clipping.: “It’s violent music, but fans are cherishing going to a dark place in this exuberant, sonically masterful way”

If categorising clipping.’s music is difficult, it might be partly because the band themselves admit that they sometimes get lost in the shifting sands of what they create.

“It turns out I change a lot of things after the album comes out,” admits Daveed Diggs, the group’s frontman. “There are a lot of kids at the shows who know all the words to the songs and I know that they are rapping different things than I am. I’m like, ‘Who’s right?’ and they’re almost certainly right,” he laughs.

“These days, I’ll ask for a rehearsal track when we know we’re gonna add something into the set and I’ll read the lyrics, but I’m already trying not to look at them because I’m just trying to get into it,” he adds. Sometimes, though, there isn’t a hard copy to fall back on. “There have been a couple of instances where I lost my notes,” Daveed admits, “and I’ve had to go on [lyrics site] Genius and thought, fucking, ‘I know that’s not right!’”

The reason their live sets are front of mind is that Kerrang! is speaking to them backstage at London’s KOKO venue, which tonight will host the biggest headline show of their career. Daveed is joined by clipping.’s co-founders and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, along with touring member and frequent collaborator Sharon Udoh.

In a couple of hours’ time, they’ll collectively conduct a set that sparks mosh-pits as well as choral sing-alongs, with Daveed’s quickfire flow intertwined with beats so heavy that they pulse up through the venue’s floorboards and make your shoelaces twitch like antenna picking up pirate radio from another dimension.

We’re introduced to the quartet in a windowless, dimly-lit dressing room below ground level, which at first glance mimics one of the darkened hideaways in which the characters they bring to life often lurk.

New record Dead Channel Sky Plus is an expanded version of this year’s Dead Channel Sky, their fifth studio album in a storied career that includes two nominations for the prestigious sci-fi and fantasy Hugo Awards, since their formation in 2009. clipping. began with no such expectations and as “a weird little side-project”, as Jonathan puts it.

Add to this that they’ve done it all in-between Daveed’s star rising as an actor on stage and screen, with roles in Hamilton, Blindspotting and the TV adaptation of Snowpiercer all competing for space in his schedule. The latter has the most obvious crossover with clipping.’s high-concept worlds, particularly on Dead Channel Sky Plus, which he describes as “a mixtape of an alternate present, like the present that the cyberpunk fiction of the ’80s and ’90s imagined”.

“Everything bleeds into everything,” Daveed says, when pushed to describe his balancing act and creative process. “The writing would bleed over into my acting more, though. I’d be shooting a scene then go back to my chair and write lyrics for clipping. songs.”

Another curio of their existence is that they’re signed to Sub Pop, the label best known as a stable for grunge but that still clearly carries with it a counter-culture spirit that makes clipping. a good, if unlikely, fit for its roster. Even if it didn’t help them recruit their diverse cast of collaborators for a variety of weird and wonderful guest spots.

“One of the fantasies for when we got on a label was, ‘Oh, they’ll be really helpful with that…’ but not with rappers [when you’re] on Sub Pop!” Daveed laughs. “‘You don’t know Gangsta Boo, either, huh? Okay…’”

“It wasn’t like there was a label that does industrial rap music that we could find,” adds William. “We felt out on our own, making stuff that we didn’t have a community for. We’d stumbled into this type of music that we had come up with by combining the three of our musical backgrounds into one thing.

“We also had no idea that anyone would ever hear us, or care!”

“There’s a tension in the music between a sense of escape and a sense of being present,” says Sharon. “It’s really unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It is very, very violent music, but I think what some fans are really cherishing is this dark place that you can go to in this exuberant, sonically masterful way.”

“Sub Pop have always let us do whatever we want,” continues Daveed. “And a lot of things about this band exist because of how it was introduced. It wasn’t this massive thing and also came along after a time when that was really possible.

“If we had been this successful at 22, it would’ve have been a nightmare, a total shitshow!”

Speaking of shitshows, our conversation takes place days after talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was unceremoniously yanked from the air, the latest high-profile cancellation (albeit temporary, in this case) that seemed to move the United States’ political climate closer to a dystopia described in a clipping. song.

“We’re in a fascist state,” says Daveed, who’s appeared as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. “We’ll continue to see more of it until we figure out how to actively fight back against it.

“Some of the gear we want for this tour isn’t shipping to the States anymore, because people are starting to boycott the U.S., and that’s what should happen. If you don’t like what’s going on there, don’t support it. I don’t like what’s going on there.”

He does, however, retain a note of optimism.

“Artists create things that move differently, that travel through cultural cachet, as opposed to the traditional channels,” he says. “We’ve seen this every time this [censorship] has popped up. The usefulness of art becomes really palpable. I think we’re entering one of those times.”

With that in mind, clipping.’s notes from the underground – which on Dead Channel Sky Plus utilise a sonic blade to carve out stories about inequality and civil unrest – sound more essential now than ever.

Dead Channel Sky Plus is out now on Sub Pop

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