Night Slugs oddball Beau Thigpen (a.k.a. Helix) brings us a straight up, repetitive, relentlessly filthy, and violent club track. What I love about Helix is the obsessive quality of his music: the same sound over and over yet there is still an intense forward motion. “diss trak” goes for more tangible content than his past work, which uses almost no vocal samples. Here, Helix draws from society’s preconceived notions of hip-hop (gun shots, anti feminist slurs, groups of guys yelling) and uses these elements so much that the violence becomes almost soothing and cyclical, or perhaps just numbing. The best part of it, though, is that I am probably reading too much into the poetry and politics of this track; Helix’s primary reason for producing this track (or “diss trak” I guess…) was so that it could bang in clubs. “And is that my iPhone ringing in the background? Oh, no, just the music…” Maybe it’s presumptuous of me to call “diss trak” a surreal American dreamscape, but just listen a couple times in a row… I’m snuggling in its icy, dangerous embrace.
• Helix: https://soundcloud.com/1helix
• Night Slugs: http://nightslugs.net
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