HIGH PRAISE; Superdestroyer (Lonely Ghost Records) “Home Movies Are Time Travel”

Existing in that weird plane between “DIY” (whatever that means anymore), emo (same comment), punk, indie, lofi-beats hip-hop, 80’s hardcore revival.. and probably literally any other genre you’d like to hear and assign to them yourself, Superdestroyer is one of the most intriguing and truly creative artists we here at LSPR have come across. Not just creative in a “wow, this song is really catchy” way, but creative in the way that makes you think “wow, every time I talk to this guy I start rethink the way I look at music as a whole”. His newest album “Home Movies Are Time Travel” is what we’ll be digging into today.

Personally I would describe this music (and some of the other flagship artists on the Lonely Ghost Records roster) as “post-genre”. Meaning the essence is more important than the substance. Tracks like “I Don’t Even Know Who I’m Supposed to Be Anymore” could easily be written off as emo, but the atmosphere alone from the minimalist opening bass hook offers more insight to the Superdestroyer universe than most DIY bands are able to in the entirety of their career. I’ve never smoked weed, but people say when you do the familiar becomes completely new, a rediscovery of the mundane, everything around you just feels.. different, novel. So many of Superdestroyer’s sonic choices feel this way, and as a fellow musician and listener that’s genuinely exciting.

Since he and I first teamed up through LSPR, I’ve learned a lot from Superdestroyer about the changing state of DIY, a term back when I was in my prime meant “this dude can let you play his basement Tuesday night if you need a show”, but which now feels more like a social currency. Songs like “Satoshi Nakamoto: The Dankest Mystery on the Internet” should be in contention for song of the year in the DIY world, but you’ll likely not see it come up anywhere else other than here just because Superdestroyer doesn’t subscribe to the idea of music as a quest for clout. Regardless, he’s found a way to take the urgency of modern rap (the hook/verse/hook structure) with the musicality of DIY punk, and package into about a minute’s worth of music. Its an adrenaline rush yet also perplexingly chill, and again, these moments of almost novel re-invention are what Superdestoryer is all about.

Maybe it’s a curation issue, or a bandwidth problem for most young peoples’ attention spans, but records with this much of a foreshadowing on where the future of underground music is heading.. well, maybe shouldn’t be underground, or at least shouldn’t be going undiscovered. “Home Movies Are Time Travel” clocks in at a whopping 12 minutes, so if you can’t keep a sustained focus on these 9 tracks for that long maybe you need to practice mindfulness haha.. but sincerely, this is worth your time and once you really discover what’s going on with the musical universe Superdestoryer has built it will likely be on your personal year end favorites list.