Armand Hammer feat. Benjamin Booker – “Doves”

Photo by Ryosuke Tanzawa

Armand Hammer’s epic run isn’t stopping any time soon. Even these so-called “bonus tracks” from billy woods and Elucid are on a totally different astral plane than everything else happening right now in the worlds of rap and hip-hop, above ground or underground. “Doves” attaches itself to the momentum of their 2023 listmaker, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, which heard the NYC duo building their bars with spikier edges, flows that searched through darkness and never found light, and beats influenced by industrial music and experimental noise. Rightfully so at that, the listen seeks out its own space to further explore their visceral energy across a 9-minute-long sequence co-produced by constant collaborator Kenny Segal and New Orleans soul singer and guitarist Benjamin Booker. Hi appearance casts a haunting pall over its forlorn, post-catastrophe passage rather than a beat composition where detuned guitars and piano as well as ringing ambient waves and distortion feed even harder impact behind woods and Elucid’s prose. The track ends with it being swallowed up in white noise, as if there could be any other end destination from one of Armand Hammer’s strangest trips yet.

Directed by: Ryosuke Tanzawa

Armand Hammer’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is available now on Fat Possum.