“With the link drilled into my skull, even thought will be on lease”, raps self-styled cyborg MC Franco Franco in his native Italian on “Pitstop 2024”. The same technological paranoia, writes Alastair Shuttleworth in The Wire 501, haunts every corner of Faith Elsewhere, his bracing industrial rap album with producer Kinlaw. Darting through a noirish world of trap beats, woozy dub and noise blasts, Franco Franco’s dextrous, pitchshifted vocals rail against our tightening digital dystopia. As he explains, however, “We are into the core of it, and there is no opting out.”

Formed in Bristol, the duo belong to a new wave of experimentalists linked to local crew/label Avon Terror Corps (ATC), whose disciples range from improvising vocalist Dali de Saint Paul to digital radio station NOODS. ATC might be considered a spiritual successor to Young Echo (see The Wire 355), a circle including Kahn and Vessel, whose darkly alien music electrified early 2010s Bristol and inspired Kinlaw’s own beat making.

The following mix, they say, offers “celestial musings, cyber-noir, ritual, trappist beats from [our] own pockets and the pockets of [our] close friends, as well as a few hat tips to those that we love and those that have passed.”

Tracklist

Cathédrale Saint-Julien du Mans x Introduction From DBL
Kinlaw & Franco Franco “Live at cave12 12/11/23 Free Palestina”
1127 “Se7naaa”
Sacred Lodge “Unlodged (Child Remix)”
Felinto “Fiesta Punk 2”
YOKEL unknown
SHBASH + Dj Gawad “Komester”
Weird Weather “The Drunken Monk”
Mert Seger “Wa-Sho”
SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL “Keep Shining”
High Density Gathering “Trying To Survive (Desperate Ballad)”
HLM38 “Negligence Affective”
Mario Mario x Della Turre “Attaccati Al Mic Tipo Borraccia 2014”
Lil B “The Age Of Information”
Colle Der Fomento “Sorridi”
Intel Mercenary x Steven Marksbury unknown
Pietro Pietra Editore “PCI Beat”
Chief Keef “Save Me”
YOKEL x Franco Franco unknown
Vasco Rossi “(per quello che ho da fare) Faccio Il Militare”
Neurosis “Cleanse III (live)”
Suicide “Half Alive”
Norman Church “Though seest the maystrie of a human hand”
Kinlaw & Franco Franco “Wave Led (Eks remix)”
Operation Ego Death ft Steven Marksbury unknown
Rammellzee “Crayzay”
D’Angelo & The Vanguard “Betray My Heart”

Kinlaw & Franco Franco speak to Alastair Shuttleworth about about their work in The Wire 501. Pick up a copy of the issue in our online shop. Subscribers can read the full interview in the digital library.