Matt's Monthly Music Musings: April 2014: What Constitutes An Album? (Or, A Mini-Review of Live From Death Valley)

Initially, I was going to use this month to talk about recent albums like Elbow's excellent The Take Off and Landing of Everything or personal favorite musician Chad VanGaalen's Shrink Dust. But, then, this album happened.

Well, it didn't recently happen. I just happened to stumble across it after seeing it talked about on forums for a while. Now that I consumed all of Death Grips's albums in record time and consider myself a very avid fan of them (I had a mini-freakout when I found at least one other person who loves them earlier this week), I'm starting to move into their deeper cuts. And this is quite a great find.

But, here's the thing. Those two songs I just linked? They're the entire album. Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I happened to find an "album" shorter than last year's Threat Level Ultra. This one clocks in at a mere three minutes. But, holy hell, what an amazing three minutes those are.

This got me thinking: What amount of music is needed to make up an album? This may seem irrelevant, as I'd consider both Live From Death Valley and Threat Level Ultra as EPs, but they both have a wealth of content in a short amount of time. Even more so than most major albums, I'd argue.

If I had to come up with an answer, I'd say that an album is any collection of music that gives you a good idea of its "feel" or "sound" in its entirety. For Live From Death Valley, in this case, it's a quicker, more punk vibe than Death Grips main stuff, with some rapid-fire drum beats from Zach Hill, more muddled and buried MC Ride lyrics, and some absolutely insane sampling. Seriously, if you thought their sampling of Venus Williams's grunts in "System Blower" was insane, you ain't seen nothin' yet. From what sounds like muffled, out-of-tune horns and Street Fighter "Hadouken" audio clips in "Poser Killer" to the crazy low, bird-like hums in "Fyrd Up," there's a ton of material buried in these songs that I haven't even scratched the surface of yet.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is that, you can debate endlessly over what qualifies as an album all you want, but I just managed to wring out all these words over this three minute EP. Before, I did the same with Threat Level Ultra. I think that's enough evidence for me.