Not only is Already Dead right at its very own tenth
anniversary, but they’ve also branched out into tape club membership. It
feels like the label is its very own institution at this point, one that’s in
perpetual motion, like if you left it alone it would still continue to churn
out tape releases, regardless of whether or not an actual human was involved in
the behind-the-scenes or not (and there is, so don’t worry). Wondering also if
there’s a human behind Mu Vonz or if Mu Vonz is its own mechanism riding out
eternity and broadcasting what it broadcasts. Again, there is, so don’t worry.
I ask that because even though there’s a hip hop
element to Mu Vonz, the vocals still sound as if they’re samples of
conversations or speeches or poetry from long ago. Mu Vonz cloaks his voice in
reverb and haze, which peers out from slowly swirling synthetic atmospheres
that also help to cloak whatever it is Mu Vonz is up to. An experimental
musician first and foremost, Mu Vonz approaches genre as if there’s a rift in
the universe through which he travels, space and time bending around him in
relation to the cosmos, slowing it all down to a subatomic crawl till he’s out
the other end, and the sounds are back to a somewhat normal frequency but
stretched and smeared and deliberate.
If this is hip hop, then it’s hip hop for an alien
civilization. Or maybe it traveled back in time, as Trouble Land sounds like it’s piping in through an ancient wireless
radio. Either way, it’s certainly not of the present.
Tape exclusively available through the Already Dead
Tape Club!
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