High Wolf to reissue the Black Zone Myth Chant mixtape on vinyl

Back in 2011, the globettroting French experimentalist High Wolf released a pseudo-hip-hop experiment under the name of Black Zone Myth Chant (a.k.a. Black Zone M.C.), the infamous but great Straight Cassette mixtape. In it he downplayed the exotic/spiritual facets of his High Wolf work and zoned into hip-hop, an interest not made explicit in any of his music up to that point. The mixtape featured some fat-but-trippy beats paired with the closest thing to anti-flow you’re likely to ever hear: vocal mumbling distorted to molasses. The mixtape was originally released digitally and on cassette by Winged Sun, High Wolf’s own imprint. Now it’s coming out on vinyl, thanks to Laitdbac Records, who will reissue the album on a limited-edition 12-inch format.

However, despite its dominating cavernous babbling, Black Zone Myth Chant is not just an exploration of heavily sedated flow, but actually an electronic-manipulation-of-the-human-voice project close to Steve Reich’s “Come Out” piece, Meredith Monk, or Julianna Barwick gone gangsta. The album was sadly obscured in its day by the almost simultaneous release of Death Grips’ debut mixtape and Shabazz Palaces’ Black Up, both adventurous detours for hip-hop in their own right. It didn’t help that most people thought this was a humorous aside, a footnote in High Wolf’s body of work — a hypothesis possible to sustain on the inclination for languorous beats and 800%-slower samples, displayed by a branch of post-vaporwave electronic music. But trust us, this is the kind of obscure record that’s certain to fill revisionist “Best Albums of the 2010s” lists in decades to come. I can almost see the blurb: “The missing link between DJ Screw and Dean Blunt.” So here’s your chance to stay ahead of the curve. Some of the mixtape’s highlights are the deliriously catchy synthwork in “Triangle COP” and the Berlin-school trance-pummeling of “My Glory Will Be to Sing Eternal Law.”

The Black Zone Myth Chant reissue will include three “Bonus Beats”; three new tracks that are more rhythmic than the original material — and thus recall High Wolf’s usual neo-kosmische tribalism — but just as good. You can give the album a preview listen over at the Chocolate Grinder. The album is out digitally right now, and will be available on vinyl in September 25.

Black Zone Myth Chant tracklisting:

01. White Voice
02. Hit By an Invisible Arrow
03. Triangle COP
04. My Glory Will Be to Sing Eternal Law
05. Centre of the Universe
06. Sleeping with TV On
07. Bonus Beat 1
08. Bonus Beat 2
09. Bonus Beat 3

• High Wolf: http://highwolf.bandcamp.com
• Laitdbac: http://www.laitdbac.com

More about: Black Zone Myth Chant, High Wolf