) announces her new album, Portrait of My Heart, out March 28th via Sacred Bones, and shares a video for the lead single, “Portrait of My Heart.”
On Cabral’s fourth album as SPELLLING, the Bay Area artist transforms her acclaimed avant-pop project into a mirror, as her lyrics for 'Portrait of My Heart' tackle love, intimacy, anxiety, and alienation, trading the allegorical approach of much of her previous work for something she says is “pointed into my human heart.” The result is the sharpest, most direct SPELLLING album to date, and its immediacy emphasises the essential mutability of Cabral’s practice. From the dark minimalism of her earliest music to the lavishly orchestrated prog-pop of 2021’s The Turning Wheel to this newly energetic expression of her creative spirit, Cabral has proved again and again that SPELLLING can be whatever she needs it to be.
In what became the genesis for the rest of "Portrait of My Heart", the title track, with its propulsive drum groove and anthemic chorus of “I don’t belong here,” is a potent embodiment of the album’s turn toward emotional directness. Once Cabral came up with the main melody, she found herself using the song as a tool to work through the anxiety she sometimes struggles with as a performer: “If this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and that I’ve chosen this life path, why does it cause me so much discomfort all the time?” She continues: “The song conceptually is dealing with the sort of mental torment of being obsessed with making art and it consuming you. Choosing art over everything…over love…over the love of life and dealing with the consequences of this.”
“When the lyrics for the title track came together, it really started to morph everything in this more energetic direction, instead of this more whimsical landscape that I’ve worked with before. It started to become more driven, higher energy, more focused,” Cabral explains. “And I have a big affection for it because of that. I love that it feels like it withstood transformation, which is something I always want to aspire to with things that I make. I want them to have this sense of timelessness. It could exist like this, or like that, or like this, but this is the one for right now.”
The accompanying video was directed by Ambar Navarro and explores the obsession that comes with making art and when you're deep in the hole of creativity.
Before undertaking her tour for The Turning Wheel, Cabral assembled a band including core members Wyatt Overson (guitar), Patrick Shelley (drums), and Giulio Xavier Cetto (bass), and their ongoing collaboration has uncovered new contours of the SPELLLING sound. Cabral still writes and demos in isolation, but presenting the songs for Portrait of My Heart to her bandmates, named the Mystery School, helped her discover their eventual lively, organic forms. So did working with a trio of producers—The Turning Wheel mixing engineer Drew Vandenberg, SZA collaborator Rob Bisel, and Yves Tumor producer Psymun.
However, Portrait of My Heart is also shaped significantly by its guest musicians. The original plan was to have a featured artist on every track; that idea was scrapped when Cabral realized some of the material was too personal to put in someone else’s mouth. But a few key features help shape the album. Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi) sings on “Mount Analogue,” the first true duet in the SPELLLING discography. Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory turns Cabral’s original piano demo for “Alibi” into the crunchy, riff-y version that appears on the record, while Zulu’s Braxton Marcellous gives “Drain” its sludgy heft. These parts aren’t just incorporated seamlessly into the album; they feel like an integral part of its universe.
Ultimately, though, Portrait of My Heart is nobody’s record but Cabral’s. She fearlessly draws the curtain back on parts of herself that she’s never included in SPELLLING before—her feelings of being an outsider, her overly guarded nature, the way she can throw herself recklessly into intimate relationships and then cool on them just as quickly. “It’s very much an open diary of all those sensations,” she says. There’s a real generosity in that, as listeners may recognise themselves in Portrait of My Heart in a way they haven’t on past albums.
SPELLLING will be touring the US this coming spring - details below. European dates to follow.
Daniel Carter
&
Ayumi Ishito
Endless Season
577 Records
Scheduled to release: 2/28/25
An arpeggiated backdrop of glockenspiel-like beats set-up maestro Daniel Carter’s light saxophone phrasing for “Dreamy Contagion,” the new single from Carter and collaborator / multi-instrumentalist Ayumi Ishito. Their upcoming new album, Endless Season, is scheduled to release on 2/28/25 via 577 Records. A sturdy marriage of synthesized sounds and brass, “Dreamy Contagion”’s modern anchor is pleasantly busy, a mid-tempo pace and robotic low end that Carter and Ishito both ably breathe through, lengths that quiver or sing before a spoken passage commences, the contents stated with an automaton’s lack of emotion.
