JENNY DEATH… not yet – Download DEATH GRIPS’ “Fashion Week” (instrumentals)

Back in early June, “now-defunkt” Sacramento hardcore, experimental, electro-industrial punk-rap outfit, Death Grips released “Niggas On The Moon,” with the explanation that the 8 track effort (featuring vocals by Bjork on every one of them) was actually just the first half of what would be their upcoming double album, The Powers That B.  The release came in the form of a free digital download arriving without prior warning via their Facebook page, a distribution model long established through their previous works.  Along with the download came the following announcement:

this is “niggas on the moon”, featuring björk on all 8 tracks.
it is the first installment of our new double album, “the powers that b”, due out later this year on Harvest/Third Worlds Records.
the second disc is titled “jenny death”.
peace & love
have a sad cum bb
-us

A month later, the members announced their dissolution of the project by posting a photograph of a rough looking paper napkin with their intentions to disband scrawled on it in ballpoint.  Since then, fans have waited — mostly, not-so patiently — for the second half of the new double-LP to drop, and as the end of the year approached, both speculation and anxiety continued to grow exponentially.  In fact, at this point, Death Grips is strongly approaching the ranks of PHISH, as far as playing into the speculation of their fanbase is concerned and, like the jamband/prankster/unorthodox-marketing legends, it’s becoming harder and harder to discern where Death Grips hijinks begins, or when they’re simply fueling, playing off, and acting in response to their own fanbase’s obsessive speculation.  Whereas sites like PhantasyTour.com play home to a lot of rampant speculation and theories from “phans” of the boys from Vermont, the subreddit r/DeathGrips is a prime example of people losing their goddamn minds trying to crack the puzzles being thrown at them from the Sac Town crew, which remains active, despite their claims of being officially inactive.

One common theory is that the group never actually “broke up” at all — the contacts for booking, press, and the band directly are still featured on their website, along with a section for tour dates (it’s empty).  Another one involves the Twitter account @bbpoltergeist which would, most likely otherwise, be presumed a completely”fake” Death Grips account, if it wasn’t for an August 9th tweet of an image that appears to be the same CGI basketball arena that appeared exactly 3 months later in the “Inanimate Sensation” video — still the only official Jenny Death material that we’ve heard up to this point.  Eventually, a pre-order for The Powers That B compact disc appeared on Amazon Japan, complete with a tracklist, and later on Amazon US — with the tracklist since removed — both with a February release dates (Feb 25th in Japan / Feb 10th in the US) and without the cover art, which we’ve already been shown, featured on either of them.  In fact, when the cover art was first released on the Facebook page on October 10th, it was accompanied with this message…

Our new double album “The Powers That B” is now complete.
This is the album cover.
Digital and physical release dates coming soon.

Some guessed the album would be released on the anniversary of the project first coming into form (Dec. 21st) and then Zach Hill‘s birthday (Dec. 28th) a week later.  Still… nothing…  But, to be fair, Death Grips wasn’t technically, entirely dishonest about releasing Jenny Death before the end of the year; The Chinese New Year (aka the “lunar new year”) isn’t until February 19th, which would actually align with speculations around the potential February release.  That is to say there wasn’t anything… until tonight.

Again, thanks to both the Facebook pages of drummer/producer, Zach Hill and that of Death Grips, as well as producer, Andy Morin‘s twitter account, we’ve be given the following new release listed as “Death Grips – Fashion Week (Instrumentals) Full-Length Soundtrack” for free.

HERE’s a direct link to the DOWNLOAD.
And HERE’S ANOTHER.

There are 2 things that I noticed immediately about this crazy batch of electro-hardcore bangers.  The first is that it’s an “instrumental” release, meaning that the comforting aggressive barks of vocalist, Stefan “MC Ride” Burnett would be absent.  And the second?  The tracks actually spell out “JENNY DEATH WHEN,” a common phrase/hashtag that’s been utilized increasingly throughout the previous months by those who continue to wait this thing out.  There’s nothing vague about that jab, even if nothing else that they are presenting at this point is very direct.

Here’s what we do know… the woman pictured seated on the Fashion Week cover art (the header image of this post), is Sua Yoo, the artist who created the illustration that appeared on the groups only major label album to date, The Money Store.  Also of note is one particular “Jennifer Death” illustration that Yoo posted on instagram back in July, before shutting down her account.  By doing a google reverse image search of the cover art, you can track it to similar pictures located on the Yelp page for the Silver Legacy Resort Casino in Reno.  Next to one particular image, it reads “this chair is huge” and in another one, it even shows an adult couple sharing the seat with the man’s legs unable to reach the ground, implying that Yoo may in fact have been photoshopped into the image accompanying the download (of course, the chair is large in this photo, as well, and may just be a perspective issue).  Other images look like they might be connected to the Jenny Death cover art that we’ve been shown.  Right now, folks are trying to crack this riddle like mad, and attempting to align the suspected Jenny Death release dates with fashion week.  Then again, Silver Legacy Resort also hosts live music.

Another possibility being tossed around, due to the fact that Fashion Week is referred to as a “soundtrack,” relates to the fact that Hill claimed that he was working on a film as a partial excuse for not participating in their summer European tour back in 2013.

Zach is currently writing, directing and soundtracking an original feature film. The movie is of his own creation, fictionally based and not related to the group. The film will be soundtracked with all new Death Grips music. He is also working on and recording the new Death Grips album at the moment. Death Grips is Stefan. Zach. Andy. Zach is very much still in Death Grips.

-Death Grips

If I remember correctly, there was even some temporary speculation that Robert Pattinson of sparkle-skin Twilight fame was supposed to appear in it.  When the limited edition vinyl of the Government Plates LP was bought up the minute they hit shelves on Black Friday/Record Store Day, the credits revealed that the actor actually contributed guitar to the track “Birds,” the video for which features the same coffin tattoo on Yoo‘s thighs in the chair photo.  Another crazy thing is that a reddit user by the name of Esoteriix posted a download link for 8 tracks that he said he accidentally stumbled across on Morin‘s website and downloaded, before they were swiftly removed.  He also claimed that there were other videos and images that he didn’t get in time.  This was 4 months ago and most people accused him of trolling, but now, some of those tracks, apparently, do appear on Fashion Week.

But fuck this wormhole… there’s a lot more to it and I’ve got shit to do.  If you jokers want to deal with this, feel free to speculate in the comment section below, get all Carmen San Diego with this shit on your own, and/or dink around on reddit or 4Chan.  Things are getting weirder by the moment…

UPDATE:

Literally, 2-minutes ago, this was posted from the @bbpoltergeist account

https://twitter.com/bbpoltergiest/status/552038443123884033

These huge inflatable pills sure look exactly like the same stickers that were inserted into the initial vinyl releases (as well as the advanced CD that I received) for The Money Store, to promote the then-upcoming release of No Love Deep Web.  Apparently, they’ve also thrown these things around at shows.  If this shit’s legit, then you have to give a bit more merit to previous tweets from this account, like the one from September 4th, which read “everyone thinks we broke up but we didn’t” or the one from December 16th which read “we’re going on tour.”  And then, of course, there’s the September 21st tweet: “troll so hard.”  These fucking guys, already…