Today, I Wrote Nothing, billy woods’ forthcoming fifth solo LP, borrows its title from a collection of short stories by Daniil Kharms, a long-deceased Russian writer, whose works went mostly unpublished during his lifetime and who met his untimely fate, staving to death during the siege of Leningrad, in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet hospital. If, as we might suspect, the album took more than titular inspiration from the anthology, this perhaps offers some insight into why woods chose “Warmachines” for its first single, or at least into the song itself. A quick shuffling of wartime vignettes and soldierly observations, “Warmachines” seems to simultaneously speak to the weapons of modern warfare (the missiles and drones) and the people who, whether threatened by or wielding these weapons, become machine-like themselves.
Whatever the writer’s intent, “Warmachines” provides plenty to look forward to from Today, I Wrote Nothing, which drops March 31 on CD and 2LP.
• billy woods: https://www.facebook.com/williambodega
• Backwoodz Studioz: http://backwoodzstudioz.com