DJ Muggs The Black Goat
Dies Occidentum

DJ Muggs The Black Goat ‎– Dies Occidendum (Sacred Bones Records 2021)

Genre: Hip Hop

The record producer Lawrence Muggeroud, known as DJ Muggs, is a versatile musician who has collaborated with major artists like Beastie Boys, Tricky, Janet Jackson, and many others over the years. However, he is best remembered for bringing to life, in the early 90s, the seminal rap group Cypress Hill. Louis Freese and Senen Reyes joined him in this first adventure where he narrates his wild adolescence, dangerously lived on the streets of Cypress Ave, in South Gate, Los Angeles. The hill of cypresses, Cypress Hill, indeed.

Since 1997, he has been releasing solo albums and singles, exploring and consistently trying to raise the bar in rap/hip-hop music. DIES OCCIDENDUM is his latest work, and it seems particularly interesting to me right from the low medieval-style cover, almost as if to foretell to the now lost civilization, a return to tragic times marked by misery and misfortune. The album consists of ten perfectly blended instrumental tracks that mix dark hip-hop, ambient, and psych rock with modern elements of trap in the best possible way, a truly unique stylistic variety. Dark and unsettling, dominated by bass-heavy synthesizers and syncopated drums. The painful choruses of “The Chosen One” bounded by horrorcore-style piano loops alternate with voices and references to images from old horror films. The entire album sounds like a 45 rpm record played at 33.

"Nigrum Mortem" has a more distorted rhythm as it incorporates the sound of doom stoner guitars and an organ base intertwined with a muted-sounding free jazz drum line. "Transmogrification," which closes the album, is largely characterized by the chirping of crickets and the crackling of something burning, probably wood in a fireplace of an ancient manor.

There's a bit of Burial and a bit of DJ Shadow in Muggs' style, the same kind of energy; and if we manage to put aside some prejudices (I say this for myself as well) towards certain types of music, we can comfortably and often place DIES OCCIDENDUM on the turntable, in the CD player, on the iPod, or any other music player you fancy. It's worth it.