Wriggle

Album review

Originally released in 2016, clipping.'s Wriggle EP consisted of material that wasn't finished in time for inclusion on the band's 2014 full-length CLPPNG. Like that album, the tracks stick to the group's self-imposed limitations, with all of Daveed Diggs' lyrics delivered in second person (as a reaction to "I" being the most commonly used word in hip-hop) and much of the music built from samples of real-world objects rather than regular musical instruments, in the tradition of musique concrète. On "Shooter," Diggs plays a word association game nodding to the "hashtag rap" cadences popular in rap during the 2010s, and the gun-heavy lyrics are fittingly accompanied by a beat weaved from the sounds of 15 firearms shot by the group members themselves. There's an element of playfulness to the song, particularly the rhyme schemes, which keeps it from sounding deadly serious, yet its dryness and lack of boasting doesn't make it seem like it's truly glorifying gun violence. The EP's title track unexpectedly turns "Wriggle Like a Fucking Eel" by British power electronics originators Whitehouse into a high-speed electro chase, with acid techno synth lines coursing around diced samples of William Bennett's agitated shouting and abrasive, searing feedback. "Hot Fuck No Love" is a similar combination of noise and ghettotech, with turbulent jungle breakbeats bubbling underneath, along with unabashedly filthy lyrics and guest verses from Cakes da Killa and Maxi Wild. "Our Time" is clipping.'s attempt at an R&B song, lacing lyrics about intimacy and heartbreak with sizzling distortion. Five years after Wriggle's initial release, the band updated the EP, adding a verse by Debby Friday to the industrial tunnel stormer "Back Up," also featuring SB the Moor. Several dance-centric remixes are also included, with innovative drum'n'bass producer Homemade Weapons' deadly, minimalist take on "Wriggle" being the best of the bunch. Avant-footwork producer Jana Rush isolates two lyrical fragments from "Shooter" and makes it as sexual as "Hot Fuck No Love," and Cardopusher turns "Wriggle" into a Nitzer Ebb-style industrial club anthem. Especially in its updated state, Wriggle feels like more of a deconstruction of clipping.'s influences and techniques than their more conceptual full-lengths, highlighting their skills at inventive genre fusions and audacious sonic engineering.

© Paul Simpson /TiVo