Death Grips- "Retrograde"


Experimental hip hop trio Death Grips haven’t been around for very long, but between last year’s still-awesome Exmilitary and the series of great tracks they have released throughout the past few weeks, their life has hardly been a quiet one. Most recently, the group launched a video that, in true Death Grips fashion, defies conventions without missing a beat. By filling one page with 109 separate YouTube videos, each of which contains a short loop of the band performing, Death Grips allows the user to trigger a virtually infinite number of possible combinations, ultimately creating something that they call an “infinite GIF sampler.” This is all in anticipation of the two albums the outfit will be releasing this year, the first of which, titled The Money Store, is looking at an April 24 release by way of Epic Records.

Death Grips had this to say on the project:

“We created a deconstructive musical piece called RETROGRADE, conceptualized and executed by Death Grips and coded by Jacob Ciocci (Extreme Animals). It’s an infinite GIF sampler. There are 109 loops that you can start and stop at will. Depending on the number of loops you trigger and the way you time them, an infinite number of visual/audio combinations are possible.

It’s inspired by Mercury being in retrograde right now (until April 4, 2012). The piece is an expression of the infinite/fractal nature of every moment in time. When creating music, we are sticking/unsticking ourselves to endless time snakes—the idea that the smallest/tiniest of moments contains everything in the universe—Progress/becoming UNSTUCK.

The piece itself is a musical instrument. Our real performances are disassembled, mangled, and thrown back together in a renegade way. We recommend the ‘PLAY ALL’ button. This is exactly how we create our art. It’s dirty, chaotic, and constantly on the brink of catastrophic failure. We encourage others to deconstruct our ideas and this piece in similar ways. We are excited about people creating their own content out of this device. It’s not about the machine itself but the process of exploration.”

Read an interview with the group about the video over at the Creators Project website, and give the experiment a spin here.

A word of advice: despite what the above excerpt says, do NOT press the “PLAY ALL” button until you have your volume turned down to a safe level, especially if you’re wearing headphones (I learned this the hard way.)

What do you think?

Show comments / Leave a comment