Music production
fromPitchfork
1 week agoRikki G. Godd: Cost of Living
Colin Blanton, as Rikki G. Godd, creates intense industrial music characterized by improvisation and experimental textures in his album Cost of Living.
The album is described as the legendary avant-garde industrial outfit's "most pop outing" to date, as hinted by the lead single "Allgorhythm," which features Ghanaian singer Wiyaala and a notable co-production credit from pop auteur Richard X. Building from a humorous spoken-word passage from frontman Milan Fras, the song kicks into a club-ready, dance-pop beat that occasionally drops out for more sardonic lines from Fras, such as the chorus refrain: "Slaves to the algorithm."
Alex Ian Smith, the primary force behind the New York-based project Railings, sounds nothing like Cobain, but his voice induces similarly vicarious listening. In " Breaking the Bong," the opening track of Railings' 2017 album, ) (, he darts from guttural highs to velvety lows and then breaks into an effortlessly clear falsetto. It warrants the most preposterous-sounding comparisons: Prince meets David Lee Roth; David Thomas with the lung capacity of Benny "The Voice" Mardones.
CONFLICT DLC was produced by STINT, mixed by Drew Fulk (Knocked Loose) and Lars Stalfors. The follow-up to 2023's RAT WARS furthers HEALTH's "dark, unflinching worldview" and is described as an "album of anger, fear, and catharsis built for the end times" [per a report on Revolver]. That can certainly be gleamed from some of the track titles: "TRASH DECADE," "YOU DIED," "DON'T KILL YOURSELF," "WASTED YEARS," etc.