***DOPE BODY are back on the line with their first album since 2015—and it’s got all the gnarly, bisected body rock of their great records from the far side of the teens. A decade plus from the audacity of their debut cassette, 20 Pound Brick, and four years after calling it quits, Crack a Light is about getting back to essentials. Essentially a power-trio with singer, Dope Body have traditionally excelled at projecting monstrously-voiced street music, artfully welded to the massive space of rock anthems, hardcore and metallic, hard-rolling funk, driven by incisively pounding rhythm and attenuated with guitar loops and FX.
LP $27.85
10/30/2020
***CHECK STOCK!!! Reveived a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. Since 2008, DOPE BODY have been refining and redefining their own kind of hard rock music, a sound that has many tributaries flowing into it, but one that is definitely coming through a group that could only happen in the post—ALL the shit mashup of 21st century schizo, man! Kunk is essential, coming from the marrow of Dope Body. While laying tracks for Lifer, they were prepared, ready to go, with the material in their grip, under their hands. Tense, with the anxiety that comes from the rendering process: you gotta get that flesh stripped off, so try and clear your mind and get it done. But in between takes, they relaxed, let their animal selves out, blew steam. Creativity sparked and new music flew. Catharsis was in the house. Lifer got done, but nobody could get over those moments, and at a certain remove, they went back and said, man—are these the next songs? They were—and the songs were already written and recorded. Dope Body are in a four-way conversation here, with drums, guitar, bass and vocals all pushing it around. Leaning into the future, mindlessly, just reacting, the jams of Kunk are shimmering, alive with a simmering sizzle. Swirling jams that pound and float, cloudlike, associating segmentally like a naturally growing train of thought. Kunk rolls forth with funk and flutter, plenty of riffs, stuttering and structure gleaming in the air. It’s a juggling act, and no balls hit the...
LP $19.95
08/28/2015
MC $10.50
08/28/2015
***Have you ever been punched in the face while dancing ecstatically, but the person who hit you ALSO seemed to be dancing and loving it but you couldn’t really tell? If you’ve been in the front row at a DOPE BODY show—or the back row or somewhere in the middle for that matter—it’s a distinct possibility. Dope Body has built their name in the underground with intense live performances of their ALSO intense studio recordings. On the back of their second album, 2012’s Natural History, they embarked on a rigorous nineteen months of almost nonstop touring, bringing their individual performance stomp to every bar, basement and backyard that asked for it. On Lifer, Dope Body redefines the aural yawp they have been venting for some time, honing wild windmills into surgical strikes, their gut-busting repulsion-sound continuing to expand without losing any of the feral energy that made a crazed reputation in the already-insane Baltimore music and arts underground. (STREET DATE - 10/21/2014)
LP $18.95
10/21/2014
CD $13.75
10/21/2014
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. DOPE BODY formed in December-of-2008-Baltimore as an experiment in musical instincts, jamming and writing the simplest one-part / one-riff / one-minute little jerk-off songs that were the first thing to come to mind (most ended up on their first tape 20 Pound Brick). Natural History is Dope Body in possession of what might be their most COMMERCIALLY ACCESSIBLE album ever— especially if your idea of “commercially accessible” is Half-Machine Lips Moves, Psychic, Powerless…, or “Salad Days”-era punk.
LP $21.50
05/22/2012
CD $13.75
05/22/2012