BAKUDI SCREAM, the pseudonym used by performer and composer Rohan Chander, released his second studio album Prey last month in collaboration with Alarm Will Sound. Chander uses a large host of sampled material from hardcore, film, hip hop, and beyond to create an ever changing soundscape as a backdrop for songs, sung in a mixture of English, Hindi, and Tamil, that explore the rise of the right in South Asia and juxtaposes the traditions of sounds of disparate cultures. At its best, Prey uses an interesting collection of music to create a work that’s greater than the sum of its parts, but the album’s primary problem is that merely putting things next to each doesn’t necessarily communicate meaning.
The album’s opening, “still loading…” is characterized by flurries of synthesized static fighting for attention with lush string arrangements, punctuated by single notes in the piano. While this is really the only time throughout the album that uses this sort of texture, the strings are filtered in a way that makes them seem distant, almost fake. In an album primarily based on samples, it seems to be a poignant introduction to turn one of Prey’s only instances of entirely non-sampled music, into a simulation of a sample. This is one of Chander’s most successful moments, especially in terms of the album’s relationship to its thesis; a recording turns into a sample turns into a sample turns into a sample.
Immediately dispelling any notion that Prey might be an album full of beautiful strings enmeshed with noisy electronics, “PROTECTION” is straight out of the black metal / shoegaze tradition of the past ten years. 3 ½ minutes of constant blast beats and atmospheric guitars with screams in the background are suddenly electronically manipulated and then cut off by about a minute of motor-like electronics.
If the thesis of Prey is to create a primarily sampled music that integrates and juxtaposes the aesthetics of many disparate musical cultures, then “you on, god?” is the most pure distillation of the album’s guiding principle. A flute is interrupted by a percussion hit, answered by an orchestra sample, which is answered by guitar, answered by more percussion, and so on. Frenetic moments are answered by ambience, and at times they somehow go together. This is all leading to a texture that starts at about 1:57 – drum loops behind a sampled choir. This continues with occasional interruptions until the end.
When a listener hears a sample that is too recognizable, it can be hard to separate their mental image of the original from the sampled creation. Such is the case with “Greed/Masters,” which uses manipulated vocal samples from Fugazi’s “Greed” as the basis for most of the track. It creates an interesting texture, but the problem of using a recognizable sample is that the thrill of the original track can overshadow the new texture. It can be an exciting idea in and of itself, but in this context the repeated and constant focus on the original sample is more distracting than it is additive.
About halfway through, the Fugazi sample gives way to a sample from “Vaathi Raid” from the Tamil-language film Master (2021). Although the musical context as a whole is really interesting and is one of those exciting, “How did he think of that?” moments, the two samples aren’t really making a larger point other than them both being broadly about standing up to different forms of large scale socio-political structures.
The next five tracks create a sort of conceptual suite, with each of them really focusing on one kind of texture, juxtaposed with a vocalist or a sample from an entirely different tradition. “BrownApe.wmd” wouldn’t be out of place on a Fugazi album. A slow, dub style groove, serves as a backdrop for various improvisations and noisy experimentations, before being overtaken by one singer repeating, “and a brown ape clinking a heavy chain.” “The Conquest,” engages more with triphop and shoegaze against a bevy of samples and a set of lyrics in Hindi. “HE WHO IS PUNISHED CAN DANCE IN HELL” engages with trap and noise rock. “My Preyers (after Keiichi)” is primarily ambient with spoken word and choir samples, while “subjugation technology” uses a drum ostinato underneath a guitar that almost feels electronic.
The album’s closer, “What Have I Done?” uses a sample from The Matrix as a jumping off point to an ever expanding soundscape of strings, guitars, and vocals. Of course we’re speaking about an album that uses samples and collages in the context of hip hop, and in this case uses a sample from a film about a simulation. But just using the sample doesn’t connotate much more than letting the listener know that there is indeed a connection here. This moment is indicative of a trend across the album to point out a conceptual link without exploring the idea further.
On an aesthetic level, PREY! is highly functional and interesting to listen to. Its use of samples co-mingled with live and manipulated sounds is both exciting and full of unexpected, but catchy, soundscapes. But it’s also an album whose press release touts a larger point about the interaction of different musical diasporas to the extent that they relate to and influence broader social and political culture.
On a purely musical level, BAKUDI SCREAM’s real triumph is the very careful manipulation of an overwhelming amount of musical material, and being able to convince the listener that all these things can and should go together. But nothing is ever purely musical. The work we create doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and is always on some level, in dialogue with the cultures that surround it. BAKUDI SCREAM knows this intimately and has made a point to create an album around this idea. Unfortunately, while highly listenable, Prey doesn’t always deliver on the promise it creates.
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