Dead Channel Sky is fast and it bangs. It’s the sound of clipping. firing on all cylinders, fusing grime and decay with energy and motion. From the opening minutes, this record hurtles with jaw-dropping momentum. It’s abrasive, chaotic body music that makes you want to jump, drive too fast, or commit crimes (in a video game). It’s technically hip-hop, but this one isn’t built on trap or drill. Dead Channel Sky is far more indebted to British rave culture - Big beat, acid techno, Prodigy-style mayhem - than anything going on in contemporary US rap, and that’s what makes it so thrilling. Here’s a crew from California quoting the UK with reverence and precision. You can call it experimental if you want, but for those raised on Music for the Jilted Generation, this sounds oddly familiar.

The production is wild but calculated. There’s big gulfs of space where the beat cuts out and comes crashing back in, and a lot of these songs aren’t built like conventional tracks. Through all of it, Daveed Diggs tears through the mic like a man possessed, with lightning-fast delivery, channeling the best of OutKast and Ludacris, but his subject is hyper-digitization, police brutality, shattered cities, and corporate rot. This is the world you’re living in now. There’s no off switch.

It’s not dystopian in theory, it’s now. It’s the energy of a society running on caffeine, adverts, trauma, and rage, and yet it’s a total blast. It’s deeply political, but not preachy. It’s experimental, but not alienating. It’s a hip-hop record - but it’s also a ruthless rave record.

Intro hits you with a string of percussive bars layered over a screeching dial-up modem tone, a throwback that immediately sets the albums tone: retro-future, aggressive, and distinctly analogue in feel. Then Dominator kicks in like a rocket, Daveed rapping in double-time, syllables ricocheting with machine-gun precision before the beat drops, and suddenly you’re in a rave with the bass rattling your teeth. It’s a hell of a way to start. Mirror Shades Pt. 2 is a total house banger, echoing Felix da Housecat. Dodger is completely deranged, with drums mangled beyond recognition, sounding like they’ve been hijacked from an early Igorrr or Venetian Snares track, and it’s just one more layer in the sonic collage. What Dead Channel Sky does so well is quote styles that used to be considered experimental, but with the familiarity of someone who’s grown up absorbing them. It’s not novelty, it’s vocabulary. Scams sounds the most like contemporary hip-hop - low-end swagger, menace, and crucially: no auto-tune. Not a scrap of it. In a genre that’s been smothered by glossy vocal FX for the better part of a decade, clipping.s’s dry delivery feels like a breath of fresh, dusty air.

It’s hard to pin Dead Channel Sky down to a single mood, because it makes you want to dance and fight at the same time. It’s angry, celebratory, exhausting and exhilarating. Clattering breakbeats, lightning-fast bars, head-spinning production, this is music for the city at night, neon-lit and slick with rain, paranoid but absolutely alive. Dead Channel Sky feels like watching Sin City on fast-forward with the bass turned up. It’s a smart, chaotic, stylish, and thrilling hip-hop record, but it’s also a rave record that grabs you by the collar and screams: you’re living in the future - now try to keep up!