Links:
Daniel Carter — Bandcamp
577 Records — Official / Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of 577 Records:
Endless Season: Legendary Maestro Daniel Carter and Flourishing Saxist Ayumi Ishito Join Forces in Dreamy Debut Album That Redefines ‘Auditory Escape’
The ultimate cosmic music has arrived! Prepare to be gently led into an invigorating electronic dreamscape by a skillfully creative partnership. Despite collaborating since 2016, Endless Season is the first duo album from 577 Records Co-Creator (and legendary maestro), Daniel Carter, and rising tenor saxist Ayumi Ishito.
Originally recorded as an acoustic set, the plan changed when Carter encouraged Ishito to explore audio production. Before they knew it, she had shaped beats and sounds that perfectly complemented his creativity, forming a tranquil, melodic dialogue. His delightful expressions become animated through his trumpet, saxophones, clarinet, flute, piano, and poems. When they meet Ayumi’s courage, playfulness, and head-turning musical gifts in this dimension, blissful ambiance and sounds as deep as Mother Nature are born. It’s why she so aptly suggested Endless Season for the title of this release.
Daniel Carter is the philosopher behind grassroots label, 577 Records. He is world-renowned for his multi-instrumentalist talents and awe-inspiring musical innovation. Ayumi Ishito is considered one of the best young, dynamic, creative musicians in New York’s avant-garde scene. Many agree she represents the future of this genre with her incredible means of weaving together sound and imagination.
Their six-track duo debut will be available on CD and digital download starting February 28, 2025!
Eiko Ishibashi
Antigone
Drag City
Scheduled to release: 3/28/25
I became aware of Eiko Ishibashi last year when I listened to her score for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film, Evil Does Not Exist, which was issued by Drag City. By contrast, “Coma,” the new single from Ishibashi’s upcoming new album, Antigone, is a vocal pop track set to a delicate stride as droning strands of accordion sound float in and out of audibility. The arrangement, psych-leaning and erratic at times, is both gorgeous and captivating.
Antigone is out via Drag City on 3/28/25.
Links:
Eiko Ishibashi — Official / Bandcamp
Drag City — Official / Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Drag City:
Antigone is Eiko Ishibashi’s latest musical masterwork, one rife with chilling speculations for the future calling from inside her own head. Out March 28th, it marks Eiko’s first “traditional” songcraft album — that is, with lyrics and singing — since 2018’s acclaimed The Dream My Bones Dream, arriving on the heels of her celebrated soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films.
Within Antigone, Eiko teases out images from a dystopia not unlike the one we’ve already got. Hers is suffused with a ‘scene missing’ quality, its continuity laced with sudden, odd details sprung like traps from within her music’s smooth, expansive sound. Like these lines from the lead single, “Coma”:
Covered with ashes, long winter,
Spring is yet to come
Candle and soap
Hold onto them tight and oppose gravityThis is your grid, watched by the security camera
You still have some time to be a survivor in Eden.Interlocking her new songs in seamless long-play flow with the compositional ambitions of her acclaimed soundtrack work, Eiko’s expressions are epic and intimate. Her early song-based albums — 2013’s sci-fi-themed Imitation of Lifeand 2014’s poptastic Car and Freezer — suggested an album-oriented direction; 2018’s conceptually-united The Dream My Bones Dream allowed Eiko to tell stories closer to home. Her instrumental works since then — 2022’s For McCoy (Black Truffle) and her celebrated soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films, Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist — have seen her diversity of musical ideas operating in an increasingly integrated long-form presentation. With these transformative encounters in hand, Eiko and her band — drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, Norwegian accordionist Kalle Moberg, ermhoi on backing vocals, Joe Talia playing percussion, and Jim O’Rourke on Bass VI, synths, etc. — bring a wide array of sounds and moods to Antigone, referencing pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a seamless flow.
Antigone is a bittersweet look at our already-alternate reality, Eiko’s jarringly personal vision glimpsed through a latticework of ambitious compositions and on-lock production techniques. At last!
Following the album’s March 28th release date, Eiko will perform at New York’s Knockdown Center for the 2025 edition of Outline.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
