Death Grips - The Money Store : CASSETTE

Import Cassette A confusing band from the get-go, Death Grips' first release, Exmilitary, was maybe a mixtape, maybe a debut, or maybe both, but there's little doubt that the freely downloadable monster was a headline release in the underground hip-hop renaissance of 2011. From Lil B to Shabazz Palaces, it was a great time to right click, but the 2012 season often involved entering credit card information -- not just to some file-hosting service but to an old-school record label, which in the case of the game-changing The Money Store, is shockingly the Sony-owned Epic. That this restless blast of paranoid avant-rap was released by an imprint that was also committed to signing the winner of the X-Factor recalls a time when you could follow Throbbing Gristle releases all the way up to Warner Bros, but none of this would matter if the music wasn't amazing itself, and it is. Here, the opening “Get Got” combines glitch, African rhythms, and a swirling keyboard riff right out of dream pop, a