Death Grips aren’t above ditching highly-anticipated festival appearances. They didn’t lose sleep after sabotaging their own record deal, and they sure didn’t mind selling thousands of tickets for concerts they never intended on playing in the first place. By any reasonable standard, this band doesn’t give a shit. So it’s been surprising that, in recent months, Death Grips have actually shown generosity to their fans, punctuating the interim between proper albums with low-stakes instrumental work.
In the opening weeks of 2015, the band preceded Jenny Death with a full-length “soundtrack“ titled Fashion Week. At roughly 48 minutes (the second-longest runtime in Death Grips’ catalog after Exmilitary), it certainly had the bulk of a typical album, but the absence of frontman MC Ride, their furious heart and anguished soul, ultimately rendered Fashion Week unnecessary. And now, just prior to the release of their next album, Bottomless Pit, comes another unusual instrumental release: “Interview 2016,” a 32-minute clip that depicts the band playing for actor/TV host Matthew Hoffman in a darkened room before sitting down for a conversation. Had the band not legitimized the soundtrack by uploading it to SoundCloud (and later, other streaming sites), the release would probably be written off as a curio, rather than an entry in the Death Grips canon. Now that it’s isolated, we can see Interview 2016 for what really is: an instrumental EP that abandons Fashion Week’s uneventful expanses for a cramped space that shows Death Grips in confrontational mode.
As with the last soundtrack, MC Ride’s absence diminishes Interview’s intensity, but its brevity gives them space to compensate, narrowing the focus for a sharper sound. Other than the ambient interlude “Interview E,” the EP mainly sees Zach Hill and Andy Morin doubling down on Jenny Death’s unhinged hardcore with a proliferation of over-driven drums and basslines that seem as if they’re fired from from a Gatling gun. And even though there’s not a clear human voice in the mix (save from a quick “Hi Everybody!” in “Interview F”), the instruments do plenty of talking. Listen closely to the slippery percussive sample smattered across “Interview C,” or the barking undercurrent of “Interview F:” the effects themselves are undeniably alien, but they still manage to communicate.
The dynamic and varied arrangements keep the EP from slipping into a formlessness; “Interview B,” the standout of the set, periodically diverts to an eerie, faintly Eastern chorus that pops open suddenly like a trap-door into the void. And lest the din grow dull on punishing cuts like “Interview A” and “Interview D,“ Hill and Morin temper the racket ever-so-slightly through silvery, distant-sounding refrains that comfort even as they contort, like possessed library music. They even transmogrify Hill’s drum fills into an arpeggiating melody on “Interview C.”
While MC Ride might be perceived as the alpha and omega of Death Grips, Interview 2016 underscores that Hill and Morin are quite formidable on their own. This release is far more interesting than Fashion Week, a full-length twice its size, and it suggests that Death Grips' strength as an instrumental entity shouldn’t be underestimated.
