Death Grips
No Love Deep Web

I was still musically a troglodyte when by mistake a cassette of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” ended up in my hands. This and more can happen when you're looking for unorthodox material in your uncle's closet. It was love at first listen. It was like a drug for me. I couldn't find a label to stick on that alien music.

It took time to understand that I didn't need one. From there a world opened up, and gradually I drifted away, lost myself looking for in every new discovery that spark that had shaken me so much. You never rediscover the thrill of the first time: life can be cruel. Leaving behind me, for years, that first love, I drowned that sort of sacred veneration in oblivion. Then, exactly a year ago, I made this bitter discovery: first love will always come back to find you and will always find a way to break your heart. It will show you that what you remembered as an angelic figure actually had smeared lipstick, rough manners, would have enjoyed making love with the worst scum. This is how I came to listen to “I want it I need it (Death beate)”, a track by the (for me unknown) Death Grips. Was it really “Interstellar Overdrive” as I knew it? What happened to it? Why did it allow those dirty hands to touch it? Why was it so in tune with those unsavory types? Why did “Astronomy Domine” let itself be convinced to participate in a threesome? Seeing your first love so corrupted, even though it has long been transfigured, annihilates you. And it knows how to make you mean. Since then, an instinctive hatred for this trio from Sacramento grew in me.

But, as in a textbook, the more the hatred for the rival grows, the more the latter seems to shine with a blinding light. So, like a voyeur, I spied on them, trying to understand in what way they were better than me. I began to follow their traces and then came “The Money Store”, just last April. I was hoping to see them sink, lose their shine, find any excuse to expose them. What were they doing if not swearing, vomiting hatred for others, desecrating what pure you would like to hold tight? Fundamentally great bastards. Yet my hatred did nothing but mask an admiration that, in any way, I tried to drown. And now comes the coup de grâce, the final blow that should leave my body lying on the ground.

First of October: “No Love Deep Web” is available in streaming as a protest against the label that had so far produced this trio. Initially, I had trivial hopes: after an album like “The Money Store” it is impossible for these thugs to have managed the feat, at such a short distance, of repeating the levels reached in that work. In the first seconds of listening I am immediately silenced. Relentless bass, bordering on disturbing, break my legs as soon as “Come up and get me” announces its insane progression. It is still them, in a state of grace that illuminates their path, sending me adrift. Those harsh rhymes reminded me of their defiant nature, of their little consideration of my hatred. But at that point my hatred was no longer catalogable, I was pervaded by a perverse attraction. The sinister cadence of “No Love” seemed to invite me to surrender, to an unconditional love, to let myself be swallowed without reservations. “Lock your Doors” seemed to proclaim their imminent arrival: they would come to drag me away, accompanied by that crowd of voices that like a sound carpet elevated Burnett's rapping. I was in the grip of a Catullian “Odi et amo”. But I couldn't let myself be taken alive, not by that foul horde. That smell of decay seemed almost transmuted into shiny consumer goods, like black latex for boots and whips. Then comes “Deep Web”. It's like a battering ram aimed at my chest. But I want to resist. They had taken what was most angelic in me, but I would not let myself be swallowed. With “Pop” I am confused, ascending sounds, intertwined like a spiral, which become more and more celestial; only to suddenly throw you into the abyss. I reach the last track, out of a sort of macabre curiosity I can't press the stop button. “Artificial Death in the West” sounds like a sentence. But I do not understand it. At this point, I don't know what to do. I don't even want to know what that black bar on the cover censors. I play “I want it I need it” again, but this time I do it looking straight in the face of my enemy. I no longer recognize any of the protagonists. I no longer understand which side of the barricade I am on.