Giant Claw

Last updated
Giant Claw
Birth nameKeith Rankin
Born United States
Origin Columbus, Ohio [1]
Genres Electronic, vaporwave, footwork, psychedelia [1]
Occupation(s)Musician, record producer, visual artist
Years active2010–present
Labels
Website www.keithrankinart.com

Keith Rankin is an American electronic musician and visual artist who records under the alias Giant Claw, a largely vaporwave and psychedelic music project. [2] [3] He is known for the vaporwave project Death's Dynamic Shroud, which he joined in 2014. [4]

Contents

AllMusic biographer Paul Simpson describes Rankin's music as Giant Claw as ranging "from dense sound collages and synth freak-outs to mutated prog rock and psychedelia to footwork and vaporwave". [1]

He also made several album artworks such as Kenny Beats and Rico Nasty's Anger Management and Kerwin Frost's Apple Music radio show.

History

In 2010, the year Giant Claw debuted, [1] Rankin launched the label Orange Milk with his friend Seth Graham, aiming to release records by underground American musicians. The artwork for all the label's releases have been designed by Rankin himself. [5] Fact Magazine have ranked the label as one of the 10 best of both 2013 and 2016. [2] [6]

Reception

The 2014 album Dark Web was praised by Stereogum for its deconstructed sound collage style, combining dub music and beat-driven styles. [7] Other works have similarly been praised. [8] [9]

In 2021, he released his first solo mixtape for 'Death's Dynamic Shroud' called, 'Faith In Persona'. Upon release, it was critically acclaimed by Anthony Fantano who praised for his production. [10]

Selected discography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rate Your Music</span> Online collaborative metadata database of music and film

Rate Your Music is an online encyclopedia of music releases and films. Users can catalog items from their personal collection, review them, and assign ratings in a five-star rating system. The site also features community-based charts that track highest-rated releases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beirut (band)</span> American folk band

Beirut is an American band that was originally the solo musical project of Zach Condon. Beirut's music combines elements of indie rock and world music. The band's first performance with the full brass section was in New York, in May 2006, in support of their debut album Gulag Orkestar, but performed their first show with Condon, Petree, and Collins at the College of Santa Fe earlier that year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oneohtrix Point Never</span> American musician

Daniel Lopatin, best known as Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer, and songwriter. His music has utilized tropes from various musical genres and eras, sample-based composition, and complex MIDI production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Ferraro</span> American musician (born 1986)

James Ferraro is an American experimental musician, producer, composer and contemporary artist. He has been credited as a pioneer of the 21st century genres hypnagogic pop and vaporwave, with his work exploring themes related to hyperreality and consumer culture. His music has drawn on diverse styles such as 1980s electronic music, easy listening, drone, lo-fi, sound collage, and R&B.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Presley</span> American musician, singer and songwriter

Tim Presley is an American musician, singer and songwriter. Presley began his career playing with the hardcore punk bands Model American and The Nerve Agents. In 2004, Presley founded the psychedelic rock band Darker My Love. In 2006 he joined The Fall, playing on the LP Reformation Post TLC, and was an occasional guest musician on the band's later albums. Since 2010, Presley has released music under the name White Fence. As of January 2019, he has released seven studio albums, two live albums, and two collaborative albums with Ty Segall under that name, as well as two albums with Cate Le Bon under the name DRINKS, an experimental solo album under the name W-X, and a solo album, THE WiNK, under his own name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaporwave</span> Online musical genre and visual aesthetic

Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and a subgenre of hauntology, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s, and became well-known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970s elevator music, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, stylized Greek sculptures, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mello Music Group</span> American independent record label

Mello Music Group (MMG) is an American independent record label based in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 2007, Mello Music has released hip hop compilations and albums by producers and rappers such as Oddisee, Apollo Brown, Mr. Lif, Ghostface Killah, Open Mike Eagle, L'Orange, Quelle Chris, Jean Grae, Kool Keith, Nottz, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Pete Rock, and Rapper Big Pooh. In 2012, MTV Hive described MMG as having a "dedication to intelligent, street-wise boom bap", although the label has released a number of purely instrumental albums as well. In 2016, Forbes magazine called Mello Music Group the most successful indie rap label of the decade.

<i>Floral Shoppe</i> 2011 studio album by Macintosh Plus

Floral Shoppe is the ninth studio album by the American electronic musician Ramona Andra Langley under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It was one of the first releases of the 2010s microgenre known as vaporwave to gain popular recognition on the Internet. Since then, Floral Shoppe has been considered by some critics to be the defining album of the style.

Ryan DeRobertis is an American electronic musician and singer who grew up in Farmingville, New York and attended Boston College for two years studying music. His electronic music project SAINT PEPSI began in December 2012. After the release of his ninth studio album Hit Vibes in May 2013, he would retire the SAINT PEPSI name due to legal threats from the soft-drink company PepsiCo. He would adopt the name Skylar Spence in 2015, and release his debut record under that moniker, Prom King. In 2019, he would return under the name SAINT PEPSI with the release of Mannequin Challenge, and he currently uses that name for live performances and certain releases.

