- "It's time to actually be as punk as I say I am," read the June 12th Facebook post revealing Michael Quattlebaum's HIV positive status. The three-sentence statement has since been mythologized as a turning point in Mykki Blanco's career, in a year that already had a few. In the spring, Quattlebaum told the world that he was moving away from music and towards investigative journalism with an interest in queer studies. But when his trip to report on gay life in Nepal was thwarted by a catastrophic earthquake there, his priorities shifted again. Still less interested in furthering his music career, Quattlebaum, with a three-year !K7 deal under his belt, had the idea to support artists around him—specifically, fellow black artists who were in the liminal zone between rap, noise and electronica. So Dogfood Music Group was born, named after his abrasive 2014 mixtape, Gay Dog Food, and carrying its spirit. The label's first release is a compilation called C-ORE, a confrontational mission statement that's admirable even when it stumbles.
Quattlebaum's Mykki Blanco project has walked the line between rap and spoken word, and that's the modus operandi here, too. The music is angry, destructive and sometimes apocalyptic, often dealing with themes of queerness and otherness. The three artists Quattlebaum takes under his wing incorporate industrial, EBM and metal into snarling electronic hybrids. Opening track "This Is Going To Be Disgusting, Unholy & Pleasurable" comes from Violence, AKA Palmtrees Caprisun. He howls vaguely biblical proclamations with the militancy of KMFDM and Front 242, and like those bands, sometimes the schtick comes off self-serious and silly. The other half of the time, however, it sounds fierce and powerful.
Psychoegyptian, an old friend of Quattlebaum's, makes deranged tunes that sound like Mykki Blanco with harsher edges, especially the bilious "LBCD." Each word comes with a spray of saliva, and the beats are chewed-up and distant. Then there's Yves Tumor, who stands out on C-ORE because of his sheer brashness. His "Histrionic" trilogy presents three slabs of sizzling, burnt-out noise that rival Prurient at his nastiest, while "Childish" is a ghostly trap number with eerie, autotuned vocals. It's a rare moment of calm on a record that blusters like a tornado.
C-ORE's unwavering force is part of its power, but it does have moments of relative respite from Mykki Blanco, who included two tracks at the behest of !K7. "Coke White, Starlight" is a highlight in the Blanco rap canon, with a lagging beat that she raps circles around, humourous in one bar and furious the next. ("They don't wanna see a man in a dress succeed," she says wryly in the intro.) The brief "Paw" is more experimental, with chopped-and-diced vocal samples twirling around a loose arpeggio. Her contributions don't exactly fit next to the raw stuff, and they stand out as stronger, more professional tracks. But the compilation was meant to show off hungry new artists who are still wet behind the ears, and it does, pointing to just how open-ended Dogfood Music Group can be. Making good on Quattlebaum's professed interest in radical queer politics, the music on C-ORE feels suitably radical, queer and non-conformist.
Tracklist01. Violence - This Is Going To Be Disgusting, Unholy, And Pleasurable
02. Psychoegyptian - Lbcd
03. Mykki Blanco - Coke White, Starlight
04. Yves Tumor - Histrionic I
05. Psychoegyptian - Don't I Look
06. Yves Tumor - Childish
07. Yves Tumor - Histrionic II
08. Violence - Saturn
09. Yves Tumor - Histrionic III / Skunk of the Earth
10. Mykki Blanco - Paw
11. Violence - Stillborn Song
12. Psychoegyptian - Lullaby feat. Slum Savage