How clipping. Hacked Life’s Glitching Contradictions
[...] Hutson, thankfully now freed from Zoom jail, voices a similar sentiment: “Even though we still think of those novels as science fiction, the cyberpunks did predict a lot of things that we do have now that seemed really futuristic in the fiction of the ‘80s. But to us now, [everything] seems not only oppressive and miserable but also just…boring and everyday. And they kind of don’t work, too—I mean, look at what we’re doing right now! [Video calls] were thought to be some giant science-fictional leap in the early ’90s when people saw them in Back to the Future Part II, and now it’s just this boring thing we have to sit on for work all day.”
The tonal discrepancy between the seductive aesthetics of cyberpunk techno-dystopia and the grimy, bureaucratic actuality of it is one of the driving forces of Dead Channel Sky, which recontextualizes our reality through the lens of ‘80s/‘90s cyberslang (and vice-versa). Cyberpunks imagined a world that, despite still sharing the societal ills of the then-present, had been radically changed—and even made unrecognizable—by technology. (“Dystopian, but, like, badass dystopian,” Diggs jokes). Fear was very much present in the cyberpunk literature that proliferated towards the end of the twenty-first century, but it was outsized, made larger-than-life. No fictional depiction of techno-fascism could ever predict just how banal and mundane it would end up feeling in practice.
Enter clipping. with Dead Channel Sky. Contrary to the futuristic imaginings of past cyberpunk literature, “[t]his album takes place in 2025. It takes place right now, but in a sort of alternate present, a parallel universe that was extrapolated out of the cyberpunk novels—and it looks almost like ours,” Hutson says.
[...] The notion of a cyberpunk album first cropped up in 2018, after the song “Run It” (now on Dead Channel Sky) was made for “a specific cyberpunk-related property that it ended up not getting used for,” Hutson explains. “And we just liked the song! We’ve done that a bunch—where we have a song made basically during another project that we like but doesn’t quite fit, so we end up deciding to put it aside and create a whole new thing around it instead. And we liked “Run It” so much that we started to talk about, like, what would a whole album of this sound be like?” Originally, the album wasn’t even officially considered “cyberpunk”; the closest anyone got to naming the sound was when Snipes named their Dropbox demo folder “Hakker Techno.”
[...] Unlike Splendor & Misery, which told a singular, focused narrative, or the horror records, which operated like self-contained short stories, Dead Channel Sky exists somewhere in between. It’s not a concept album in the traditional sense, but it’s not just a loose collection of songs, either. Instead, it feels more like a curated compilation from a parallel dimension—a mixtape from a future that never happened. “All of these things take place in the same world. All of these “artists” have probably heard of each other, or know each other, or whatever,” Diggs explains. “The idea of this album is that these are all different artists who just sort of happen to have my voice.”
And in further contrast to most previous clipping. records, Diggs’ voice varies greatly from track to track on Dead Channel Sky, often abandoning his signature even-keeled flow for a gravelly growl or a hushed undertone. “There’s a lot more timbral variety vocally on this album—we let ourselves stretch out. Part of it is that we’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ve removed the self from it in so many ways, and initially, that less emotive delivery felt like part of what clipping. was about, but it’s just become less about that over time,” Diggs explains. “This has become the major musical output for all of us, as opposed to a side project, and so it has to hold all of the other shit I want to do too, because I’m not making other rap songs! And since the album is like a mixtape, including more vocal variety lent itself to it really well.”
[...] “Code” wasn’t built around its sample, either; in fact, Diggs’ original idea for the track had little to do with the documentary excerpts now placed throughout the song. “I wanted to get people that we knew from various different regions all over the world to send us messages using the most local slang they could muster, and then we’d have Baseck or somebody scratch together really intricate DJ-premier style cuts for the thing,” he says. “But that was a lot of legwork that didn’t get done…uh, well, by me!”
[...] I did manage to solve at least one “mystery” during my chat with the band: the song cited in the press release that seemed to be missing from the final record (“Knocking it Back”) was literally just an earlier title for “Scams,” so for any Redditors reading this, there’s no need to rubber bands out for that one. (“We change song titles a lot,” Snipes says. “Like, a lot, a lot—to the point where I can’t keep track of them.”) For instance, 2020’s “Eaten Alive” was apparently first called “Rusty Tool Shed,” and then “got leveled up to Swamp Witch,” Diggs says. So, for what it’s worth, don’t call out song titles at clipping. concerts; according to Diggs, “Somebody has to say the first line, or I’m never going to get there!”)
[...] “With this album, we also wanted to draw connections between ‘kinds’ of music that are much more separated now than they were originally. Like, in the ‘80s, hip-hop just wasn’t as rigid in terms of sub-genre. There was fast hip-hop, acid house, Brit-hop and futuristic hip-hop; there were samples, drum machines, and sampled drums—but it was all sort of just one thing, and we’ve always liked the chaotic, free feeling of that,” Hutson says. “And we’ve always done this, right? That was our thing with experimental music, too; we wanted to draw connections between techniques of experimental music and the techniques hip hop producers use. Really, we try not to ever think that we’re doing anything new. We try to think that we are making new combinations.”
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