<i>Chuck Persons Eccojams Vol. 1</i> 2010 album by Daniel Lopatin

Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 is a 2010 album of remixes by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the pseudonym Chuck Person. Its tracks consist of chopped, looped samples of various songs—including popular songs from the 1980s and 1990s—processed with effects such as delay, reverb, and pitch shifting; the results highlight mournful or existential moments from the sources. It was used as an initial template for the vaporwave internet microgenre.

<i>Birth of a New Day</i> 2015 studio album by 2814

Birth of a New Day is the second studio album by English-American electronic music duo of dreampunk producers Hong Kong Express and Telepath, both collaborating under the alias 2814, released on January 21, 2015, by HKE's record label Dream Catalogue. With the popularity of vaporwave in the early to mid-2010s, the duo experimented with the genre by not using any form of samples to compose the album, thus becoming notable for being one of the first vaporwave releases not to include such production techniques. 2814 stated that they wanted it to "have a strong sense of place"; its themes reflect the dark worldviews of HKE.

<i>Soft Sounds from Another Planet</i> 2017 studio album by Japanese Breakfast

Soft Sounds from Another Planet is the second studio album by American indie pop band Japanese Breakfast. The album was released by Dead Oceans on July 14, 2017.

<i>Dark Web</i> (album) 2014 studio album by Giant Claw

Dark Web is a studio album by American producer Keith Rankin, known by his stage name Giant Claw, released in September 2014 worldwide by the labels Orange Milk Records, Noumenal Loom, and in Japan by Virgin Babylon. Dark Web depicts the idea of existing cultures and music coming together to form, in the words of Orange Milk, "new compositional tools." As such, its melodies are executed from a combination of half-second-length snippets of vocal samples from pop and R&B songs. Dark Web follows Giant Claw's typical style of samples and MIDI compositions but with more influences of modern music than Rankin's previous records. Dark Web garnered a favorable critical response for its odd tone and landed in the year-end lists of publications such as Tiny Mix Tapes and CMJ.

Takahide Higuchi is a Japanese electronic producer, disc jockey and painter who works under the pseudonym Foodman. He has been releasing music since 2011 and is based in Yokohama. His work first gained traction in the early 2010s when he was recognised as a leading name in Japan's footwork and juke scene; the producer has continued to see his work as rooted in footwork. According to Resident Advisor, the musician's work blends different electronic genres, including juke and footwork but also ambient, techno, house and noise music, yet dissecting these styles and morphing them together "then driven to extreme without giving you a second to come up with a definitive genre." The Vinyl Factory consider him to be an experimental musician.

George Clanton is an American electronic musician and singer known for his involvement with the vaporwave music scene. He established his independent record label 100% Electronica in 2015, and in 2019 launched the first vaporwave music festival, 100% ElectroniCON.

Dreampunk is a microgenre of electronic music characterized by its focus on cinematic ambience and field recordings, combined with various traits and techniques from electronic genres such as techno, jungle, electro, and dubstep.

Jornt Elzinga, commonly known as Cat System Corp., is a Dutch musician regarded as a vaporwave figure that originated the mallsoft subgenre. He also previously recorded as Mesektet for his dark ambient releases.

<i>News at 11</i> (album) 2016 studio album by Cat System Corp.

News at 11 is the fourteenth studio album by Cat System Corp., the alias of Dutch electronic musician Jornt Elzinga. Released on September 11, 2016, it samples smooth jazz songs and excerpts from TV talk shows and commercials as a tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks. Inspired by a vaporwave mix featuring a picture of the burning Twin Towers, Elzinga produced News at 11 as a portrayal of "a parallel universe where it never happened." Initially intended to be a Weather Channel-themed release, the album was produced over the course of nine months, and drew comparisons to the themes of author Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018).

Luxury Elite is an anonymous American musician known for her significant influence in the vaporwave genre. During the 2010s, her lo-fi sound and visual style, along with her relaxed melodies, made her an impactful figure in the "late night lo-fi" subgenre. She also produced music under the aliases 1-800-TONIGHT, night video, and television archives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death's Dynamic Shroud</span> American electronic and vaporwave trio

Death's Dynamic Shroud is an American electronic and vaporwave trio consisting of James Webster, Tech Honors, and Keith Rankin. The band releases a large amount of music regularly as sample-driven mixtapes under the .wmv moniker, in addition to releasing more standard mainline albums.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Simpson, Paul. "Artist Biography by Paul Simpson". AllMusic. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  2. 1 2 Bowe, Miles (29 June 2017). "Giant Claw announces new album Soft Channel on Orange Milk". Fact. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  3. Miller, Patrick (9 November 2021). ""Did You Hear That?" – Giant Claw Interview". soulfeederweb. Retrieved 18 October 2022.
  4. "death's dynamic shroud biography". 100% Electronica. 2020. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  5. "The Art of Noise: Keith Rankin". Dummymag. 2014. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  6. Hussey, Allison (14 May 2021). "6 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: J. Cole, Sons of Kemet, Jorja Smith, and More". pitchfork. Retrieved 18 October 2022.
  7. "Steam Giant Claw Dark Web". Stereogum. 24 September 2014. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  8. Scott, Jazz (2017). "Giant Claw Soft Channel". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  9. Brennan, Mark Anthony (6 November 2016). "Giant Claw Deep Thoughts". Exclaim!. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  10. death's dynamic shroud.wmv - Faith in Persona ALBUM REVIEW , retrieved 2023-04-23