![]() Their 2017 album, Heavy Black Heart, whose title was inspired by an emoji, touches on the joy and fear of aging: a timely subject as its creators hit their 30s. Eventually, death's dynamic shroud outgrew vaporwave’s roots and aimed to create music with more sincerity and romanticism, and less reliance on samples. Very few of their peers were sampling modern music, but the group turned their curiosity toward contemporary K-pop, stretching vocals into longing, melancholy croons caged by metallic clangs and molten synths. Their 2015 album, I’ll Try Living Like This, established death’s dynamic shroud as standouts in the vaporwave community. In the group’s first year, they released 11 mixtapes of painstakingly curated material in which samples of TV shows, Top 40 radio hits, and video game sound effects crash, corrode, and meld into each other, taking on a life of their own. Each member brings a specialty: Rankin’s innate bass-wrangling ability, Honors’ pop sensibility, and Webster’s experimental songwriting structure all keep each other in balance. As self-described “composition nerds,” they pulled from other inspirations too, including the Beatles’ chord progressions, Nine Inch Nails’ eerie soundscapes, Pink Floyd’s psychedelia, the epic Final Fantasy RPG series, and anime. ![]() The genre’s sample-heavy approach provided the group a playground to contort existing sounds to their maximalist limits. As Webster puts it, “It helps all of us create a more varied and exciting project if we don't care about who's taking the credit for doing what.” The new album-an LP accompanied by two 12" EPs and a companion animation film-will be not only be their first for 100% Electronica, but their first fully collaborative set since 2017.įounded in 2014, death’s dynamic shroud was initially a vaporwave project. Though Webster, Honors, and Rankin share the moniker, they often make music separately or in pairs, mixing and matching combinations to create different outcomes. “We always want to do something that's not like anything anyone's ever heard before.”ĭeath’s dynamic shroud thrive on the unconventional. “Even with standard pop arrangements within the album, there will be these breakdowns inside of them as if someone spilled acid on the track and it's just kind of melting on the table,” says Webster. “But with big bursts of color.” Lead single “Judgment Bolt,” for example, braids fiery explosions of heavy, grinding bass with a distorted, sand-whipped string interlude that they compare to wandering the desert. “It’s black and chrome, and sterile in an untouched way,” Honors explains. The vastness of death’s dynamic shroud’s wide-eyed world-building is evident in their upcoming album, which they describe in characteristically visual and abstracted terms. You feel a sense of new adventure, with a curious pang of déjà vu. Full of richly textured layers of sound-ranging from chopped vocal samples and gleaming synths to spectral drums and ringing video game effects-their music draws unsuspecting listeners into a place that’s simultaneously murky and neon, somber and playful. Consequently, their art feels less like songs and more like lovingly crafted immersive worlds. ![]() "Like when I was a child," says member Tech Honors, "I was obsessed with wanting to know what was on the other side of the flagpole at the end of a Mario level." Honors, James Webster, and Keith Rankin have long made music that explores that sense of wonderment-emotional, experimental electronic work that fill gaps between the known and unknown. Death's dynamic shroud have always been curious about what we can't see.
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