Music

Listen to Death Grips transformed into elevator muzak

by Jeremy Mersereau

Ever wanted to listen to anarchic industrial punk-rap crew Death Grips, but were scared off by Flatlander’s relentless, distorted beats, or Zach Hill’s roll-tide drumming? If only there was some kind of baffling, laughably-advertised software from 2009 that would auto-generate gentle musical accompaniment for MC Ride’s intense polemics, and replace all that violent electronic noise with some syrupy piano and harp.

You can probably tell where this is going. Enter: a copy of Microsoft Songsmith and one enterprising Redditor, who fed MC Ride’s propulsive verses through the cheesy auto-accompaniment program and ended up with Elevator Grips, an album that reduces Death Grips’ music to sounding about as dangerous as the theme to Shining Time Station.

Honestly, that soca-lite version of “Artificial Death In The West” is pretty tight. Elevator Grips doesn’t sound too far off from what Death Grips themselves might come up with, if they hit on the idea of conceptualizing cheesy music as, I don’t know, the soul-destroying essence of late capitalism or something.

According to a note on the Bandcamp page, more downloads will soon become available, so don’t bother purchasing this one… because I’m sure we were all about to pay real world dollars for novelty versions of Death Grips jams.

Now, let the dulcet strains of the Songsmith version of “Ace of Spades” lull you to sleep. Truly, this was Lemmy’s vision all along: