Dylan Rippon’s punk-disco future classic “Destroy The Now” gets vinyl release!
One of the finest British albums of the last twenty years, ‘Destroy The Now’ by Dylan Rippon has just come out on Limited Edition Vinyl to coincide with the release of instant indie classic ‘Sunburn’ which was featured on SKY in a recent feature length documentary film ‘The Warhol Effect’ which explores the late work and legacy of Andy Warhol.
The power of Dylan Rippon’s music rests in his extraordinary sensitivity to the dislocation of the modern experience combined with the stark beauty of his melodies. Throughout the album, Dylan instinctively weaves darkness and light into beauty. ‘Forever’ is a love song for the ages. Anguished and eternal. ‘Mobius Trip’ is a twisted electronic nightmare of folding and unfolding worlds. ‘All Too Human’ is the prayer of everyone standing on the edge of oblivion. ‘Futurismo’ is for a man who knows the future but will never live to see it. ‘Listen’ is the voice that calls from the liminal world.
And new single ‘Sunburn’ explodes the agony of panic in a glorious synthesis of punk and disco.
Dylan explains this recording as follows, “I started work on ‘Destroy The Now’ around the same time that I was asked to write the music for a new documentary about Andy Warhol called ‘The Warhol Effect’ (dir. by Paul Toogood and Lloyd Stanton). I wanted to make sound in the same way Warhol made images, at the speed of light. Andy was the first to repeat, repeat, repeat. He could paint in code. He was his own algorithm. Marshall McLuhan, my only spiritual guide, understood the digital human as a spirit, disembodied by light itself. He said, ‘everybody at the speed of light becomes a nobody’. And he knew what this separation of the body and soul would do to our lives. ‘Violence whether spiritual or physical is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more
violence.’ I started thinking about the violence of digital life, the way it ‘destroys the now’. Warhol spent a lot of time thinking about the violence of car crashes and electric chairs, teenage kids dead on the sidewalk but all over the evening news, violence as a destiny. Maybe that’s why Valerie Solanas tried to murder him. After that, it didn’t take long for the songs to manifest themselves. It was automatic. I didn’t even have to try. ‘Listen!’ was the Universe telling me to wake up, to be aware. ‘Futurismo’ was for Antonio Sant’Elia. He imagined skyscrapers and futuristic city-scapes but was killed in the First World War before he ever saw his dreams come true. ‘Mobius Trip’ is the ‘eternal return’, Nietzsche’s horror concept that we are all destined to live our lives again, every thought, decision and action the same as the first time around. ‘Forever/Eternity Song’ is a love song. It may be the greatest love song ever written. ‘All Too Human’ borrows its title from ‘Human, All Too Human: A Book For Free Spirits’. The robots are already more human than we are. They feel, we scroll. The digital human is all too human to be real. ‘Divider’ is a song about memory, about losing love long ago when you could feel the streets and breathe the night. ‘Sunburn’ is a panic attack transformed into glorious light. ‘Momentum’ is a prayer. I mastered the album at Abbey Road. Richard Bull created a beautiful painting for the sleeve. I had the feeling that I’d made something really special.”
Baring the hallmarks of a dystopian world spraypainted musically by Kraftwerk, Air, Future Islands, The Killers, Gary Numan, John Lennon, The Cure and David Bowie, Dylan’s influences as cited above are laid bare for all to see but only he could have put something this comprehensive together. A cult gem for the modern age made from a gifted light of life devoted to music and art. This may well be Dylan Rippon’s finest hour and the perfect bridge to connect Gen X and Gen Z.
‘Destroy The Now’ is out now on Hero Rhymes With Zero. Order the vinyl now here.
