Catching M1s in a Church Basement with Armand Hammer

billy woods and his duo with Elucid give up one of the year’s most gripping rap albums

September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 Ted Miller 0 Comments 2023, Armand Hammer, Backwoodz Studioz, Billy Woods, Elucid, Fat Possum Records, Maps, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips

Armand Hammer (Image: Fat Possum Records)

I write about billy woods so much because there’s so much to write about billy woods.

More literally, Armand Hammer’s new We Buy Diabetic Test Strips marks his eighth album, be it solo or with rhyming partner Elucid, since 2019, two of which I named my favorite album of the year at the time: Hiding Places with Kenny Segal’s scrambled indie-dystopian production à la El-P, and last year’s astonishing Aethiopes, which Preservation fitted with a gripping combo of Tom Waits-ish junkyard percussion clatter and samples in the ballpark of Ethiopian jazz. In descending order, Haram, Church, Shrines and Terror Management all blew me away too, though my two favorites took somewhat longer to grasp and rewarded me deeper as a result.

If this data is any indication, then you can expect We Buy Diabetic Test Strips and billy’s much-ballyhooed Segal reunion Maps from May near the top of that ranking if you ask me in six months. Neither were what I expected, which I should learn to expect by now. Maps was so friendly in its slightly-more-tuneful approach (Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring a/k/a/ Hemlock Ernest, croons the hook to single “FaceTime”) that I found it insufficiently devoid of acid-tongued quotables while the rest of the music-reviewing community took the opportunity to overwhelm it with praise to make up for allowing the above-named to survive solely on word-of-mouth.

Pitchfork didn’t just grant woods his first Best New Music for any project, but at 8.9 there hasn’t been a higher score on the site all year other than for an(other) archival Arthur Russell dig. (Coming closest: Wednesday and Noname albums I love at 8.8, Caroline Polachek and Amaarae albums I like at 8.7, along with an Anohni and the Johnsons album I probably won’t.)

Eventually Maps kicked in, mostly thanks to its numerous, Action Bronson-esque namechecks of delicious food (brown butter skate wing, conch fritters, deep-fried pork belly with fresh mint and Thai basil, lemongrass oxtail, chili oil — and I’m not counting the obligatory NY rap namedrop “Kennedy Fried” or the 5’3 expat who’s “thick as congee”) and a second half that’s more like it (the queasy, Hiding Places-esque “Hangman,” Danny Brown-augmented “Year Zero,” the staggered Aesop Rock boom-bap “Waiting Around”). Ultimately the accessibility I scoffed at seemed to humanize a half-impenetrable artist for everyone else and localized his overactive brain.

So while 2022’s “Remorseless” gave my post-Trump/COVID/Roe depression a dead-inside solidarity hug (“There’s a freedom in realizing it’s not going to get better”), maybe “I will not be at soundcheck” (in favor of “the local greasy spoon or Sichuan establishment”) was an uplifting, mildest-ever-YOLO that more people needed in the wake of experiencing those same traumas. And why shouldn’t an artist behind maybe eight albums I love in just five years enjoy himself on one of those victory lap thingies?

VIDEO: Armand Hammer feat. Pink Siifu “Trauma Mic”

I bristled at Test Strips’ rollout singles for the opposite reason: too far in the opposite direction. Loved the look though; the “Trauma Mic” (there’s a title) video put woods and Elucid in neon-orange Hazmat vests and made them forklift-certified, a literal industrial depiction to match its harshly Einsturzende Neubauten-inflicted beat. The JPEGMAFIA-helmed “Woke Up and Asked Siri How I’m Going to Die” probably remains the most aimless thing on the record despite JPEG’s wildly alive Scaring the Hoes with Danny Brown being the most invigorating and inventive rap album I’ve heard all year. If a relatively avant-garde act was trying to shake a newly world-famous rep, you couldn’t do better (worse?) than those.

But I’ve come to trust my favorite artist of the 2020s and settle into a rhythm at this point; ordered both CDs early just in case I learn to love them, because I spent an embarrassing amount of money on Aethiopes learning that the hard way. And the loving process is well underway, with the sledgehammer soundscapes vying on album between live-band jazz more R.A.P. Ferreira than To Pimp a Butterfly, especially on the vibrating-vibraphone swing of “I Keep a Mirror in My Pocket” and the gorgeous, flute-driven “Total Recall” finding the median between “Fu-Gee-La” and Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War.” El-P himself donates a burbling-creeper beat so hypnotically addictive to “The Gods Must Be Crazy” that it might’ve actually made RTJ4 even better.

Armand Hammer We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, Fat Possum Records 2023

Elucid matches woods bar for sour bar in wreckage you can still pull smirkers from: “what doesn’t kill you makes you blacker,” “that security deposit ain’t coming back.” On the only showcase where you’ll hear both Junglepussy and Soul Glo, “passed my own crime bill” finds its way to “looking like Westside Gunn after you squeal” over high-grade Arkestra noise (really wish Greg Tate was alive to comment), and woods sticks to his Maps tour journaling (“Guestlist only got me mezzanine, VIP is ruthless” meets “Walked out of Denny’s like it was Ruth Chris”). The deceptively sensuous whisper of JP is always a hoot; “The scent of Junglepussy is in the air” she intones like this is the back half of Stankonia or something. On the locked-in “Empire BLVD” the warlike, fantasmal imagery of Aethiopes and Church prevails: “Catching M1s in the rec room of a church basement.”

If you’ve ever seen a “we buy diabetic test strips” sign in your neighborhood, there will be plenty you recognize here and still plenty to teach you, about gnarled sonic environments and the fast-paced details of Brooklyn living. Or as my man told the NYT in a lovely Marcus J. Moore profile this week: “That feeling of, ‘there’s a road behind everything that’s in front of you’ — people’s hidden lies and hidden networks and economies,” woods said. “Some people are seeing this and know exactly what it is, right? Everyone else’s eye glazes over it. The sign is just a mystery you don’t really know about. Because it’s not about you.”